Yeah, he'll do that. He spends a few moments watching from under the tree, first, checking for predators or other dangers.

It could be worse - the sun is out and it's not actively snowing. For now. Thick blankets of snow cover the earth, criss-crossed with tracks from the local wildlife. If there's anything bigger than a songbird around at present, it has mastered the art of hiding from feline eyes. 

Out he goes, then, looking for signs of prey or humans or anything else interesting and making a point of staying close enough to the trees that he can climb one for safety if need be.

There are many signs of prey - small (and not so small) birds huddled in the branches, mice and voles tunneling beneath the snow. Even with it being winter, he's hardly seen so rich a hunting ground. 

After a few minutes, he encounters a very strange thing - a mass of faintly glowing snow in the shape of a ptarmigan, bustling about fussing over the tracks left in the snow. Where it passes, the snow is left whole and unbroken, as though it had just fallen. 

That's weird and he should get under cover about it. (He does.)

Denice is pretty sure that's not normal bird magic - it's possible that there's another kind besides birds-in-general and parrots, but restoring snow seems off, and anyway it doesn't explain the glowing. It could be bee magic, though; you can never be sure what to expect from bees, and unlike humans they can familiarize other bugs, and if they had a firefly that would explain the glow, maybe.

Bees are generally fine with other creatures in their territory, as long as they don't act threatening; she has her familiar watch from his hiding place for another few minutes before venturing out to check, just to be on the safe side.

It seems utterly preoccupied with the state of the snow; certainly it ignores a mouse it drives away from the roots of a tree with a chirp and a bluster of wing-driven snow, once that mouse is no longer a threat to its pristine snow. No bees or bugs are visible within its body. It seems to not be a danger, or if it is, it's one that can be avoided quite easily simply by staying a few meters away. It seems quite safe to venture out, if this is all that's around.

She doesn't, on reflection, particularly want to make contact with the bees, if this is bees; they probably won't be able to communicate anyway. She directs her familiar to keep going, circling around so he doesn't get too far from her tree.

He hears, in the distance, a strange ringing, almost too faint to actually listen to. It sounds like no bell he's ever heard - most like the sound of crystal glasses being pinged, or rubbed with a wet finger to produce a long note. 

What a pretty sound. She sends him to check it out.

In a place where a great eruption of rock has created a surface with little soil, and, due to it's steep angle, little hope of creating some, the pine trees are suddenly replaced with a stand of tall crystals in a shape not entirely unlike that of a tree, if a tree was rendered at an extremely low poly-count, and then carved from the finest ice-blue crystals. They shift and tinkle in the wind, each meter-long "leaf" of crystal glowing softly in a way that erases all shadows from an otherwise much-shadowed forest and leaves the entire thing with a wholly surreal look, like nothing on earth. 

...that's... what?

She's pretty sure magic can't do that, even bee magic.

She has her familiar watch from a bit of a distance for a minute, though he can't wait too long without starting to get cold.

The ice-crystal-trees continue to exist! They do not seem to be much more lively than the existing trees, apart from the glowing thing. If you get too close to them, the air seems faintly colder, like they're less a living thing with insulation and more like they're great poles of cold stone or metal, ready to suck the warmth from you just by existing. The snow doesn't seem to want to stick to them, but it is piled around them as much or more than the pines. A strange bird, with iridescent blue feathers that almost match the colour of the crystal, flits from branch to branch before disappearing into a nest cleverly hidden beneath where a cluster of leaves joins to the trunk. No other animals seem to much like the crystals - they stick to the pines, from what can be seen. 

Pretty understandable that the other animals are staying away, if the trees are cold. She calls her familiar back, too; not that she doesn't want him near the trees, but she doesn't want him that far away at all if they're... in whatever situation this is, with magic she doesn't know about and can't predict. He can check out the area around her, instead.

The area immediately around her contains:
- A little creek determinedly bubbling along despite a heavy encrustation of ice along the banks. 

- long gap a few meters wide cut through the trees, where a cloud of pine needles and snow-flurry are blown around in a way that doesn't seem wholly natural, on second inspection. 

- a clearing where several tree-stumps show signs of having been cut down by an axe, and impressions in the snow might imply a disused fire-pit. 

Denice is starting to get chilly, even under cover and with another cat for warmth, by the time he's done; it's time to dig a den to keep the group warm. She picks a spot a little ways from the fire pit for it - she doesn't actually want to interact with any humans but they tend to stay away from predators if they can, so it's at least better than nothing as a sign that the area is safe.

Her familiars catch the pair of voles she flushes out in the course of her excavation, and the three of them settle in to get warmed up when she's done.

The digging goes much easier than she is used to, even taking her magic into account, and she rapidly gets down below the line of frost and into the soft, warm, earth. 

... then she breaks through, into another, larger tunnel, almost large enough for an adult human to crawl through, also wending it's way into the earth. 

She scrambles back up the tunnel, and after a moment when the floor seems disinclined to crumble out from underneath her she creeps forward to knock a bit of dirt into the tunnel so she can hear how big it is.

That done, she digs around it, leaving a generous amount of dirt between it and her tunnel, and digs out a small den at the end, just big enough for herself and her familiars to all fit and be able to shift around.

Time passes and they can rest a while. 

Until something decides to investigate what's dug a hole in the tunnel to it's own den. 

See, this is why she dug around; the hole is on one side of their tunnel and she's on the other. Still, something to keep a close ear on, especially if it sounds like her tunnel - and her air supply - might get blocked.

Indeed, the creature at the other end of the tunnel cannot reach all the way down the tunnel. It mews with annoyance. 

Kitty! <3

...That's a big kitty, though, and she's not sure how hungry it might be, or what it might consider food. She stays put and stays quiet.

Eventually, it will give up, make a rough attempt at patching the hole, and go back to what it was doing. 

That's fair; she was originally planning on patching it herself once she'd rested.

After a few minutes she gets bored and goes to check on the patch job; finding it haphazard, she decides to improve it a bit.

Oh! The thing is back! 

... and it's a smol. 

A pair of tentacles will come, seemingly out of nowhere and grab Denice.