Snowforest Taiga living without you

She'd meant to return to the mountains, but after the encounter with the two boys and the mother before that, Stryx found herself in the lowlands instead. She wasn't certain where she should go next — back to the coast maybe, to check on the progress of the woman if she still lingered in the grotto? To the brook where she'd left the boys, to see how the dark-coated one fared in his craft? 

That's really why she lingered; if she returned to the mountains she couldn't return for these check-ins without burning more calories, and she wasn't eager to do that.

So she wandered. She hunted for a few hours, finding a skunk as her luck petered out, and then chose to let it escape without harassment. The last thing Stryx wanted was a good douse of that thing's odiferous glands even if she was in need of some food. The fates would provide for her eventually, she thought with a vague roll of her eyes.

As she journeyed through the taiga's forestry, the trees like spires cut from aventurine and swaddled in thin yellow light, she wasn't subtle. Her strides were purposeful because that's the attitude she always carried: as if she had somewhere to be, some work to be doing. The rest of her, from her lowered head to the lazy drag of her tail through the grass, spoke of her overall weariness. She paused and changed her route as necessary, but soon found herself surrounded by a dense copse with no way out.

That's when Stryx noticed it: like a bird calling between the trees, but far more familiar. A keen little sound, whining, making her lip curl at first. She stopped, sighed, and moved to intercept where she thought she'd find it again. The whine came again, but Stryx couldn't find anyone on the first pass — the third, the fourth — and when she stopped to rest in her search, the sound was gone.

But her gaze lingered on a slanting shadow off her flank, and the longer she stared at that section of forest the more clear it became. There was a hollow there. So, she moved towards it, sulking the whole way while her pond-water gaze turned sharp with interest.