Blackfoot Forest lethe

@Burr! <3

Raven had never much cared for traveling. Every attempt at it in her youth had resulted in her getting horribly lost. She had lost nearly a year -- or more? she couldn't even remember anymore -- fumbling around trying to find her way home. Needless to say, she had stuck very close to home ever since she'd finally made her way back to her beloved caldera.

But there was a downside to being a homebody. It limited her to a very small social circle, for one, and it also restricted her medical knowledge strictly to what plants she could find near the caldera. As vast as the Teekon Wilds were, she could only imagine what fascinating and different things she might find outside the caldera's immediate surroundings that might aid her medical abilities. Meeting Chusi and hearing of her journey had really gotten the gamma thinking about exploration again. So, after talking with Finley and Elwood, she had decided to take a short journey to Rising Sun Valley. It wasn't a tough one to navigate. All she had to do was stay south to give Blackfeather Woods a wide berth and to bypass the mountains by way of Tormented Tarns. As long as the mountains didn't spontaneously disappear, she'd be able to find her way back easily.

She lay now beneath the mostly-naked boughs of the trees at the edge of Blackfoot Forest. Her feet were a little sore from so much traveling, but she was already caught up in how different things looked on this side of the mountains and how exciting it was.

The absence of his parents and Cyron put Burr in a strange mood when he was within the confines of his pack's territory. He didn't have any friends to confide in besides his sister, and she wasn't exactly the best sort of company when Burr was in a mood. The two goaded each other more often than they banded together, and at least outwardly, she was handling things better than he was. Sunny had left Easthollow and there weren't many others he had connected with that he felt comfortable talking to about how he felt, so Burr bottled up his feelings instead. It left him feeling antsy and unsure of himself, so he sought to escape it by escaping the territory itself.

Soon enough, Burr would come to realize that this approach was not only unhelpful, but destructive. Until he did, he would continue to keep his thoughts and emotions sealed behind his lips while silently hoping that his parents would soon return with Cyron in tow. They weren't very similar anymore, which became more obvious with each passing day, but Burr missed his brother dearly and would give anything to hear a sweetly innocent, babyish joke from his doggish sibling. He hadn't yet considered the possibility of this arrangement being permanent. Any day now, Illecebra, Mawk, and Cyron would all return.

He wandered a lot farther than usual, only realizing it when the dark-barked trees of an unfamiliar forest blocked his vision. The boy's ears fell back as he peered up at the bare autumn boughs, remembering for a moment an imaginary game he had once played with a similar forest, only that one was make believe. This was the real deal, and in spite of how large he had grown in the last few weeks, Burr gulped audibly. But the memory sparked a desire to prove he was as grown up as he felt recently, prompting him to move forward with small, hesitant steps... until he spotted a pair of stark yellow eyes against the forest backdrop. He met them for just a moment before all his boyhood imagination came rushing back.

The scream that pierced Blackfoot Forest at that moment was as unmanly and un-grown up as they came.

It was a very dark forest, which was interesting considering it was the middle of the day. Despite the fact that the changing season had stripped most of the foliage from the deciduous trees, there still seemed to be a lingering gloom to the area that couldn't be attributed solely to the lush conifers that still maintained their greenery. Raven wondered what lore surrounded this forest, and if there were were any dangers to those who hung out within its shadowy expanse. She certainly hoped not.

Intending to hunt up something to eat later on before the sun went down, she relaxed now in anticipation of a short nap. But as she sighed and closed her eyes, something caught her attention. There was movement in the forest, twigs snapping and leaves crunching beneath the footfalls of some four-legged creature. It wasn't small, either. A flutter of anxiety tickled inside of her but she remained where she lay, appreciating for once that she was dark of coat and easily concealed in the shadow of her surroundings. If it was a predator, jumping up and running might be a mistake. So she remained there, frozen, huddled against the trunk of a thick, ancient fir.

She peered around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was she was hearing. She looked over her shoulder, craning her neck to see behind her. The sounds were so close they were practically on top of her, but nothing was there. She turned her gaze forward again and suddenly locked eyes with a young wolf who wasn't more than two feet away from her. Clearly he hadn't seen her where she lay, and while he almost literally scared the shit out of her, it wasn't nearly as bad as the startle she gave him as a blood-curdling scream tore through the air. Holy crap, it's just a puppy! she realized, feeling like a complete jackass. "Noooo no no!" she shouted over his cry, quickly moving from beneath the dense shadows of the tree so he could see that she was just a wolf. "It's okay! I'm not going to hurt you!"

There was a rush of some indescribable feeling that pummeled Burr's chest as his scream pierced the air, sending crows flapping raucously into the sky. His heart th-thumped rapidly against his rib cage and for a split second, his vision turned white as horror wrapped him in a vice grip. His ears pressed down so hard against his scalp that their bases ached, and his whole body shook visibly as his composure fled him. The scream was long and drawn out, or maybe that was just how it sounded to him. Things seemed to move far too quickly and far too slowly all at once, such that Raven leaping to her feet seemed to happen in a fraction of a second and her words came out like a gun's staccato: nononononono!

But no matter how he tried to throw back his weight and move his feet, he felt like his entire body was made of lead. In the end, Burr simply collapsed on the spot and curled in on himself, uttering sharp cries of, "sorrysorrysorry!" in hopes of placating the monster in the woods. It took several long beats for his senses to return to him and for his vision to return to normal. By then, the kindly wolf had removed herself from the shadow of the tree, and when the frightened wolfdog looked up at her, he saw she was no monster at all.

The fear of the unknown still had him tight by the throat and his heart was still racing, but something else began to leak through, and soon enough he mustered up the courage to glare and accusingly yell, "you scared the crap outta me! Why were you hiding like that!"

The boy's terror made Raven feel ten shades of awful. It was a miracle she hadn't given the poor kid a heart attack. She did her best to make herself look small and non-threatening, which wasn't difficult given her generally small stature along with the fact that she hadn't really gained back much of the weight she'd lost during the caldera's famine several weeks prior. Fortunately, her efforts seemed to work as the boy regained his composure relatively quickly. Somewhat understandably, his fear quickly changed to something more aggressive as he began to shout at her. Though she felt somewhat shamed for the way she'd frightened him, she wouldn't take 100% of the blame herself.

"Hey," she said, sitting down and giving him a somewhat deadpan look. "I was just laying here trying to take a nap. You're the one who snuck up on me and started screaming. Doesn't your nose work?" Her tone was not accusative or defensive, but lightly matter-of-fact.

"I didn't sneak anywhere!" came Burr's response, which unlike Raven's, was exceedingly defensive. Hell, he was a kid, what did he know? The truth was, he hadn't really been utilizing all of his senses properly. He relied on his eyes far too much and paid too little attention to what his nose and ears told him. Had he been thinking more like a hunter, like a predator, Burr would have noticed Raven a lot earlier and saved both of them a mild heart attack.

"I forgot, okay!" he said, exasperated as he flung himself down on his hindquarters. That helped a little with the whole world-spinning-heart-racing-dry-mouth situation, though it significantly lessened the impact of his dramatics that he couldn't storm off. It wasn't really in his heart to do that anyway. He peeked at Raven across the way, stubbornness writ in every line of his face, and blinked away when he spotted her vibrant yellow eyes again. Everyone in his family had yellow eyes, but none quite so bright as hers.

"Why are you sleeping there anyway?" he had to ask, because after all, "these forests are haun-haunted and you'll get a curse put on you and you won't be able to cure it, ever." Or, well, so his imagination told him.

Burr is such a cute little butthead<3

The kid was very defensive, but that was to be expected. Her experience with raising her younger siblings, plus all the time she spent around Finley and Elwood's various litters, had taught her that pups could be irrational, argumentative, quick to anger, and a whole, long grocery list of other things that weren't always pleasant to deal with. She just listened to him, arching her brow as he blurted out that he forgot to use his nose. She resisted the temptation to comment something to the effect of well, that's what you get then, figuring it would do nothing but agitate the boy even further. He seemed upset enough with the whole situation that there was probably more than enough self-chiding going on without her adding to it.

His last comment made her grin, though. "I ain't scared of no haunted woods," she replied blithely, looking around the shadowy forest with skepticism. "Heck, 'Haunt' is literally my middle name. Besides, there isn't much I can't cure anyway." Turning her attention back to him, she cocked head curiously and asked him, "Speaking of names, what's yours?"

Wow, she had a lot of balls. Burr's eyes grew wide when Raven openly challenged the scariness of a haunted forest, and something of a sparkle took root in his gaze when she shared her middle name. Although he didn't know what a middle name really was, he wasted no time forgetting his ire from seconds ago when he exclaimed, "cooool!"

That wasn't all, though. Burr slowly lowered himself to his rear end, rapt, as Raven went on. She had scared the crap out of him, but Burr's opinion of her only continued to soar. She was... like... the coolest wolf he had ever met! "I'm Burr!" he hastily replied, beating his curly tail against the ground as he hastened to ask, "miss, how do you cure curses? Can I do that too?" He would never have to fear a haunted forest again if it was really possible for a wolf to cure a curse!

The boy's mood was changing quickly now that they had moved on to more interesting subjects. She'd never known many folks to be so rapt and fascinated with her line of work, but then again, she'd never associated them with witchcraft before. She supposed that if one wanted to get really technical about it, what she did wasn't too far removed from some of the basic ideas at the core of witchcraft. She nodded in response to his question, laughing a little as she answered, "Of course you can!" Gesturing for him to follow, she moved from where she sat in the hopes that she might be able to find some late-season* plants she could show him and explain how they were used to cure "curses".

"It depends on the type of curse," she continued as they walked, "but if you know what you're doing, you can cure all sorts of things, like bellyaches, rashes, diarrhea, bad breath, infection. Have you ever heard of a 'medic'?"

*This thread was started in mid-October, so I'm assuming some hardier plants would still be hanging around in the lower elevations.

As Raven affirmed that Burr too could be a super cool Curse Curer™, his eyes grew wider and brighter and his whole expression screamed, wow really this is the coolest day ever! Never before had Burr taken any interest in any sort of skill or pack role, but what Mawk had described as a healer and what Raven was implying seemed to be two very different things. It helped that it wasn't his dad telling him about it this time. Try as he might to grow up fast and act like an adult when around his family, Burr was easygoing at his core and didn't like to work hard, so everything Mawk mentioned as a job was unappealing to him.

Little did he know that medics, AKA witches, had the hardest—and most thankless—jobs of all. He would figure that out some other day. Let's let him think it's the sweetest gig in the world to go around curing curses and being a legitimate hero, unafraid of anything.

"Those are all curses?" he asked, breathlessly, while trying to remember if he had ever had any of the ailments Raven mentioned. He had surely had a bellyache now and again, and diarrhea had featured in his infancy (but he had no recollection). Bad breath? He wouldn't know anything about that, but his was probably not the greatest. I've been cursed before! he thought, and knew that he just had to learn how to cure these things if he was going to grow up to be some great hero (without working hard, mind you) like he imagined in his boyhood fantasies. "What's a medic? Is it like a witch that cures curses instead of giving curses?"