Felltree Marsh something weird is going on: what did jan say?

@Sunny

Harley had decided that day, she was only going to do things that thrilled her. She explored inland, turning her brief trajectory away from the coast, and simply ran. Her body was not thick, but her muscles were sinewy and, when properly trained, the bullish girl could run for miles and never even stop, not even once! However, nowadays she was not so properly trained so she only made it as far as the mucky, late-winter marsh before needing to stop and replenish her energy stores.

While she recharged, the hoyden made to explore the area — yet another thing that thrilled her! There were various small rodents scurrying about, and Harley made half-hearted attempts to launch herself after each of them, always coming up empty-handed; but this was fine, because she was her only competition, and as long as that was the case, she would always be winning! With a light heart, the cocoa-dusted girl trotted on and hummed a small tune to herself.

and literally two months later…

she ducked her head under the branches of the sparse, meager clusters of trees to sniff at their base, where mud kissed bark and was swallowed by it. There were all sorts of interesting things here, too! She had found a cluster of frog eggs, probably the season’s first, as well as a bird plucking and pecking at a small silver fish, caught upon low tide’s lengthening sands. Then there were the snails, which she tasted with the tip of her tongue and decided were absolutely horrid, and various small carcasses which had died, then froze, and now had thawed.

Of course, all of this meant wading through the muck and various puddles of standing water — which Harley was happy to do of course, and was actually quite a small price for her to pay. The hoyden had always liked being messy and uncouth, as the process of getting dirty was so fun, and the process of getting clean was not-so-fun. In this way, she had always been more like the boys. That, and the fact that she liked girls — but whatever, that didn’t matter now, not with Raiden gone.

A stick snapped in the background and Harley suddenly snapped to attention. She had been particularly lucky on all her travel not to have encountered a bad soul, or one who wished her harm, and Harley had begun to wonder when her luck would run out; and Harley was convinced it was right then, at that snap of a twig, at that very moment in time. She had let her guard down and destiny had come to meet here! It was about time, wasn’t it? Well, whether or not it was time, Harley wouldn’t go down without a fight. “HEY,” she called out, her bark filled with more of surprise than threat, and she whirled around the face they grayscale stranger.