Stone Circle baby, I'm dying for another taste

She staggered past Easthollow's boundary sometime past dark, still feeling the effects of those little black seeds, but also the beginnings of a pulsing headache. She bee-lined towards their den, fur ragged and stick through with twigs and brambles, a stark contrast to the level of clean it normally was kept. She reached the den after what may have been eons of minutes, stumbling into the entrance when the warmth and scent of Murdock greeted her. 

She crashed half-into his side; though small as she was it probably felt more like a gentle bump. Blinking, attempting to contain her spindly limbs beneath her she began to stage whisper. "@Murdock,"  she began, something like pride infusing her next, slightly slurred words. "I went on an adventure." Ice and snow and vegetation were all trapped in her coat, and she quaked as she shifted near, but in her addled state barely felt the burn of the chill.

Murdock woke with an indignant squawk as Poppy rammed into his side. It wasn't painful, but she was wet and cold, and he'd been having a nice dream. "The hell is your problem?" he grumbled, trying to make room for her while she bumbled around, skinny legs going in every direction. Eventually, he got sick of it and pulled her down beside him, beginning at once to pull all the twigs from her fur.

"An adventure?" he asked skeptically, a little worried about how strange she was acting. "Where? A swamp?" She was dirty as hell - they'd probably both smell like wet dog in the morning, which was not his favorite thing to smell like. "You look like a bog," he added, not quite able to help but take a dig at her.

For a few minutes, the girl flopped around like a dying fish, trying to organize her limbs in the small space. Clausterphobia did not come; normally this much hectic movement beneath the earth would have her thinking the earth would collapse upon them. But the poppies helped with that, as they did the hold, and she collapsed against Murdock with little complaint when he drew her near. 

"an adventure!" She echoed in quiet happiness, elaborating after his next question. "a red man gave me some seeds. seeds like me! we went places!"  She continued, twisting to face him as he began the arduous process of plucking various debris from her pelt. She laughed softly as he took a dig at her, the prospect of a bog walking around on legs suddenly very amusing. "yeah!" She agreed, moving to bop his shoulder as Engel had, but missing by a couple inches.

Murdock plucked a burr out of her fur and realized there was something rather familiar underneath the bog and wet dog smell. "Was this man called... Engel?" he said dramatically, beginning to realize that his dog had somehow gotten high as a kite as well as extremely dirty since the last time he'd seen her. "You must've had a busy day," he noted, a little jealous of what had, apparently, been quite the experience for the girl.

Maybe she'd take him with, next time. For now, though, she was falling all over him - not at all in the right shape to be going on adventures. "What did you two get up to?" he asked, wondering what sort of adventure this had been.

Her gaze rounded as he guessed correctly, muttering, awestruck, "yeah!" She squinted her gaze against the beginnings of a pounding headache, but the fact that Murdock was magic was too important, and she had little time to focus on her head. Muttering something about magic under her breath, she fell silent as he asked his next question. "we found a great big river, and we did some jumping and rolling and the red man couldn't talk properly and then the sun was as red as him and then he fell asleep and that was boring." What began as a relatively structured thought stretched into a mangled and fast-paced sentence, somewhat vague.

And then again, her own memories of what, exactly, had happened were confusing at best, remembering their adventure as moments of striking clarity, and too blurred faces and trees and snow. "you're a very good wolf, Murdock."  she mumbled, half-grin on her face as her head slumped to her paws, suddenly exhausted. "you're like a big, friendly tree." She muttered, tail twitching behind her as her gaze blinked, sleep looming over her like a wave; but not quite engulphing her yet. 

Murdock hid a grin in her fur as his words registered with the intoxicated girl. She was funny when she was high - he had to give her that. There was something very endearing about her fawn-leg clumsiness and wide, doe eyes.

He paused his plucking and grooming when she complimented him to lay his large head over her smaller body in an affectionate embrace. "You're a good wolf, too," he replied solemnly, only to grin as an accompanying simile occured to him. "Like a cute little chipmunk." Because she had practically been climbing him a moment ago, and because didn't they have that sort of relationship? He gave her shelter, and she...

He licked her cheek, doing his best to ignore the strange, willful stirring in his chest. He was too old to fall in love again.

Sleep trickled into her slowly, her gaze falling closed and her breaths beginning to slow, frantic tail wag slowing to a sporadic twitch. Murdock's compliment had a joyful grin slip over her muzzle, her tail pick up a moment. He hadn't called her a good dog; rather, she was a good wolf,  and that meant so much more. She knew she was a good dog, but a good wolf was something she'd aspired to be. Sleepy grin etched firmly on her face, she wiggled once like a gleeful slug before falling suddenly into sleep; the type of heavy rest that would not be broken for hours to come.