Otatso Wetlands let me dangle at a cruel angle

Bhreac's exploration of the area surrounding the Hollow continued. She'd always been prone to roving and wandering, and now that she knew she had a safe place to rest if she needed it, she felt comfortable to roam as far and wide as she dared, knowing that any exhaustion would be easy to remedy. Being part of a unit, even one she didn't feel very connected to yet, had its appeal.

After walking or running for a while, Bhreac came upon the wetlands. They were densely covered with flora, and buzzing with creeping, crawling life she couldn't quite see. It was pretty, in an eerie sort of way, and definitely the sort of semi-challenging terrain Bhreac relished. She still had a bit of mud clinging between her toes and along her lower extremities from plodding through the marsh with Viggo the other day, and so she supposed it wouldn't make a difference if she went through the shallow, brackish waters she saw collecting in puddles beneath the trees now, would it? 

With a shrug and barely a second thought, Bhreac set to, ducking under the trees and hurrying along through the wetlands. The trees were bent and gnarled, branches extending out low from their trunks and forcing her to duck under particularly low hanging ones, or jump over roots growing up from the saturated earth.

caiaphas sat folded between the cold tuck of granite and limestone, where her gaze traced the ugly sprawl of a conchoidal fracture in the stone's facet. she had opted to secure herself in this dank chasm the night prior -- and despite the sun's ready advance still found herself in the dark grotto, as if emulating the sorrowful and isolated life of a earth-weary troglobite.

so she counted cracks, detritus - the imprint of some long vanished fern that sat in the stone. a deplorable memory of the cretacean era, here marked and forever forgotten. caiaphas' seclusion was immediately marred as overhead footsteps thundered marking the passing of some unknown being.

pale as ectoplasm the wraith rose, pulling out of the gnarled entrance with streaks of mud staining her flank. ahead a medium-sized wolf, dingy and sundry in coat. she watched the female for a moment and then followed, taking painstaking care to remain quiet in her passing. she hung back a fair distance, trailing in the manner of some sad shadow acquitted from its' corporeal partner.

Bhreac continued to pick her way through the wetlands, enjoying the simple but somewhat challenging task of making her way through it at a clip. Her tail wagged behind her as she hopped nimbly over a series of tree roots, and then slunk low to the ground to swiftly crawl beneath a half-fallen tree trunk. Her belly brushed low to the muddy ground, and she could feel the dirt gathering in her coat, but she didn't mind. One thing that Bhreac had certainly never grown out of was a childish delight in finding herself a bit dirty; it was usually an indicator of a good time.

After a few more moments, though, she heard footfalls that weren't hers — the ground was saturated with water, thick squelchy mud nestled between the curling tree roots and flora, and she was so attuned to her own movements that she knew which sounds belonged to her. She'd found most wolves to be fairly friendly in this area, if not downright baffling in their pleasantness, but whoever it was wasn't intent on making themselves known. She didn't stop moving, but the thought made her uneasy; she quickly decided, though, that it could've been a fox, or a bird, or a squirrel, or any other manner of creature, and so she carried on.

so far the sundry-colored female had yet to notice her, though for a moment caiaphas felt her heart baptized in cold panic as the shewolf ahead stopped, clearly having heard her. the telltale sign of her attuned ears, working in unision to pierce from her environment the status of her tracker, clued caiaphas in that her game was shortly ending.

caiaphas froze as her quarry ahead stopped, though there was no denying she was silent in her passing. the terrain made stealthy advances nearly impossible -- yet as soon as she resigned herself to being caught it appeared bhreac had resumed her travels. delighted that her stalking could continue, caiaphas hung back a bit until bhreac was just barely out of her vision. she knew it was only a matter of time before her clumsiness betrayed her location, but until then she was thrilled to exploit the female's sense of comfort by stalking her.  if she was lucky, perhaps the bhreac would unwittingly lead her to food. the prospect of a meal caused caiaphas' mouth to froth, and while she followed bhreac she schemed diabolic ways in which she thieve an honest wolf's hardwon meal.