Haunted Wood no one likes a beggar slightly overdressed

The further northwest he went, the wetter it got. It wasn’t just the season—he’d been through a few to know that spring always came with its showers, but this was something different. Not the occasional weather of the plains, coming in explosive emotional bouts before settling down into nothing for days and days on end. If the weather down on the plains was unpredictable, up here it was depressive—it hung around for days, deep and cold and wet, settling down to one’s very bones. Sometimes he felt as though his blood was cooling down, thickening and churning into sludge. Could be worse. Could be better, though. Still, there was something about setting off in this particular direction that amused him, so he continued onward.
 
It’d stopped draining earlier this morning, though as it marched steadily on towards noon now the accumulation was still thick on the trees and undergrowth. What was left of it, anyway. He feels as though this place had seen livelier days, as now the branches twisting towards the sky had little to adorn them but the dripping condensation. A forest with one foot in its grave, bones supported by the roots of previous flourish. There was something poetic about it, in a way. There was always something oddly poetic about the inevitability of rot, the vast entropy in the universe.
 
But enough about that.
 
The place was too dead to offer anything by way of food, so he walks along at an easy pace, heading ever northwest. Occasionally a low sound can be heard, warm and rustic—it’s Cash’s, humming an aimless tune, deep in his chest, somewhat mournful in a minor key.
 
You found ways to keep yourself sane while alone for weeks on end. Song was a way he’d found, though it was a more personal one than story or game. Eventually the notes settle into a steady rhythm, then a pattern, then the words weaving between in his head: none but bones now, ‘rest fallen ‘way to the earth, n’thing but bones now— and he can’t figure out the last line, but he wants to somehow rhyme in “dearth…”
 
Now, when Cash gets into these types of moods, he gets a little too wrapped up in his own head—a little more easy to approach unnoticed as he wanders up with the stream on his left side, seeing in the distance a lake flanked by the forest he’d been meandering through.