Deepwood Weald Time to take time, for spring will turn to fall

Having been born unto a plentiful spring and having weathered only a mild and forgiving winter, the girl was not conditioned for such cruelty. Oh woe was her. Indeed, the yearling was used to having a relatively full belly, and the gnawing of hunger had never found her so readily as it did now. In the wake of the locusts, which June had found magic in, came a dreaded sparsity of food that was at once unwelcome and unexpected. They may as well have been flesh-eating insects for how well they drove the prey away.

An inner voice insisted that she needed to conserve her energy, but a hungry and heedless June ranged out from Silvertip Mountain and into the weald as morning shifted to afternoon. She felt much hungrier than she looked. Her weight loss was minimal for now, not surprising given how reedy she already was, but there was a glint in her eyes that betrayed her hunger, and as the Silvertip yearling ranged further and further, she poked her tongue out in a gentle pant, as if the very oxygen of the air could sate her. But it could not.

When she came across a heavyset Mackenzie Valley wolf with cascading grey-to-white fur, June nearly hurried forward to greet him and see if he could aid in her search for food. He was surely capable, given the size of him, she having come to associate large size with capability in spite of reality, but the sight of his torn ear and the jagged cut of a scar through his coat stopped the yearling in her tracks. She was unable to mask a gentle whine as she came to a halt, uncertain of his temperament, given his scarring.