Sleepy Fox Hollow i am going to cover myself with ashes of you and nobody's gonna give a damn

After departing from the prairie, Asterr had headed towards the east, skirting the edges of the looming woods until she'd been able to break away and travel along the creek. She'd stopped only a handful of times for a rest to be taken, and always had they been short for she'd wished to distance herself from the darkness. Though within the woods there lived a friend, she could not find it in herself to trust the place as a whole, and so it was avoided without a second thought. The creek had held her attention for far longer, especially when she'd begun her ascent back up into the mountains. Though she could find some things that struck her as normal, familiar and easy to navigate, there still existed many turns that she'd been unaware of. Never had she given up, however, traversing the terrain until a peak had been reached, only to travel back towards lower lands once the other side had been noticed.

Each step was careful, wishing not to slide any length of the way down and risk injuring herself, but eventually had she entered the hollow. It reminded her roughly of the lair, for it thrived as a hidden beauty within a land of rocks. The scenery had spoken to her, the greenery being something that she could always find to be interesting. Made better had it been by the seclusion of the territory, for she'd believed there a chance that few souls of the canine variety might be found there. Thus her movements were slow, casual rather than calculated, and only occasionally did she taste the air. In the end, she'd seen Ukko before having scented him, and had misidentified him almost immediately as Noctura. While there were plenty of signs to tell her that the male she'd cherished and the stranger a distance off were not one in the same, she'd crept closer anyways. Perhaps it was because she'd wanted for it to be him, to know that he'd returned to her even after having witnessed her physical union with another, but never would she know for sure.

Once close enough to make out the finer details of his features, she'd halted, expression wilting as it was discovered that the stranger truly wasn't whom she'd desired him to be. She did not know the male ahead of her, she had never seen him prior to that moment, and yet she couldn't look away. Aside from his eyes—and his scars, but she could not see them—he looked similar to the one that she was nearly positive she'd lost, and so she'd been left to stare at him; if she were to stare long enough, then maybe he would morph into the stargazer.