Raven's Watch A bag full of cats.

Tagging @Stark for visibility, but AW. Vague because her Tangle thread is ongoing.

Okay, so she made it out of the forest. It took a while, but with a bit of smarts and a whole lot of luck (that she'd never admit to) Pepper found a river among the craziness of the forest, and followed it. The river led her southwest, sort of, and seemed as if it would end up back near the sea, and the thought of hanging out on the sand for a day or two - maybe eating a bit of fish or chasing some birds - appealed to her greatly. It wasn't until a few hours later, as she paced her way along the riverside and caught the image of the grandoise mountains to the south, that she realized her mistake.

It wasn't a huge deal - she could backtrack and visit the sea sometime in the future - but Pepper wasn't exactly keen on hiking up and down a mountain.

There was no sign of Hogan at all, leading her to believe that this adventure had truly gone stale. It was irritating, and perhaps that irritation is what kept her motivated. When Pepper finally decided to take a breather, she had abandoned the river and accepted the situation for what it was: a doomed quest on the lower levels of a foreign mountain. The shale bed was uneven and precarious. The dirt was dried from all the sunlight, and what few trees she'd found were spindly things, reaching for the sky or twisting hungrily towards the sea, as if the salty water could save them from the summer heat. And she, panting regularly now, decided to take a break where the shadow of the mountain was the thickest.

Most importantly, she thought — rather, she swore to herself — that there was a familiar scent upon the wind, and so Pepper chose to linger a bit longer than she otherwise would've, just for a quick look around. Maybe Hogan had stopped here and moved on? Or maybe she was imagining things - who knows, this long on her own and her brains might've transformed in to scrambled eggs by now.