Falls of the Hinterlands But something rustled on the floor

timeline - shmimeline! ill fit it somewhere.

The forest served as shelter for the night, although the wandering girl did not really require it - nor like it, she came to realize. It was so different from what she had grown up accustomed to; usually, herself and her siblings would curl up anywhere among the shrubbery and the snow, and by morning a blanket would have formed across them. It wasn't a problem to be exposed in such a way, what with the strength of her natal pack and the great expanse they inhabited. It was easy to see trouble coming and thus, to prepare for it. Something instinctual had driven Saga in to the forest for the night, but it was too cramped. She slept for twenty minutes and would wake to strange sounds, or the creaking of boughs, or to the calls of animals she likely had never met, and would startle awake only to drift off after a handful of moments. This repeated for the entirety of the night.

To think that communing with the spirits of this forest would do her good! Alas, she had thought wrong. Not a single image drifted through her mind as she tried to sleep, and so no portents came to her — and it was the first night in many moons that the girl had not spoken with the golden-eyed stranger. It was upsetting to feel this disconnected.

But the day blossomed around her. As tired as she was, Saga knew she had to set out again on her journey, even if she lacked suitable instruction. She paced through the forest for hours upon hours, feeling more fatigued than ever before, and was drawn ever closer to a strange reverberation in the air. As she caught the scent of water, her attention spiked; she sought the scent, and the sound, and traipsed by the falls with her full attention drawn to them. It was a magnifiscent sight — but what caught her eye next was the sharp movement of something small in the underbrush. She didn't know what it was, aside from potentially lunch, but she lowered her head in line with her shoulders, and hastily tried to charge for it. The critter knew the forest better than she, and slipped through the shadows and up a great tangled tree before Saga could do anything besides bumble through the foliage.

With an exasperated moan, Saga stared up the trunk at the escaping squirrel, and then turned her weary eyes back towards the falls.