The Heartwood monsters of smoke and mirror

He strayed back towards his originating point after venturing towards the heart of the region, though this was more or less unknown to him. Mordecai really didn't give too much mind to where he was going on any particular day. Forests had the tendency to gain his attention, where in this case he had followed an equally stray creature of prey into the sprawling timber. The sun high in the sky, the wind scattered some of the blooms from the timber about, and it was only a matter of minutes before he completely lost interest in the chase. It wasn't worth the expended energy to be after a weasel, anyway.

Drawing in a deep breath, the gold-eyed Ostrega let it out sharply, bringing himself to calmer energies. The adrenaline he felt moments ago still flared, lending to him a momentarily disorientation in the form of hyper-vigilance. It wasn't unwelcome, because he only then spied out where the weasel had found itself, but the desire to give chase had passed. He huffed in its direction, watching it scurry well out of his view in response, and set off for deeper parts of the forest. The shade there would be better, or so he hoped, and a little time for relaxing had come. So he hoped, anyway.