Meadowlark Prairie in flanders fields

She violated her vow—not setting foot outside of the caldera—within hours of making it. She remembered passing by the field of faded red after her chance encounter with the mother and her pup near the dark forest. Upon waking this morning, she suddenly couldn't stop thinking about it. Raven decided she would go there today to investigate, pausing only for a moment as she breached the borders and headed out into no man's land.

They were dead flowers, wilted and withered by the cold. Raven stood at the edge of the field, stretching out a petite paw to touch the nearest one. It broke from the stem and crumbled into the dirt. She bent down to sniff. There was no smell, save for a subtle earthy fragrance. She licked her lips, trying to identify these blossoms. There were so many brightly colored flowers in her mental catalog, many of them red: begonias, chrysanthemums, hyacinths, marigolds, peonies, roses, zinnias and so many others...

Nearly none of the aforementioned flowers were known to be toxic and Raven was curious about potential medicinal properties. If these dead blooms possessed any, she would have quite the haul here. There was only one way to find out, however, and that was to ingest a small sample and wait for the possible side effects. She could have asked a pack mate to help her with this but she dismissed the idea out of hand; nobody she knew was in the right condition for risky experimentation. She would just have to undertake it herself.

An hour after swallowing a mouthful of red dust, Raven sprawled in the field of decomposing poppies, smiling happily up at the blue November sky.