Stone Circle Crawl out of love

Only recently had the three month old realized that the world was larger than the mile and a half surrounding his family's den, and ever since that discovery, young Burr was prone to stretching his growing legs on longer walks through Easthollow's territory. He never ventured near enough to the borders to cause any concern, nor was he over-curious what lay beyond his carefully constructed boundaries. He never went farther than the Marino River in the forest and never any farther than their meadow of wildflowers elsewhere. Much of his time was spent in the vicinity of the Stone Circle itself, where he felt safest and most assured.

Today, however, he was nearer to the river than the circle. The aspens rose all around him, confounding his sense of direction due to their similarity. The boy eyed each one warily as he passed by it, but even years spent studying these trees wouldn't result in an intimate knowledge of which was which. That one to his right had five brown scores in its white bark facing eastward, while the one to the left had two and one-half around the side, but further along he encountered two more trees with a similar arrangement, and knew he would never be able to pinpoint his exact location in the forest until he found the river, no matter how observant.

Speaking of the river, Burr's little ears perked up when the burbling of water became clear. He was kind of thirsty. He was also hungry, tired, and his paws were sore from all the walking, but little Burr wasn't one to complain about it. If he had a problem, he was apt to solve it, and for right now, he could solve his thirst problem. So he picked his way through the thick undergrowth to the edge of the river and emerged, a smallish grey blob of puppy about to enter a growth spurt, and bent down to lap clumsily at the shallows, heedless of the danger presented by rivers.