Wild Berry Meadow Despite

When Wraen had left the Moonspear in order to head East that morning, she did not know that she would stumble upon a literal treasure chest. There was a meadow tucked between three forests - Bramblepoint (her favorite), Heartwood (which she avoided ever since running into the Redhawk wolf with the ravaged face, she did not fancy seeing that guy again) and the distant patch of green, where rumour had it, the much feared and much hated Blackfeather wolves resided. At the first glance - quite inconspicious with the white cover of snow and stalks of grass and other dead and dried up plants sticking through. Even smells of these plants were hard to tell apart, because they all seemed pretty made up from the pretty much the same molecules - dried up matter, soil and ice - just in different concentrations varying from one spot to the other.

But what drew her attention was the deer tracks that were criscrossing the area she was exploring and the patches of bare earth, where they had uncovered the grass and little berry bushes they needed for their meals. And there in the middle of the "wreckage" was a single berry bush standing with little bright red berries on it's branches and it seemed to be gloating just the same way that fateful apple tree in the Bible would have. Up until then Wraen had not been aware that you could find "the green forage" in winter, therefore her surprise was a pleasant one. She picked carefully one berry after the other, feeling the sweet and cold taste in her mouth before swallowing them.

It was there and then, when she noticed that she was not alone in the meadow and that a distance away there was another wolf standing. It had an unusual coat color, which had worked as a good camouflage against the white of the snow and the yellows, grays, browns and blacks of the grass and other plants. "Hey!" Wraen called out to the stranger, approaching it confidently, eager to make a new acquaintance and looking forward to a conversation with a traveller just like herself.