Swiftcurrent Creek tongue-tickling bubble juice

The fae had always been prone to nightmares, but only recently had they started to come as often as they did. It was more often than not, now, that Olive found her sleep disturbed by something terrifying or worrisome — not a real threat,  but something conjured up entirely by her own mind. The imagery changed often, but there were elements that were oft repeated: Dakarai [of course], blood, a stranger, a pervasive sense of dread. She would awaken in the night, breath and blood racing as if she had just returned from a hunt, but her mind could remember nothing of the nightmarish visions save for those few details. 

When she awoke, she could rarely get back to sleep, so Olive spent many days tired and lethargic. The cold also did her no favors, as she was very much a summer wolf and had the characteristically thin, silken coat to show for it. It was times like these, when she was cold and thin and waifish, that she felt the true weight of her solitude.

Olive was hungry, but thirst was so much easier to slake so she sought a creek she knew to be nearby. There was another already there — it seemed that she had not been the only wolf to be drawn to the creek, where the ice had thinned and broken, seeking a drink of winter's frigid meltwater. The woman reached out her coal-tipped nose, but could glean no packscent off of him — he didn’t smell like the three ladies from the other day had, at least. It was a quite small space where the water bubbled up from beneath the ice, and rather than approach a complete stranger, Olive took a seat several yards away, milky plume wrapping demurely around her haunches. She was certain that he had heard her approach, so Olive waited patiently for her turn to imbibe.