Herbalists' Cache fever to the form

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set for valentine's day, aww ♥

The sylph’s days had become somewhat repetitious, despite her best efforts to remain en route — moving towards somewhere; destination, unknown. She would know it when she came across it, Olive assumed, and she would suddenly come to full empyrean comprehension upon glimpsing it, probably! It’s what kept her scurrying across the wilds, from her oceanside home, southward across the plains towards Aries, and then on a north-easterly route around the land’s mountainous backbone — and who knows wherever else she might go! Olive knew it equally as likely that she might never recognize whatever it was she sought, and if that were the case, the ash-and-bone shewolf supposed she might continue traveling around forever; not necessarily looking for anything, but also not ignoring any of it. What was stopping her from doing so, now?

Perhaps she was being too idealistic about her future as a gypsy nomad, because she found herself concerned with things she never had to as a wolf of Teaghlaigh or Moonspear and it was annoying. Every morning the tiny woman awoke in a new, unknown location and made busy finding sustenance for the day. At this late in the winter, all vegetal life had been smothered by the snows and perished, leaving Olive to make a meal of whatever warm-blooded creatures she came across. She spent the rest of the morning lazily preening herself and brushing through her furs with a fastidious tongue; then she made her daily devotional to the gods and traveled on until the sun buried itself behind the silhouette of the western lands. It was then the temperature would plummet, so it was time to find that night’s dwelling. Again she would bathe, then curl into herself and find repose, only to wake up the next day and continue the cycle. It was repetitive in the most chaotic way possible and though Olive loved this lifestyle to pieces, there were many times she missed the ennui of home.

That day, however, the sylph had awoken in more ways than one.

At first, she blamed it on the moon. She felt flushed and feverish, as if all her blood was rushing just under the surface of her skin. A rich energy emanated from the pit of her stomach and she was suddenly so much more aware of each part of her body; each toe on all four of her limbs, and her tail with its silken, creamy plumage, the fluttering in her belly and the rising sensation in her chest — it was all so familiar in a most puzzling way — and Olive spent many hours in a daze, taking a break from her customary daily travels, before a moment of clarity allowed her to understand what was really going on.

It wasn’t that she didn’t think her heat would never come along again, but it was hard to Olive to believe it had already been a year since her last season — surely, it had only been a few months, at most! Though the more she reckoned with it, the more undeniable it became and the lamb decided to just lean into it. So many times, the picture of a woman’s heat was painted as a nightmare — something to be scorned and hidden! Olive hadn’t agreed with that viewpoint then and she especially didn’t agree with it now, not when she felt antsy from an itch she couldn’t scratch and overflowed with feminine energy. Perhaps it should be a safety concern, but safety was the last thing on the spiced femme’s mind at that moment — no, she welcomed danger, and the mere want of it threatened to wring all the breath from her and kill her!

Last year she had Dakarai, but this time she had no one, no plans — and there was no way she could plan anything now, not even plans to hide herself, not in her distracted and agitated state! Restlessly the nymph moved from tree to tree, brushing up against the arboreal firmness as if she were a serpent, or a feline, or something else that was not a wolf but a creature that lived inside her body all the same. Her mouth was dry but she was not thirsty; her mind has so many words to speak but she did not have an audience. Making small murmuring noises, the woman dropped her body close to the earth and luxuriated in the coldness on her belly — and when that one spot of earth became warm from her feverish heat, she pulled herself along to the next patch of cold earth, over and over again until she was simply raking herself against the ground in a manner that did not appear dignified.