Gyrfalcon's Keep a guiding light to keep me from foundering

Reef's search for fungi lead her away from the sea and inland. She was born on the coast and, like so many other wolves who were, she had been taught how to suss out a number of different provisions from her surroundings. Mushrooms were among them. She knew the earthy delicacies grew in damp and dark places. Often that meant caves but a stony mount flanked by a tight stand of trees caught her eye. She was sure that somewhere among those rocks and boulders and beneath the canopy of the forest she would find mushrooms.

She was not wrong. Reef had the good fortune of locating a narrow fissure in the keep which was shielded from snowfall by the sprawl of evergreen branches. There was little room to spare and at times her shoulders rubbed the walls. Determined and unconcerned about tight spaces, the small girl pressed on, eventually finding a small cave set off from the chasm itself. Growing in clusters were the pale slender mushrooms that she had been bid to gather. Reef laughed in joy, and soon found her way back into the relative brightness of the timber, her mouth full with a couple clumps, each sporting several dozen individual stalks.

She set her find down at her paws and grinned up at the sky, as if thanking some spirit or deity for favoring her in her search.