Blacktail Deer Plateau preparing for winter

Ruenna’s bark gave Grezig pause. She stopped and turned, looking over her shoulder, and saw the girl standing there expectantly. Grezig let her tail wag and trotted over to the girl. “Ruenna,” she said in greeting. “What is it?” She hadn’t spoken to the girl much since that time a month earlier when she’d gotten her head stuck in that log full of orange spores. The experience had been so strange that it all seemed a bit like a dream now. If Grezig knew what Cheetos were, she would have said that all three of them had been hitting the Cheeto bag too hard that day.