Otatso Wetlands my words would just evaporate

Talos was starting to think this had been a bad idea. But then, there was very little that ever seemed to turn out to be a good idea anymore, nowadays, she thought grouchily to herself as she stooped below a weedy vine trailing lower than she'd like and swerved past an ugly lumpen treetrunk that hummocked its roots rudely into her path. She'd seen an interesting-looking creature whose colorful feathery...scales? fur? who knew?!... had piqued her interest for a moment— just a flash, the smallest and most tantalizing of glimpses— but it had well and truly vanished among the shadowy labyrinth here, it seemed. Talos had been hoping that perhaps her luck might turn for a change, and give her a look at what she thought might just maybe have been an actual, real live dragon this time...but nope. No such luck at all. She lifted her paw high and wide so as not to trip on the snaking lumpy treeroots that rose up into her path like small stubborn foothills, and then grimaced as she managed to set her foot into an unexpectedly swampy patch of ground with a loud SPLORTCH.

 Well, it had looked solid enough; how was a girl to know when perfectly ground-ish looking ground was going to turn out not to be ground at all? It took a bit of extra effort to free her paw with another disgusting sucking sound and then she was left staring with a grumpily wrinkled nose at its goopy brown exterior dripping in midair where once there had been a lovely sturdy little coal-black paw. Well, whatever. With a deep sigh of disgust she stepped out and around the soggier patch and continued on her way, snaking and threading her body in all sorts of weird contorted positions in an effort to not get totally coated in mud, thinking more and more that the sooner that she left this territory the better off she'd be. There was a small problem in that she wasn't quite sure which direction was "out" any longer, though, as she'd stalked into this wetland in high dudgeon and been paying little attention, but Talos was confident she'd manage to remedy that soon enough. Besides...it wasn't like she was expected to be back anywhere at any particular time now was it. That was one of the perks of going off on one's own and away from difficult parents and other adults after all: hey, no bedtimes! Talos tried to feel some small measure of happiness about this, at least, and failed.

She spotted a hummock of higher ground highlighted by one of the fitful beams of afternoon light, up ahead. It took some doing and a little bit more of slogging, but a few moments later she hauled her carcass up onto the thankfully quite dry patch of dirt, and promptly tried to scrape her muddiest forepaw off on the nearest convenient patch of scruffy tan grass. It was going to die off for the winter soon anyway, wasn't it, so who cared if she made an utter mess of it anyhow. It took Talos another moment for another twitch of movement to catch her eye: this time however, as she twitched her own head upward to follow it, she caught herself staring resentfully at the form of another wolf just sitting there uselessly. Oh, she said, disgruntled. ...What are you doing here. She didn't sound as if she really much cared about the answer, and her expression soured a little further as she managed to catch a whiff of the guy's scent. He smelled much of Swiftcurrent region, and faintly of a few other canines of whose existence Talos would really rather not be reminded at the moment. Great. Just great. EXACTLY what I wanted to find in here, sure. Go hunting for a dragon and get some stupid ugly packmember whose name and face I don't even know. Her stare was quite rude, almost challenging as she ogled him with a sullen and unblinking silvern gaze.