Bramblepoint The mold of your life is in your hands to break

The good thing about this forest was the dense vegetation.  Mal felt more secure with all the places to hide, that it was okay for him to sleep under the arms of a thornbush just as long as he didn't suddenly have a nightmare and stab himself in the head from suddenly sitting up.  That had only happened once so far.  But hey, at least nobody would bug him.  He'd done a little bit of scouting figuring out where the nearby packs were, but he hadn't gotten too close.  He mostly just wanted to know the lay of the land.

As nice as the dense forest was in some ways, it had made it a little more difficult to catch prey, because all the things he could catch could so much easier duck under the most pointed foliage -- so maybe he wouldn't stay here long, but in the short term it was pretty great.  He hadn't run into anyone either.  It really didn't seem like a particularly popular place, so as he set off down a game trail to see what was on the other end, he entirely expected to be the only one investigating it today.  Regardless of what was there, he figured he'd head back towards the lake after this and risk running into someone there.