Shadewood a setting sun, or rolling waves at sea

Silence met her ears at first.

For a few moments after waking there was nothing, an emptiness surrounding her. As her eyes opened she took in a hazy glimpse of dark shapes lined in fuzzy hints of light, and closed them again.

There was a sound in her head like white noise. As conciousness returned to the wolf the noise increased in pitch, like a dog whistle, until the silence was broken and she was deaf to everything but the sharp note; but then someone drifted by her in the dark, and the crunching of the leaves by unseen paws cut the sound from her head. The wolf winced as she shifted against the leaf-litter, raising a paw and draping it over her face - but that tone was gone, and she could hear the forest now.

She thought she could see someone stalking across the beams of light, thought she saw the dust motes shift around something solid, thought— hello...? She breathed the sound more than spoke it, and the word caught in her throat, made her cough. The wolf lifts her dark head and catches a shaft of light across her eyes, so she drops it again. Maybe the stranger will notice her where she's laying but - does she want that? Is she in danger?

The wolf doesn't know which to prioritize: her safety, or her silence. It doesn't occur to her until moments later that the dark shapes of the forest are not familiar in the slightest, nor the sight and smell of the distant red-coated creature; nothing here is famliar, nothing here makes sense.