Blackfoot Forest silaqqiqtuq

'A woman's work was never done,' the crone used to say to her, prefacing every lecture with some mantra or other. Stryx could not help but hear those familiar words drifting in the back of her mind as she hiked; she had come down from the mountain range by accident and found herself surrounded by a forest of dark spires, littered in between with plants she could not easily identify.

It was like combing between the needle-sharp quills of some mythological beast. Some of the bramble bushes held promise. She had to tear herself away from one such cluster and carried some seed pods in her fur thereafter, unable to reach the majority, which only pissed her off.

Stryx planted herself in a patch of grass where the light was brightest, hoping to utilize the summer sun in identifying what she'd gathered, while also picking away at the spherical burrs. Some of these came away with ease and she spat them immediately in to the dirt; others would take some work, and she'd have to pull out chunks of her own coat to be free of them. Those ones she left alone, for now.

Something dark shifted overhead, drifting beyond the canopy. The dark vee of the bird's spread wings briefly scythed her spotlight. Stryx looked up with a scowl, watching the shape as it scattered beyond the trees and then rebound, taking roost somewhere close. With a huff she returned to her grooming - oblivious to the presence of the bird's master, the wolf.