Haunted Wood don't fall asleep at the helm

He had gone further then he had ever planned to. Moving south from plain to meadow to prairie until he found himself here. It was an odd forest, not at thick as the Neverwinter pines standing sentinel, though no less beautiful. From gnarling oaks in a misted vale, haunting and shadowed even in the daylight hours. To melancholy willows, their branches drooped, falling to the earth instead of high to the skies. Then the white birch trees came and he silently traversed the area known as Haunted Wood. Formally claimed by a aggressive and powerful lot, now the lands were silent and still, back to its namesake. 

Aiolos followed the river now, his movements a lazy lope. He had grown tired in the few days of searching endlessly for his missing brethren, only to come up short. Now, he merely strode, his purpose nearly lost to him. 

Then he heard a scurrying through the forest. Panting heaves of panic, rushed movements. He pauses, head darting around, body circling. The sounds of the fleeing pronghorn echo through the trees, dizzying him. He cannot pinpoint the sound, the forest making him feel as though it were playing tricks on him, watching him, and he shakes his head back and forth hard, trying to get his bearings. 

And the sound is gone. And when he opens his eyes out in the distance by the river's edge is a wolf, stark black with piercing pale eyes. And for a moment, be it her sudden sight, his tired and weariness, or the forest itself, Aiolos is struck. He stares.