Grouse Thicket no more innocence left to spill

He delved keep into the thicket, blending with shadows that grew longer as the day passed into night. The game birds were tempting but he had gotten his fill earlier of them along the forest’s outskirts where once again he and @Stjornuati had parted ways for another spell. The pair, though they worked in tandem as often as they could, knew they could cover more ground by splitting up. There was much to scout out here, much information that could be gathered as to what would make a suitable place to hole up should the snows come early and thick, and by the earliest tendrils of dawn’s light they would confer and conspire yet again.

The thicket itself reminded him of the great forests of home, though the hardwood trees were not as bountiful as they were here; the interior world he had grown up in had been choked with coniferous forests and staggering peaks. It was a place where the weather was prone to changing in an instant if the wind decided it and all in its way were left to its mercy or malevolence. A place where even the summers had their occasionally moments of trying to smother them all in batches of stifling heat and the only escape had been to try and scale those snow-capped ridges and jagged eskers.

But here…

This place had variety. Potential. Perhaps not as far north as he would have liked to be, but it had all the creature comforts that one needed to make a decent home out of them. Though he wanted it to be true, he knew that this place would not be without others—no, there were signs of travel through here too—and his body was guided almost mindlessly along a footpath well worn in by those who used it as a thoroughfare to another locale.

A quail cried along the path as the last ember of a setting sun pierced through the vista; Solpallur watched it skitter into the decaying undergrowth only to snap after it and spurn it along faster. He laughed about it, a raspy almost wheezy sort of sound that was far more delightful than his features could ever cast. Yes, he quite liked this little stretch of land, and he would revel in its void of common kin while he still could. He would have to bring Stjornuati through here to hunt another time.