Blacktail Deer Plateau Now you know, now you know

As the long autumn drew closer and closer to winter, Saena continued pursuing her Naturalist apprenticeship. She rose at the crack of dawn every day to watch the sky lighten and tried to analyze the clouds that rolled in. She still guessed wrong a lot of the time—Saena often predicted rain, sleet, and fog just for the day to turn out pleasant—but she was getting better at predicting when the weather truly would be bad. She was aided by her unusual dreams, in which the simorgh version of herself explained the shape and composition of rain clouds, snow clouds, and storm clouds.

When she wasn't watching the sky, Saena was wandering the plateau or its outskirts, taking mental note of the fauna and their behaviour. She'd recently discovered a wily wolverine that hid at the plateau's base. A family of deer mice made their home near the clear spring she'd found with Pura in the summer. The plateau housed several grouchy badgers. The deer were the most interesting; Saena had tracked their progress all the way around the plateau. As a Naturalist, it wasn't her job to count the herd or determine the best place to hunt them; she was to ensure they were in good health, and to report the number of offspring and other behavioural changes.

She dabbled in other things as they came to her in her dreams, but mostly she did what she knew. She hadn't been gossiping as much, but that was more a consequence of there being nothing worth talking about. Tytonidae was still gone, and Pura haunted the plateau like a ghost according to Blue Willow, but Saena hadn't seen him.

Speaking of ghosts, Saena found herself face to face with a small, semi-transparent white bear cub when she rose from her daily weather watching. She froze in place with her hackles prickled into sharp ridges along her back and lifted her lip fearfully. The ethereal cub didn't move or say anything; it continued staring at her with its blank white eyes. She could have swore she saw a ripple of blue in them.

Unwilling to spend any longer in the presence of the terrifying bear cub, Saena turned and began to lope quickly away, thoroughly spooked. Her ears remained twisted back, listening for pursuit, but the cub didn't seem to be following.