Wild Berry Meadow arrowhead

At her prompting, Dwin provided Pukei with all the detail she wanted and then some. She listened with her ears swept all the way forward, captivated in her tale. However, it was not the story of thrilling adventures and awe-inspiring feats that she was hoping for. The look of utter delight on her features slowly melded into a more solemn, pensive expression as the other girl recounted the horrors of living the life of a loner.

Hunger and cold were sensations she was familiar with, though not to the extent that Dwin had experienced, it seemed. The girl had quite the way with words; was she a storyteller of sorts? You can keep them at bay. That sentence in particular bounced around her mind. Was this the universe giving her a warning? That keeping the hunger and cold at bay was all she had been doing so far and her luck would soon run out?

She shook such thoughts from her mind, replacing the dread with a joke, as was custom for her. "They sound like pretty shit friends," she laughed, before her ears fell back in sympathy as she regarded her companion with a newfound look of admiration. "I'm...sorry you went through that, it sounds awful."

"I mean, you survived through, right?" she said, motioning to the girl with a nod of her head. Unless, of course, Pukei was actually far hungrier than she realised and was hallucinating this whole encounter as some sort of cosmic premonition. "Was it worth it in the end?"