Duck Lake i laid the guns to rest

The morning sun was obscured every so often by the thick clouds that drifted lazily in it's path, blocking it to degrees, chasing away the warm beams of sunlight to skittish shadows. The sun itself was rather warm as the dark burgundy fur at his back soaked them up, warming the tendrils of coarse winter fur like a personal heater that hung in the sky. It was not as cold today as it was most days, actually bordering on quite warm for what Nefarious would have thought as winter. Still, the shaman wasn't about to complain for the reprieve of crisp, winter frigidness that stole into the air and was arctic enough to chill a man to the marrow of his bones. Nefarious had a teeny bit of an unknown advantage, having some arctic blood in him, though he did not immediately know this. Any and all knowledge of his biological parents had been lost. Before Anik and Nefarious he had been called something else, a different name, identifying him as someone else, but he couldn't remember that either. The only thing that Nefarious could recall was the pain of hunger when Suluk had found him several days later, knowing only that he had not been nearly old enough to hunt for himself. It was odd, the Kesuk considered, how that was the only thing he could remember of the time “before”, though likely because it had been traumatic for him, having no food. It was not a pain he ever wanted to relive, that much he had concretely decided from that day forth.

Nefarious was not willing to stray too far from Swiftcurrent Creek, especially since he was still learning his way around it's internal territories, though he had a rough idea of things for the most part. It was enough to be able to make patrols without finding himself horrendously lost at the end of them, trying to find his way back to his ...work in progress den. The medicinal and poison caches were the very first thing Nefarious had set upon, putting the need for such things above his own need to reconstruct the previously too small den. His private stores were fairly bare, though this was the fault of winter. Always, he was on the search for anything that he readily knew of as either medicinal or poisonous. It had fallen to Nefarious' attention that he may have to find a healer and get a crash course on the plants indigenous to this region, since he was not and there might have been some plants exclusive to Seahawk Valley, just as there were surely ones exclusive to these Wilds. The knowledge of plants was rather versatile, thankfully, and would not require the whole re-learning of his craft. As long as he recognized them by sight (or scent) and was knowledgeable of their purposes then he was set to go.

It was with the hopes of stumbling across something that he could stock up upon that was indigenous to both these Teekon Wilds and Seahawk Valley that happened to not die in the winter (though he knew the hope was likely an extremely vain one), that he set out of Swiftcurrent Creek. Having stuck within the pack lands since his arrival, Nefarious knew eventually he would have to brave the unknown free territories beyond, especially because half of the time, the things he needed for his caches were not conveniently located anywhere near the pack lands. That was just how it was. Even if he came back empty handed then at least he could say that he gleaned some knowledge of a free territory.

His path took him to a large lake, that was, almost surprisingly, not uninhabited by “wild life”. Rather, the lake itself appeared to house quite a bit of duck families, partners, and likely the occasional grouping of widows. Nefarious was not a massive fan of the avian creatures but he admired the fact that they mated for life. If they took a mate and it tragically died, or uneventfully died even, they did not take another mate. It was kind of sweet, their bonding process. Not to mention, Nefarious added mentally with a slight cringe, getting near enough to scavenge their fallen feathers was a necessary evil. Their feathers were nice additions to talismans, and alters to Atka and Sos. There was a group of them crowded together, huddled near the bank closest to Nefarious, their eyes closed as they were presumably slumbering, likely a group of widowers. Nefarious, for the sake of not wanting to disturb them altered his course, heading to the bank a good few feet away from them, figuring now was as good a time as any to get a drink and consider his options to what he could gather. He would much rather return with mallard feathers for his own gain as opposed to returning without anything.