Heron Lake Plateau sky fire above, ice below the hearth

@Fire!

With a little more than three weeks to go before her pups were due, when Raven wasn't busy with alpha or medic duties, she spent much of her time foraging for medicinal plants that she knew could be helpful for the various trials and tribulations of pregnancy and childbirth. She had managed to amass a small cache of remedies for nausea (which had been a blessing with her recent morning sickness), gas, swelling, and infection prevention. Poppies were in full bloom right now, so she had collected some poppyseeds -- her favorite painkiller and sleep aid -- so she felt well-prepared for what was to come.

She wandered along the fringes of the lake now, curiously eyeing some of the strange mosses, algae, and shoreline aquatic plants. She was unfamiliar with these varieties of flora and was itching to experiment with them, but had to restrain herself out of maternal caution. If they were poisonous or had any sort of potentially harmful side-effects, she didn't want to risk harming her unborn puppies. So for now, she just sniffed and poked, occasionally enjoying a dip in the lake to cool off.