Sun Mote Copse so rested he by the tumtum tree

She strode along the riverbank near the copse's far eastern edge, searching for plants to add to the collection she'd left back in between Colt's and Wildfire's graves. Sugar intended to find somewhere permanent to store them eventually, someplace cool and dry. For now, though, her main focus was simply combing the shoreline and plucking up anything that caught her eye.

Abruptly, a hideous itch flared up in the space between her shoulder blades. Sugar set down the few sprigs in her mouth, then located a patch of sun scorched grass a few feet away from the water. She flopped down to the ground and rolled onto her back, then began to writhe. The dry grass proved an exceptional scratch pad and soon Sugar was sighing in relief, though she didn't stop moving even when the itch was gone.

She did freeze when there was a sudden, loud rumble and the earth quivered independently of her movements. Sugar rolled over and propped up on a socked elbow, ears folding back as she tried to figure out what had just happened. It came again: a dull roar that seemed to reverberate through the earth. The ground shifted beneath her feet in a strange and deeply unsettling way, prompting the pup to attempt to stand.

Sugar struggled onto all fours, head snapping upward as she heard a loud crack overhead. Her black eyes lifted to the nearby mountainside, widening as they watched an absolutely enormous broken boulder careening down the rocky slope. As her fight or flight instincts triggered, it tumbled into the river with a colossal splash, immediately flash flooding the riverbank and sweeping Sugar right back off her feet.

Title from "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.