Silver Creek hand-me-down dreams

The rain had been coming for days, and Tehama half-suspected she had entered a land where the sun never showed its face.  Only the flourishing plant life in the area belied the possibility.  The tawny female had spent hours the day prior traversing a grove of towering redwoods, the imposing canopy of which could not be supported without a magnanimous quantity of sunshine.  As she wandered among the cathedral of vast trees, the rain fell in giant drops accumulated in the needles high above, and Te had a peculiar feeling, as if she had been shrunken down to miniature from her already small stature.  The discomfiture was enough that she chose to keep walking, finally settling down for sleep at the forest's edge in a small soggy meadow.  There the raindrops fell at their normal size, and the great redwoods were at her back, where she needn't dwell on the eerie hush beneath their boughs and how they dwarfed her so thoroughly.

The lithe lady resolved not to be annoyed that she was utterly sodden when she awoke, practically a part of the swampy meadow herself now.  A patch of sky near the horizon looked a bit lighter than the rest, if she squinted, and so she judged it to be morning, but even her attempt at optimism wasn't enough to convince herself that the sun might actually ward off the rain today.  Te stretched, and was overcome with a shiver.  The corresponding whole-body shake sent water droplets flying, but they were quickly replaced with the steady tattoo of rainfall.  It was just no use trying to get any drier or any warmer.  The she-wolf plucked several small twigs and grasses from her fur, but there were so many tangles that she soon gave up and got to her paws.  Great Mother, but she missed the comfort of their family dens at Mount Mirror!  

A pang twisted in her chest at the thought, though, for that was a place that existed only in her memory now.  This is me setting off on own my life now, she reminded herself.  No going back, only forward.  Some place in this world would speak to her again, as Mount Mirror had been made known to her ancestors.  Just... maybe not a place so... wet as this one.  Tehama barked a soft laugh to herself, and set out across the open meadow towards a woodland—one of quite average proportions, thank goodness. Slipping into the glade betwixt a pair of maple trees, Te thought she glimpsed the serpentine curve of a swollen creek gleaming in the half-light.  She turned towards it.