Kintla Flatlands DISCOVER · live fast, die young

OOC: I originally was posting this to a different thread that I thought was in Blackfoot Forest but it was actually BDP so half of this post is Jinx hanging out in the forest and then heading back home, sorry if it's confusing. >_>

IC: Blackfoot Forest had been abundant in herbs before the snows had fallen, and some remained useful even after frost had bitten their cores and ruined them. Jinx's stride through the forest she had once owned was devoid of any emotion, as though she no longer cared for it the way she had before. That was in part true; it had been the pack's duty to defend the forest, and they had failed it. They had failed the loa who had come to call it home, and they had failed the gods who had sent them there.

Jinx, too, had failed Sos, in a way. She had not come back in time to give them visions of victory and conquest in this part of the Wilds. Her arrival back from her trip down the river had yielded nothing but the empty echoes of a pack that had abandoned her... And their territory. There was no greater crime in Jinx's mind than abandoning territory. The blood oath had not been about her; it had always been about the forest, chosen by the gods to harbour them in safety.

All that was in the past now, and Jinx's rationality — and concern, it would seem, for what could have been her empire — were shattered and left behind. She wandered in search of plants so she could at least be useful to her present pack, although these things she sought were of a more malicious nature than those she normally kept: baneberry, bryony, comfrey. Things to make the body ill and to desiccate organs; things to keep intruders from ever returning.

It was mere coincidence that brought her across Zombie's trail on her return trip from the forest; she wandered a path she had never taken before, following the line of the mountains by hugging its base. This decision brought her to the other side of the crevasse that her once-subordinate had discovered. While Jinx didn't notice her at first, when Zombie moved, the Horizon Ridge Kappa looked up sharply, and recognition shone in her slightly narrowed eyes.

"Zombie," she rumbled, recalling the name after several heartbeats of silence, during which she watched the mountainous crack warily. "You survived after all." She remembered urging the other woman up from the snow. She also remembered the trust Zombie had placed in her. For once, unlike with Pied and Hawkeye, whom she had only felt mistrust and betrayal toward, she felt a glimmer of guilt... But it was gone just as quickly when she remembered why she had had to leave.