Twisted Slough And hooked a berry to a thread

Sunset would come in about an hour, Saena guessed, though the sky was already shot through with streaks of pink and orange to herald its coming. There was scarcely even a breeze to stir the heavy canopy that shrouded the slough. The honks of migrating geese passing overhead was the only accompaniment to the sound of her paws squelching through the wet grass and soil. Altogether a beautiful evening. She was no longer a practicing naturalist, but she suspected that it would continue to be gorgeous until nightfall, which might bring rain.

Dismissing thoughts of the weather, Saena gingerly picked her way around a particularly large puddle and found sturdier ground near the base of an overhanging willow tree. There she seated herself and lifted her left hind paw to scratch an itch behind her ear. The smack of her lips punctuated this action as she contemplated whether she was hungry enough to hunt or not. The slough was a horrible place to try to hunt by Saena's reckoning, yet a wolf had to hunt, and soon enough she was off on a prowl, albeit not a very optimistic one.

@Jagoda (or @Brooklyn if Jagoda wouldn't come this far).

Brooklyn had come across the slough after a day of scouting around for nearby packs.  After the death of her parents,  the girl was in a state of dispair and sorrow, and even the beauty of the sunset was little comfort to the grieved girl. Her paws squelched in the moist earth underfoot, making it difficult to walk with any measure of comfort.

All in all, it was a sorry state of affairs. The reddish girl was hungry,  though. Grief had given her countless days without an appetite, but those days haf passed, her belly aching beyond how it had ached ever before. Eventually the earth underfoot dried slightly and she was able to prowl the slough and a heightened pace. 

She lifted her nose into the breeze and it told her of another female, not far off. Usually she would have feared approaching another,  but not today. Today she needed to hunt, and if this woman was kind enough then perhaps she would offer assistance in bringing down a larger kill for the both of then. Spotting the pale woman, she woofed softly.

"H-hello? How a-are you t-today?"

A maze of scents criss-crossed the muggy floor of the bog, but all of them belonged to creatures that were swift in these conditions. A variety of amphibians and reptiles. Hares. Mice. Nothing that Saena, a cumbersome wolf, would have much luck with. She pursed her lips into a frustrated scowl as she rounded a thick tree of some variety or another, and came almost face-to-face with Brooklyn.

Her surprise showed in the widening of her eyes and the pop of her ears atop her head, but even more surprised was she that Brooklyn didn't seem startled to have found her. Saena's blue eyes narrowed a smidgen when Brooklyn stammered out a greeting, but her suspicion was short-lived in light of the other woman's perceived nervousness, and she shook her coat out and smoothed her ears down to appear more inviting.

"I'm well," said Saena, although really at the root of things, she wasn't well at all. A good half of her memories were less clear than mud. Her home was calling to her and yet she hesitated to return, afraid of what she would find there, and afraid that she would be turned away from the very legacy she had built. And she was hungry enough to look for food in a place that was unlikely to yield any. She wasn't well, all things considered, but there was no sense being awkward about it by mentioning any of that to a total stranger.

"How are you?" she returned politely, not doing much to mask the incredulously unspoken what can I do for you that her tone suggested.