Grouse Thicket maybe i'm not listening

For @Rannveig. Just in case it wasn't clear, Dash is drunkenly hunting a flock of equally-drunk grouse. xD

What had looked to be a normal woods from afar turned out to be quite the dense little thicket once you were inside, as Dash had soon discovered. He had entered the thicket hoping for a shortcut around the eastern swamp, but the deeper he plunged into the brush the more his travel slowed. After squeezing through a particularly thorny wall of bushes, Dash finally emerged into a small opening in the underbrush. 

His gaze landed on a half-dozen or so grouse, pecking at some kind of... lumpy pile in the dirt and snow. Dash cocked his head in curiosity. He was rather close to the flock, why hadn't they all taken to the air in terror of such a magnificent hunter? The boy approached the flock, and still they all ignored him. Weird. He bent down and crushed a bird in his jaws, which finally got their attention. Most of remaining birds waddled or hopped off, just out of reach. Two attempted to spread their wings and fly, but crash-landed just a few paces away. Dash was quite perplexed. Was the flock sick or something?

A pungent, sickly-sweet scent caught the boy's attention, and he scratched the snow away from the grouse flock's lumpy pile. In Dash's case, curiosity had always ruled over prudence, and he nibbled at the edge of one of the lumps. Oh. It was a pile of apples! Old apples-- extremely bitter apples-- but lovely, edible apples! Dash took a larger bite, trying to identify the odd, very non-appley taste of these particular apples. It wasn't rot, but it was similar. Dash took a few more contemplative bites before deciding it was time to cleanse his palate with a grouse-hunt. It wasn't like the flock had gotten very far. 

Dash lunged after the closest bird, and the world lurched violently the minute he did so. He hit the ground so hard it made his head spin... or had his head already been spinning? The boy picked himself up and started forward again, only to stagger off to the right as his equilibrium tilted.

rannveig was nothing if not a food hound, and like most food hounds, was obligated to follow his nose. 

a most curious scent had settled settled over the wilds lately. he couldn’t say what it was. it smelled sweet and somehow wrong at once, like a flower out of season. 

and what do you know, just as he was sure he was at the source, a crash the sound of staggering hit his ears. looking up he saw a male that looked uncoordinated - but blissfully so?

it just so happened that strange reek was strongest here, and seemed to hang about the agouti stranger like a miasma. rannveig wondered if the man was sick — he had heard of a uncontrollable and fatal disease that sometimes afflicted his kind, and feeling worried he cleared his throat, mostly to see if there was any comprehension in the strangers gaze.

Dash caught himself mid-stagger, and he then splayed his legs out to make sure he was ready in case the sneaky ground pulled another lurching maneuver on him. For a few moments, everything was quiet. Steady. Dash was about to venture a tenative step forward when his watcher made himself known. 

The boy twisted toward the sound, and his gaze took just a smidge too long to focus on the stranger. "Heyyy," he drawled, an easy grin plastering itself across his face. "So are these like... the trickiest bird-thingies you ever saw, or what?" He turned back to the nearest grouse and leaped forward, intending to pounce upon it. He landed about a foot to the left of his intented position, catching himself on unsteady feet. "Witchcraft!" he accused of the grouse, growling at the thing as it tittered indignantly back at him.

well, the wolf was at least sentient - or he appeared to be when he shakily turned to face rannveig, bobblng the way rannveing had seen deer at the end of their life sometimes do. he was not convinced whatever afflicted this male wasn't contagious - especially since the grouses were acting up too.

he came to the rational conclusion there was some sort of hijinx happening in this area, especially given the smell. it wafted about in sickly, cloying perfume, even assaulting his nose with a strangeness he didn't necessarily hate. watching dashiell gamely tackle empty air, rannveig's expression remained confused but piqued. the bird hadn' moved much, but then again, it looked just as discombobulated as dashiell did.

"umm.. you okay..?" the answer was obviously not, but rannveig felt compelled to ask it anyway.

Dash considered the question, brow furrowing as if he was just now realizing that there was a real problem here. "I think... no," he answered honestly, looking back to the stranger with a slightly unfocused,  thousand-yard-stare. 

His eyes lit up as his slugglish brain finally made the connection. "It was the apples!" He nearly shouted, shuffling back over to poke at the pile of fermenting fruit suspiciously. He then tossed a dirty look at the grouse.

"Those aren't real birds, they're witches," he accused. "And after I killed their sister.." His eyes flicked to the dead grouse on the ground, just to make sure he was remembering events correctly. His brain felt so cloudy. "..After I killed their witch-sister, they cast a spell on these apples to make me.. to make me  all.. like..." 

What did Dash feel like? If this was a witch-curse, it wasn't nearly as bad as the stories made it sound. ".. all happy." he finished, clearly confused with the conclusion of his own theory. He grinned apologetically at the stranger, and gave him a shrug.

rannveig's question, simple enough as it was, seemed to draw consternation from the stranger. a real thinker, that one was -- rannveig was about to caaaasually make an exit (dashiell would be too ... whatever he was to chase after him, right?) when the male offered a very strange, very implausible explanation.

an explanation that you would have to be stupid to believe -- but it just so happened that rannveig... well, rannveig was that brand of stupid -- in that he earnestly believed most wolves told the truth, and that what they spoke was what they believed, therefore, was truthful.

he couldn't help his dubious expression though. birds, witches, and apples? it did sound like something out of a deirdre-crafted fairytale. keeping his distance from dashiell's mouth, rannveig skittered past the tittering birds and cautiously sniffed the pile of apples; strangely enough, they smelled sickly sweet and rancid to him -- the very same stench that was outpouring in noxious fumes from dashiell's breath.

"ah. well." he sniffed again, his nose crinkling. "why the fuck did you eat them, then?"

The stranger moved forward to investigate the apples, clearly (at least clearly to Dash) terrified by the idea of a witch's curse. 

"Dunno.. I was hungry. I didn't know they were cursed!" Dash argued defensively, only just managing to prevent himself from sinking into a heavy pout. Being a lone wolf in the winter sucked balls; in the past few months Dash had eaten so much unbelievably disgusting shit. These cursed apples actually ranked fairly low on his list of worst meal choices. 

"We got to kill the other witches," Dash said conclusively, turning back to the grouse. "To kill the curse," he explained further. Made perfect sense, right? He leapt toward the grouse once more, and this time his paw came down upon one of the birds. It shrieked as its wing was bent into the ground, and Dash released it in surprise. It attempted to fly away but crashed back to the ground, wing obviously injured. 

"You suck at being a bird, witch!" Dash taunted the creature. "Can't even fly.." he mumbled.

rannveig was skeptic still as he watched dashiell, stifling a quiet laugh as the drunken beast fell upon an equally drunken bird. curses or not, rannveig did not believe he was partaking.

had rannveig not suspected there was poison in those apples, he might have assisted in dispatching the grouse -- but he liked existing, kind of, and as much as he liked to flaunt his daredevil charm, was not about to willingly place himself in the same state of -- whatever it was --that plagued dashiell.

"you... you should sit down. maybe drink water or something?" rannveig finally declared, stepping away from the rotted apples. "there's a creek over there, i think. unless you think the water is cursed too, and then you are really fucked."

Dash allowed the other wolf's words to draw his attention away from the grouse once more. The suggestion took a moment to register, but once it did so Dash's eyes lit with understanding. 

"Water! Of course!" Hadn't he heard some story when he was a kid where water melted witches? Or was it, you threw a witch into the water to test whether it was a witch? There was something about water and witches, Dash was sure. The other wolf was right, water was the cure. "Don't be ridiculous, water can't be cursed," Dash scoffed, completely oblivious to the much more severe ridiculousness of his own statements and behavior. 

"'Kay, peace out, scout," Dash slurred his farewell, starting off in the direction of the creek. After a few moments of fighting through the thick undergrowth he would forget his mission and begin stumbling around aimlessly, a blissful smile plastered across his face. 

Feel free to let this be a fade!