Shadow Mountain And his name is JOHN CENA

I'm hungry, came a plaintive whine from somewhere in the depths of a heavy fog. The mid-morning sun could hardly cut through the gloom enough to show the silhouettes of other mountains around them; Singra felt like she was trapped on all sides by smoky white walls. Her chest felt tight. It's creepy here, she lamented, twisting her head side-to-side until she located the faint figure of her traveling companion.

Leaving Keokuk Glade was a huge mistake, but she wasn't about to let @Tiercel know that. Why, thought Singra, would anyone choose a life where they had to wander around alone or with a small number of others when they could just stay at home? At least mum and Wylla would have kept bringing them food there. Now they had to hunt for themselves. Her nails were chipped from walking. At least one of them was cracked nearly in two from that time she stumbled over a huge rock, and it was painful to walk on. And she was just covered in dust. Ugh. Who the hell ever decided traveling was glamorous and fulfilling?

Can we stop now? I can't see anything, she asked, her voice drawing long in a reedy whine at the end.

“Oh my god I think a field mouse would bitch less in the jaws of a fox than you bitch in general,” Tiercel threw her head back against her reedy shoulders and straitened her gaze at her aunt-more-like-a-sister as she made her pleas. Yeah, Tiercel had her own reservations about doing the complete opposite of what her mother and father asked of her constantly and with some cause for doing so, she supposed. “Stay in the goddamn glade!” just seemed so… restrictive? She could only get chased by the same apex predators so many times before it got boring and predictable, and besides, wasn’t this kind of imperative as a coming-of-age kind of thing? You run away from home, dragging your apprehensive friend along with you for insurance purposes against the wrath of your family, and learn some life-altering lessons that make you feel mature and not like a baby anymore, mom. 

Plus, she often heard mom and Nanna whisper-screaming about a place called Tikon or Tekon or whatever and well, since they wouldn’t tell her anything, like, ever, the old bitches, she’d just have to find out herself what was worth whisper-screaming about. Her general grasp of the word, minus a few phonetic errors, had gotten them this far, had it not? 

Anyway, truly, Tiercel had her own reservations though she was loath to share them. Like, how were they going to brainwash a moose to just lay down and die for them so they could eat like queens? Singra was older, and Tiercel noticed with envy when Nanna took her daughter to the steppe to give her hunting lessons, so she would have to put those skills to the test soon. ”We’ll find food in no time, I think I smell…” she didn’t smell anything, but feigned interest in the wind with a flex of her nose. ”A moose. Injured. Yeah! That’ll feed us for weeks!” Of course, Tiercel hadn’t exactly disclosed that she hadn’t successfully taken her first doe yet, as was tradition in Keokuk Glade. That would have implied she was a liability and it also would have given her less credibility when she had been trying to convince her aunt to run away in the first place. How were they going to take down this fictional, injured moose? With just the two of them?

Tiercel wasn’t about to give Miss

Home, 
the spot of earth supremely blest, 
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest!

more reason to kvetch about going back to home thweet home, so she had to keep her timid kin intoxicated with morale.

With a sigh and an eye-roll, Tiercel stopped her hurried jogging through the crunchy snow and fog and materialized beside Singra with a quiet ”boo!” unfurling a petty smile afterwards. ”Sure, you wanna stop here? In this fog? Where all the Fog Bears live? Okay… 

you’re the grOwn Up.” she mumbled lastly, shooting her auntie a crabbed look. "My mom would be really sad probably if a Fog Bear ate her sweet baby child and you were able to get away, but like if you want to stop, we'll stop. Maybe find that smell I smelled a second ago." The ungallant adolescent squinted her eyes towards the fog. With a gaze as lambent as it was, it should have shown them the way like bright lanterns in a cave. Alas, the wet fog seemed only to roll in thicker the more they trekked.

Uh, duh, stupid-ass, it'd be dead, she retorted with a roll of the eyes that would give Tiercel's holier-than-thou mother a run for her money. It didn't really matter that Tiercel had dissed her. It had been a weak diss. She'd taken dumps stronger than that diss. Unlike her undeniably evil little niece, Singra was neither inclined to eavesdrop on her mom's gossip nor inclined to run off on her own for adventure or whatever drug kids were on these days, but even with such a weak constitution for one of her bloodline, she was better than sissy disses like that.

She cast Tiercel a disbelieving look through the pea soup of a fog that separated them. She didn't smell shit. Well, actually, she did smell shit. Did you just fart? Maybe it was that bear dung they'd wandered right past without knowing it? Nope. Definitely Tiercel. I don't smell anything. Are you sure you know what a moose smells like? Because Singra sure as heck didn't, although Tiercel was a lot more confident than she, so of course she believed her even upon copping a doubtful tone.

Shut up, dumus, there's no such thing as Fog Bears, except what if there were? She stared resolutely ahead as she marched, unwilling to give Tiercel any indication whatsoever that she was afraid. She wanted to go home. She wanted to run on the steppes with Lusca, knowing that someone—maybe not them, but probably Raptor—would be bringing home the bacon. At least home guaranteed bacon. The KD and ramen lifestyle of two poor teens was really wearing thin on Singra's patience, and she had precious little of that as it was. Wylla would thank me if a Fog Bear ate your ugly ass and you know it, and that was probably the only possibly true thing she'd said besides her whines all day. Turning her nose into the fog and finding that even that was blinded by the weather, she heaved a hugely dramatic sigh and said, all right well go hunt it down then Miss Moose Hunter Extraordinaire.

You're the grown up, indeed.