Two Rivers Isle slow it down, release control

@Sanguinus tracker specialty 3/10 - studying squirrel behaviour

With what had occured between herself and Raziel, the depths of the shadewood felt almost like a prison. Within the looming trees and stretches of dazzling water, the family lingered; busy creatures, intend on staking claim over the land which all of them had labelled home - sometimes, home wasn't where she wanted to be. Today felt like a good day to avoid people, and so the ice queen set off to the land in which she'd aided in taking down an elk alongside... alongside her king and the monochrome male, Issun. 

It was a place plentiful of wildlife, even with winter's chill.

A hollowed out tree met the cerulean orbs of her vision, a scatter of crimson staining the frozen earth beneath her paws - something had visited this particular residence only a scratch of time before herself, and the evidence was clear to witness. Determined for an excuse to linger away from the territory (where the humming in her mind seemed driven to scream), her leathery nose found entrance into the old den of a squirrel; only to blink in baffled observation. She'd seen this before... but it had not registered in her mind, too busy with other tasks to notice - the creature that had lived here had organised nuts into categories. Quality, variety... perhaps even a small pile of the favoured nuts, too. It was peculiar...

But even more peculiar would be if someone came across the empress now - face blocked by the tree's bulk and muzzle stuck deep into a hole in the trunk.

Someone had come along and, where one might have found humor in the rather awkward situation they'd stumbled upon, Sanguinus only felt concern for he feared the poor woman had gotten herself stuck. "A-are you ok?" he let out as he fled into the scene, heart quickening as the worry washed over his face. How...how in the hell was he supposed to get her out? Tug on her tail? That didn't sound like a bad idea...

He didn't even bother to think that she was completely capable of getting herself free or rather, that she wasn't even stuck in the first place. After all he'd never met someone who would willing stick their face into the hole of a tree and leave it there for fun cause like that totally wasn't weird or anything. 

"A-are you ok?"

The sudden voice caused a burst of surprise to flicker through her chest, heartbeat quickening and head jerking upward, only to smack her ivory crown roughly onto the hollow's frayed edge. A yelp cursed the air from between her lips, but she settled herself quickly, haunches lowering onto the frigid snow and vision spinning before she was able to make out the crimson figure against crystalline white.

"O-oh..." she murmured, feeling her cheeks grow hot, but swept her tongue out across her lips and shook herself in order to clear her mind. "I'm... yeah, I'm okay. I was looking at the squirrel's den." Nothing she said would aid in clearing up the embarrassment of being caught headless, deep into a tree, but she aimed to shift quickly past that. She'd been looking to study what exactly the creature had been doing, but wondered if this man would be at all interested in listening to her babbles, or if he intended to take his leave.

He hadn't been expecting her to whirl around like she did or smack her head against the roof of the hole but hey, at least she wasn't stuck. Still, it had caught him off guard and the hairs along his nape prickled instinctively while his ears shot upwards when she turned to him, only settling once she finally spoke and revealed her situation. 

A squirrel's den huh? He'd thought they often built their nest in the thicket of a tree's branches rather than that of a hollowed trunk but, perhaps that was why she appeared so interested in it. "Mind if I take a look?" he asked, wondering what exactly a squirrel's nest looked like up close. Was it similar to that of a bird's or did they have a different structure in the way they built their cradle?