Great Bear Wilderness knock knock knock on my hotel door

Sidra sighed and wondered if this was not the same fallen pine she'd hauled herself over less than an hour before. The rainforest stretched endlessly in every direction, or so it seemed, and the fine mist that clung to the tree trunks and dampened her fur also made navigation nearly impossible. Worse still, she could feel the cool temperatures of evening coming on as the dim sunlight faded. It would be both fruitless and miserable to keep trying to travel tonight. Maybe tomorrow, the fog would burn off with the sunrise.

The dark female peered around for a bit until she found an ancient tree whose roots were gnarled and twisted, rising high from the ground. It was the slightest of shelters, and might keep out the worst of a late night chill. Sidra scratched industriously at the moist soil before dipping her head to lay down her cargo, a sort of knapsack of grey moss, in which she stored a few edible and medicinal--and recreational--plants. It wasn't much of a collection of remedies, but it was a start, and she was grateful that Alena had sent her off with the gift.

The golden flower petals had been both a blessing and a curse; they made her forget her hunger, and had a relaxing effect. She was occasionally even talkative, when she'd met up with other travelers for a night or two, and they certainly made the sex better. But, Sidra reflected as she chewed and swallowed a few, it would be nice to be able to sleep a night without them. Perhaps their lingering effect would give her the motivation to approach the nearby pack in the morning; she'd caught scent of their claim in the foothills of a squat mountain range.

The small female curled up in a dark ball, left alone with her thoughts in the dying evening light, and she sighed. She wished she hadn't split from Farin's band a few days earlier; at least then she'd have had him to warm her bed, even if he was an insufferable ass when they weren't passionately entwined. A faint daydream of the male flitted across her thoughts and she indulged for a while, wondering if sleep would come slowly tonight or if she might get some actual rest.

The priestess gazed up at the Spine, wondering how the Ouroboros Spine wolves were fairing. She had left them while they were still writhing at the lost of their queen and the deposition of the princess. If the princess and her loyal assassin had any plots to overthrow the usurper, she didn't know as of yet, but she doubted it would strengthen their ranks.

Pushing the curiosity aside, the alpha of Blackfeather Woods kept walking to her dark woods, a mixture of herbs wrapped in bark slivers tucked underneath her chin and a brace of rodents and lagomorphs in her jaws. The Spine wolves had no healer as of this time, so the herbs were plenty around the circle of squat mountains. She would have to make more trips before winter hit.

As she started walking in the growing darkness, she spotted a dark figure in the trees, curled up at the foot of a particularly old specimen. She walked closer, eyes glowing curiously as she identified the species of said figure, a wolf. The priestess dropped her load nearby, walking closer to the dark-furred wolf. "This isn't the best of shelters, especially at this time of the year." She spoke loud enough to wake the wolf if she was sleeping lightly, or to startle her if she was still awake.

Sidra had never found sleep easy to come by, but without her brother or one of her many transient lovers by her side, her insomnia was worse than ever. Only the haze of herbal remedies allowed her to rest, but they plagued her with dreams and sometimes, in those moments of half-sleep, half-wakefulness, hallucination. She thought for a moment that the scent of another wolf was an olifactory byproduct of her drug of choice, and as she dozed lightly, she missed the sounds of footfalls in the forest not far from her makeshift bed.

The voice, however, pierced the golden flowers' fog, and the small black wolf's grey eyes snapped opened. Sidra lifted her head to see the stranger who spoke, a blue-eyed version of herself. The girl extended her forepaws, the rest of her physique strumming with tension that would turn into action in a heartbeat, if the need to flee the scene arose. For now, the Qazal wolf looked up the other female warily, ears flicked back. The back of her neck tingled, but the fur there did not quite stiffen, not yet.

Sidra spoke in her low cadence. "It was serving well enough," she pointed out, not quite a rebuke. Though she had been raised with Imre and her tutors had all been males, Sidra had become accustomed to feminine companionship at Lake Lunara. Still, she was at times uncertain of how to interact with women; males could almost always be seduced, or at least manipulated, and they didn't usually gossip or give her false smiles. Yet she had an admiration for the grace and subtlety that a female's mind could have, and found them on a whole to be more intelligent than their masculine counterparts. Whether this female fell to the gossipping hen type or the prickly and intellectual, Sidra was interested to see.

Meldresi observed the female's response. In any other case the words she said might have been considered rude, but her tone said otherwise. The dark priestess' tail twitched as she regarded the other ebony clad female, breathing in the herb-tinged scent in particular. She was taking herbs? For what reason? The indigo-eyed female saw the little knapsack nearby the female's paws. She had a few in there, but their names she did not know.

Meldresi decided to pry, however. She was curious as to where she had gotten them. "Are you a herbalist?" She said, gesturing to the knapsack. "I am one myself, I was actually searching for some around here."