Iktome Plains And cut and peeled a hazel wand

The distant rumble of surf colliding with sand told Saena that she had crossed the threshold from tangled wilderness to coastline. The transition came in the form of a change from swamp to plains: the ground grew sturdier, the water less frequent, and the trees opened up like curtains onto a much sparser expanse. She took a moment in the in-between to shake the loose grime from her limbs. The sky was open and the sun bright, yet there was a chill in the air that spoke of autumn's coming, and a salty breeze rushed in off the sea.

It was still so far away, but Saena was nevertheless made nervous by it, so she turned to skirt the mountain edge. What gives, she asked herself as she crested a hillock. You were supposed to be going home. She'd made it about halfway before nerves had consumed her and she'd turned around. Silver Creek was still her ultimate destination, but it wouldn't kill her, or anyone else, to take a little time to herself before seeking them out. With no memory of how or when she left, she couldn't begin to guess at how they would react to her, and she wasn't quite ready to find out.

A beetle whizzed past her head and drew her attention for a moment, and with a turn of her muzzle she spotted a foraging bear not too far away, in the direction of Donnelaith's woods, which she did inexplicably recall. Despite the fact that it had yet to notice her and was unlikely to respond to her presence at all, Saena instinctively froze, and the place where her tail had once attached to her body twinged sympathetically.

@Emaleth

She was loathe to leave Donnelaith now that she had returned home, but while the forest was herb-filled, it did not contain every ingredient she might need. It would take some time, some exploration to build her stores. And so early this morning, she had slipped away unseen— it was not that any would try to stop her, nor could they, but Emaleth was a withdrawn creature and had no desire to explain her activities. I will return, she promised Deirdre, do not fret. And she had gone, weaving west along the shoreline.

Even in her time away, the dark child had not strayed far from the coast; to lose sight or scent of it would be the same as losing a limb. It was part of her, the ocean, as much as the sequoias that stood guard over her home. Even now, she feared venturing too far inland. It seemed a different world to the child.

---

Emaleth began her return, now, with the skeletal joint of some long-dead creature clasped in her jaws. Her gait was an elegant trot, for she had already been gone longer than she had intended. Her mission had been largely fruitless, for the western coastline contained little that was different from what the ocean carried to the shores of Donnelaith. She would need to overcome her nervousness of landlocked territories, but it would not be today.

Her trot slowed when the stranger was sighted, and she finally halted when she was some meters behind. She did not see the bear that would block her from making her way home, but the lone wolf was cause for enough concern. Emaleth was independent, but she was young and vulnerable— she knew this, though it was hardly something the Mayfair would ever deign to admit.

She dropped the bone from her jaws, the sound a soft thump as it hit the ground, and she chuffed warily to announce her presence and intention for peace.

It was a mere black bear, still thin and hungry in the early days of autumn. It would forage for blackberries and blueberries and chokecherries, and likely it would dine on whatever fish and game it could find, until the season turned and sent it underground. A mere black bear, and yet Saena's form shuddered with the memory of a much larger bear taunting her in the woods. The lance of pain through her backside as it took off with her tail fluttering between its lips. Citlali and Nochtli helping to drive it away, and yet only ensuring that it rampaged through their woods without regard for the pack living there.

Saena was so wrapped up in this flashback that Emaleth's approach was wholly unnoticed until the girl made a sound. The white-haired Redleaf whirled with ears snatching back in fear, but a few seconds of surveying Emaleth with contracted pupils brought her heart rate back down from racing. The rush of adrenaline made her sway lightly, but instead of toppling over, she blinked away the spots in her vision and breathed, "you sure know how to scare the shit outta someone."

The bear's head lifted at the sound of her voice, but it deemed the two wolves non-threatening at their distance, and went on snuffling at the ground.

She lowered her posture, showing the other that she meant no threat— though her mismatched gaze was locked upon the she-wolf before her, fearless but wary, and perhaps a small bit defiant. Emaleth had been a sheltered child and despite her brief exile from Donnelaith, the forest had been and still was her world. Strangers were alien to her, and stepping out from her shelter was like leaving a pleasant dream. She was not a social creature to begin with, and foreign wolves seemed something different than herself. Less real.

Emaleth lifted her head, eyes furrowing slightly at the paler woman's words. "That was not my intention."

It was the opposite intention, of course— to smooth any fears away— and Emaleth wondered if this whole world was backwards. As if she had stepped into a reflection of the world, and she marveled at the thought. It had not felt this way when she had left the Wilds; but then, she had taken utmost care to avoid the presence of others.

Her eyes wandered as the bear shuffled in response to their voices, and she watched it for a moment. It seemed to have no interest in them, and so she refocused her attention upon the shaken female. "Are you alright?" she queried, concern laced in her voice despite her effort to remain aloof. Emaleth was a healer, after all, though perhaps not quite so pious as her sister. Life was sacred, though some lives were more odd than others.

The girl's reaction brought both surges of both pride and relief into Saena's breast. Pride, for she was used to being the dominant creature in any group setting and desired to regain that position and that respect. Relief, because it meant that Emaleth's intentions were not ill ones, a fact she stated herself. Saena's red-backed ears flicked forward to acknowledge their established hierarchy, but she otherwise did not move for several moments, not until Emaleth asked whether she was all right.

"Fine," she answered succinctly, but she squinted in the bear's direction and her shoulders tensed. The animal was still lumbering along quite heedless of the two wolves, yet it was in line with her tentative destination. Drawing closer to it was both necessary and unwise. "I was going to visit an old friend in the woods that way," she explained, flicking her muzzle toward the bear and the towering sequoias beyond it, "but I'm afraid there's a sentinel."

The bear, of course, was very likely not in the employment of the Donnelaith pack, given biological and ecological norms between bears and wolves... and yet she knew from Lasher that that forest held a deep, old, natural magic. She didn't believe in crap like that, of course, having seen nothing of magic in her lifetime and knowing that fairy tales were nothing but, but when a forest was that old, there was a power nonetheless that even a non-believing wolf could poignantly feel. Believing that a bear was guarding it was easier when you felt that power.