Felltree Marsh You dream the dream that I do.
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All Welcome 
The scent of Cyclone had faded in the forest but Tuya would not give up hope - so she chased what signs she found of life, of Libertine, and drifted away from the claim over the course if the month. It hurt to be so invested in the idea of a person only to have it blow up in her face; but finding a suitable master in these wilds was a challenge itself, and if Tuya was anything, she was unyielding. Her route took her north to the coast and then east as she avoided the mountain range. She ate sparingly, slept rarely; the test of her endurance and motivation was harrowing, especially when she came upon the marshland.

It was nothing special - and even the girl could see that. A sprawling yellow grassland with bands if silt-heavy water bleeding in to the horizon. There was a lot of life in this place, moist and smelly as it was. Songbirds proliferated, filling the swaths of grass with their tittering. She caught some frogs in the early morning, but afterwards couldn't find the energy to eat them. Instead she found a thicket of deep water - more or less a trench - and threw them as far as she could with a spin of her forequarter. Within minutes a heron had swooped down and snatched the free meal from the mire.

With an uncharacteristically morose little huff, Tuya moved on.
dayvan cowboy
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A novel for u <3

After his encounter with the kinda mean, auburn-haired woman and the subsequent run in with a murky-eyed boy who had mocked him, Lucca had fled Rusalka, the final straw being the incident where a cougar had decided to infiltrate the territory. The rest of the pack had taken care of it while the Blackthorn coward bolted.

He hoped his skedaddling out of there would go completely unnoticed. He knew that they knew that he wouldn't stay for long, that it had only been for the winter. He had made a promise to their leader (who unbeknownst to the boy, no longer led the pack), and guilt and fear alike about it gnawed at his conscience. But it was fine. This was fine. He would just avoid the coast from now on.

Because you didn't have to confront your problems if you just never faced them, right?

Unfortunately leaving the safety of a pack (even one as tumultuous as Rusalka) at the height of winter was not exactly an award-winning idea. Somehow, amazingly, he had come out the other side only slightly worse for wear. He wore the signs of a struggling loner through his matted coat and aching paws, but his health was really no more terrible than it had been when he initially joined the coastal pack. Maybe just a little hungrier and sadder than before.

Speaking of, the boy only realised his wanderings had taken him in a giant, aimless loop when he started to recognise familiar surroundings, having come back through the Tangle after his journey up north. He would have thrown back his head in a cry of utter defeat — how could someone travel for two months only to end up in the same place as they started? — but his would-be lamentation was silenced before it had even begun by the sound of a distant splash.

Lucca's downcast gaze swept upwards, trailing a heron who had taken to the air after claiming its meal. He watched it for a moment, wishing idly that he had wings, before he looked to the waterlogged ground again, only then noticing he was not alone. A patchwork woman was in the distance, seemingly bored with the landscape and beginning to move onwards. To where, Lucca of course had no idea, but she was the only other he had seen in weeks. His paws seemed to move on their own accord as he waded as quickly as he could through the marshy waters towards the stranger. "H-hey, wait up!" he called breathlessly.
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She did not get far before something caught her attention. At first she paused because the ground began to get wetter, boggier, and she wasn't in the mood to slog through the wetlands at that exact moment. The sound of squelching caught in her ears off her flank and as it got louder, she grew curious. Tuya looked over her shoulder in time to see a plump silver shape moving towards her — and then she heard, H-hey, wait up!

It was surprising that she hadn't noticed them before; the closer they got the more curious Tuya became of them, and she studied the approaching wolf with a keen interest. They were muddy now (just like her) but through the slime, grime, and silt she could still see a glimmering gray-cast coat. That plump shape wasn't from excess weight - if anything the stranger was a little underfed - but their coat was thick and dazzling. In short, Tuya thought the stranger was kind of cute on first glance.

Um, hi! She called back as she turned around; forgetting for a moment that the ground was both uneven and quite damp, her re-positioning sent her hind feet in to the bog and for a split second she had a look of panic as the mud slipped around her toes. It was really, really cold! Oohh jeeze, I — I think my feet are stuck..? She tried to wiggle those toes, but the mud just kept sloshing around them; she tried lifting her feet one at a time (like a cat trying to avoid some wet grass), but those hind paws were stuck fast. Aw, crap!
dayvan cowboy
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Thankfully, she noticed his exuberant call, and threw a glance over a slim shoulder at him. Lucca perked up, closing the distance between them with just a couple more laborious, squelching steps. He came to a stop, feeling as if his lungs were on fire and his breath coming out in wheezing pants. Lucca was not very good at most things — and breathing properly was one of them.

He did, however, manage a raspy, "hey!" before he noticed the sudden look of surprise on the woman's soft features. All joy at finally coming across another fled him as her unexpected predicament dawned on them both. The swampy ground had claimed her ashen feet and it seemingly refused to let go. Lucca let out a whine of concern at her exclamation, and then another at her attempts to free herself.

Having lived upon the water-logged Plateau for a time, this situation had occassionally happened to the more slim-legged of the Redhawks, but it had never been as bad as this. "W-wait, miss, you gotta...uh, stay still!" he blabbered unhelpfully, before moving awkwardly to where her hind paws were submerged. A terrifying thought of the girl slowly sinking down, down into the marshy depths with him unable to do anything set his heart racing.

"Don't panic," he said (although who knew if it that was more for him or for her) and began to clumsily dig through the mud near her paws in an attempt to free them.