in the woods somewhere

Morgawr was exploring. While she liked doing nothing all day long, she was getting older and felt that she ought to get herself some level of skill in something before she got too old and somebody would end up trying to make her. She didn't like being told what to do. It just didn't work for her. She needed to make her decisions and choose to do the things she did because she wanted to. In a lot of ways, she was still just a stubborn, contrary little toddler; still, she had grown. She didn't quite realize it yet, but she'd begun to be much more interested in the affairs of other wolves. She was still a misanthropic, head-in-the-clouds, self-centered lone wolf, but she had realized that other people also had lives and interests completely detached from her, which was better than before. Maybe that was just what growing up was. If so, Morg wasn't quite sure if she wanted it. It was comfortable in her own mind: never inactive enough to be boring, or challenging enough to frustrate or frighten her. It enticed and enthralled her in all the right ways, and it made her feel smart to figure out some new interesting tidbit of a creature's character. It wasn't surprising.

She'd decided that an easy, fun skill to learn would be medicine. She'd had a lesson on a bit of it, which she hadn't paid much attention to at all, but she was younger then and stupider. Now she could surely hold her attention on something at least a little better. Still, old habits die hard. The idea of sitting still and respectfully listening to someone drone on and on about the basics of herbs and healing was just as claustrophobic and awful as ever. A better idea was to learn as much as she could on her own first, and then go to the better healers of the pack for the stuff she couldn't figure out. She assumed she could probably figure out most of it on her own. She was going to try, at the very least.

She wasn't going far from home and so was allowed to go alone. She walked softly through a forest of willow trees, the golden light streaming through the leaves like little spotlights set there just for her. She stepped through a thin stream of clear, cold water, and watched the gentle ripples. She drank in the sweet scents on the air, brushing up against the willow bark and smiling as she did. When she stood against the trunk of a tree, the still branches and leaves surrounded her like a cave. Her ice blue eyes widened as she strode right out of her mind and consciously realized how pretty this place was.

But she was on a mission today. She dipped her nose to the ground and scanned for any interesting-looking plants. That was her only factor in deciding what to bring back, since it wasn't like she knew anything about herbs. There were a few small patches of little flowers (Valerian) and she thought they looked sort of pretty so she pulled a few stems out of the grass and shook the dirt and mud from their roots. She hadn't brought a bag or anything to carry her findings back with, but she could surely find something if she had enough that she couldn't just carry them in her mouth. Actually, now that she thought about it, it probably wasn't a great idea to hold a bunch of random strange plants in her mouth anyway, considering she didn't know what ingesting any of them would do. She wasn't that into the idea of messing with medicine she knew nothing about. Even though that was kind of the plan, she didn't have to experiment on herself just yet. She glanced at the trees all around her and realized: wait, bark! With effort, she pulled a good sized rectangular-ish shape of bark off one of the trees and set the flowers on it. She picked the bark up like a tray, holding her head high to keep it from tipping, and kept searching. It was a little harder now, but she could still see around and above the bark tray. A bright red color struck out at her from the deep green grass and dark muddy ground. It was a mushroom, with little white dots over its surface (Fly Agaric). She sniffed it cautiously. It didn't smell bad, just mildly earthy, although that might just have been the actual earth it was growing in. She shrugged and pulled it up.

What else could she find?

She continued scanning the ground for a few moments before finding not much and setting her tray down and rolling over in the grass, her paws sticking up into the air lazily. She watched the sunlight flicker through the branches above her, and thought about what she wanted to be. For as much as she wanted it, she couldn't just sit around all day and do nothing. She had to find something to do that was worth something. She could learn to heal, or to fight. Both of those seemed alright to her. She hadn't done much so far, but she could work on it. In the golden light and the shadows of the willows, she decided that she would work on herself. She was not going to be just a kid for much longer. Next season was her litter's first birthday. They were going to make things of themselves; she could do that too. Maybe she could spar with some of her packmates when she got back, or ask for a medicine lesson. She didn't really want to talk to anyone, but she probably needed to.

She got to her paws and picked her tray back up. She could find some more stuff on her way back home, maybe.

WC: 985

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