Testing Time (Meeting)

The season's change had not brought relief to the ache in her joints, but rather a renewed pain and swelling which certainly had not been helped by her mid-winter swim that had resulted in a chest cold that was just now clearing up. She wasn't going to complain about a cold when she could have drowned instead, no. She'd just self-medicated and moved on with her life. But waking up one day to find her den leaking and most of her herbs ruined had been a harder blow, and she'd had to rush to save what she could before the rising river water claimed her den. She still wasn't sure where she was going to store the rest of her herbs now, let alone what she was going to do about someplace to sleep, but for now she'd spread the delicate dried plants out on a rock away from the river to keep them out of the mud and dry them out a bit from the damp and keep them from molding. She'd had to go back into the water for her pelts that she'd been saving up, dragging them from the water-filled hole and back up the muddy way to her herbs one by one and spreading them out over the mud to dry. They'd dry dirty, but unless she could figure out some way of pinning them to a tree branch that would have to do. She still didn't know what to do about the ruined herbs though... most of her anti-inflammatories and pain killers for her joints had been among the losses, and she would very quickly run out of what was left. The question was if they would last until the spring's herbs were ready for harvest.

She was still at a loss when Bass' call rang out calling the pack together. She blinked - partly in surprise, partly in gratitude at the distraction - and dragged herself through the mud toward the call. By now every bone in her delicate body was visible with her wet coat plastered down, her pelt more brown than white from the dirty water she'd had to dive into to rescue her personal effects and her underside coated from chin to tail in thick clingy mud that splashed up her ribcage. Still she threw Bass a good-natured grin and stuck her tongue out at him playfully, hiding the ache in her body beneath good cheer, and chose a slightly-less occupied rock that contained only a red-marked cream colored fellow to settle herself neatly upon. She politely chose not to shake to rid herself of the water and mud despite the way it made her pelt itch so abominably.