the bard's last note

Those cursed sailors. They'd cast him ashore on claimed lands, and sailed away knowing damned well he wasn't going to do anything about it. The frail castaway nervously shuffled his paws on the edge of the surf, hood pulled close to his features as the chilly midnight air clawed at his scraggly pelt. By the smell of it, he was close to a border. Long, spindly limbs pulled him with as much haste as his aching muscles could muster, his few possessions carried in a small bag between his jaws. There was something... wrong here. The aromas on the breeze were distinctively sour, like a lingering sickness. Well... The gilded waif hesitated on the boundary between the dark sand beach and the craggy waterline at the foot of the lone peak. He could hear the rush of water tumbling from a great height along the slopes of the mountain, promising a drink of fresh water that made his stomach turn painfully at the thought. At the very least.. he could pay for his trespass, couldn't he?

The tonics and tinctures hadn't been particularly useful for malnutrition, and thus far he'd been offering them up in exchange for safe passage and a place to stay the night as he fled the kingdom's reach. If the faint aroma of illness that he'd caught coming from further inland was some kind of lingering sickness or plague, the various concoctions would be more helpful for this pack than they would for himself. So he dropped his bag carefully upon the damp sand, shivering against the biting chill as he hurriedly rifled through his remaining rations and belongings. Ah, there. The small bottle of distilled oils and essences was removed with careful, trembling jaws. Gums pale with dehydration and starvation, nearly blending in with the sharp teeth that gripped the wax-sealed neck of the glass bottle. It was tiny, but it was better than nothing. He'd put the mixture together in the weeks prior to his exile, so he knew its efficacy well.

At its side, he was quick to place an otterskin filled with a few extracts. The skin was waterproof when closed properly, in case he'd needed to swim anywhere. The small vials inside were a few different herbal extracts, namely peppermint for insect repellant and oregano to mask any remaining traces of his scent when he ventured into public. They were expensive, and he hoped that they would appease the inhabitants of the pack enough to keep them from hunting him down after his accidental trespass. For good measure, the skinny wolf flexed his freezing digits for a moment before he extended one slender digit towards the sand. His claw carved through the damp sand easily, forming a series of shapes and figures that he knew as easily as he knew the back of his own eyelids. The message would have been clear to anyone hailing from the lands where he'd been born, and his exhausted brain didn't pause to consider that not every region used the language, or writing.

- Gifts of medicine and oils, payment for trespass. Apologies. -

His good eye flashed in the light of the moon as he heard the snap of a twig, briefly illuminated amidst a break in the cloud cover that had hidden the ship's approach into the sheltered inlet. The runaway frantically searched for any sign of pursuers, and then hurriedly tied his satchel back up. There would be caves of some sort nearby, hopefully near the waterfall where he could get a drink. It was difficult to mask the tremendous effort required to lift the bag back off of the sand to make his escape again, his ailing figure hardly suited to a continued flight across the landscape.

"speaking" -- "in another language"