The world was ending. Absolutely, without a doubt, the world was ending. Her toes squelched in the mud as her knees locked - hair fibers trickling like a snake in the utter disgust of the feeling, smell, and noise that she was greeted with upon waking up from a sleep that was apparently too long. Her eyes were not weary and filled with sleep, but wide eyed in the humid warm air that would have left her skin dewy and fresh. For a moment she started berating herself, questioning if she should have ever left Judes or her brother, the clean, muted rocky landscape when what she found was this. A soaking den, her belly wet and her legs caked with who knows what type of mud. Despite it all, she stood still in almost admiration of the water slowly trickling down the maple trees around her, the canopy rearranging them almost as if gutters on a house. The low lying grass shifted between her paws as she walked around, no more than a 15ft circle as the belief hung on her face like a crooked halloween costume.  It was such a beautiful place, but it had been ruined by the rain showers and season that she apparently had no idea was coming. Ruined was an extreme word here, but in the eyes of a girl who saw heaven and decided to nestle in it..this was a disaster. The grape vines had been strangled away, fingertips soft but deadly, caressing a page before ripping it out.

She hesitated then, when her ears shifted back at the sound of rushing water. Instantly her childish thought led to a massive wave that was coming to purge her of the sins she had committed. It had come to take her back home, but she didn't even know where that was, really. Soon enough she found herself at the source of the sound, an offstream of Cat-Tail Creek had made its way into her little sanctuary. The closer she got, the more her feet sank and all forms of life had evacuated the area. There was the distant, very soft croak of toads that too had been evacuated and for a moment she wonders if they feel the same way. If their little mud holes had been flooded and they were in disgust. Perhaps not, for he was a frog and frogs lived in mud. She did not, clearly. She shook out the soft spray of water from her fur before beginning to turn back to return to her sopping filled basement with little to no hope but the feeling to pray.

There were a few low hanging branches near her den, just low enough that if she stretched every muscle in her body and with a little jump, they snapped between her teeth and came shaking down. Small, dry bits of leaves and canopy fell too and it was with those she decided to relay the floor of her home. Broken nails and all, she gathered enough to place at the base of her resting area and near the entrance. Dragging the wider branches to create some sort of brambles looking effect, as if she was daming herself up away from the water. She’d soak up what was there and prevent anything else from getting in, or so she hoped this idea would work. It brought in a feverish smell, the smell of dead, dried grapes into the fervor of her home as she slid her belly in and began to roll around, or whatever motion would work the best to smush the new bedding into the sopping cold floor. It was like a muddy, herb soup that smothered her coat and made her feel as if a pig in a sty. A smarter woman, an older woman, perhaps would have relocated to higher ground and dug a new home but she was far too determined, maybe even stubborn, to do such a thing.

Eventually, she began to attempt to pull the sloppy mess back out, which arguably made a muddy mess of the floors. She decided it was better to be muddy than sleeping in water which was pretty ironic because she hated both water and the mud, and the way that the loose grass blades and leafs stuck to her feet, in between fingers and somehow ended up in her mouth. After a few rounds of new bedding and ridding of it, eventually she found herself with cold mud and fresh linens, which was pretty enough for a young girl who looked like she had lived in a coal mine from the day she moved from her mothers tit.

Finally, her rump hits the floor a few feet from the entrance in a defeated gesture. She had mud in her ears, nose, inbetween her toes and yet she didnt even have the energy to go find a shallow pool to at least rinse off in. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment,lost to quiet contemplation.

Stick In The Mud Prompt - AW!

Sota rarely traveled far from home but today was apparently an exception - though it wasn't far into his journey that he began to question if he should have left at all. The recent rain showers rendered the ground soft and muddy nearly everywhere he went, and the nearby creek was running dangerously high, threatening to flood. Veering away from the potential danger, Sota continued further southwest. His attention was captured eventually by the thick forest of oaks and maples. Oaks in particular were known to be good for climbing, and Sota scoped the place out before making a move. One swift move had him leaping onto a low-hanging branch and clinging precariously to it before he moved to the next, moving as easily as any wolf did on land. Eventually he scaled to nearly halfway up an oak and moved on to the second, then a third. But after a bit of scaling the treetops, the scent of a wolf reached his nose and he found himself scanning the forest floor. Here it was dimly lit, light choked out by the thick vines that covered the treetops like a canopy. The figure of somehow could be seen below though, and Sota furrowed his brow in worry at how she slumped down, looking defeated. Overcome by the need to help, he carefully navigated lower until he was perched carefully on a low hanging branch. "Hello? Are you alright down there, miss?"