Slide

When Marleen had reached the south, she then traveled in the opposite direction, as fast as her legs would go. There was no hurry but the wanderlust to run and simply go, to be the wind in her ears, to race the skies, to wear her pawpads. While the snow insulated the ground, it also covered its imperfections, and she suffered many a stumble, unexpected snowpiles, and even at one point outed a lemming family from beneath the snow. The snack went well with her haste, and soon enough, her wandering path brought her uneventfully to a land that was not covered with snow at all. Unlike the winter wonderland that the other areas were pelted with, this place sported bare ground, plants that hadn't fully frozen over, and even running water that tasted heavy of minerals, rocks, and something putrid.

The putrid source turned out to be a nipple that blasted water like a volcano at semi-regular intervals, each spout landing in the same spot and radius as the last. She'd watched it for hours, standing perfectly still, her legs ajar in case she needed to bolt, her tail hanging pathetically relaxed. The heat from the water volcano was the reason why there was no snow here, and she wondered dimly if one could cook an enemy in this place.

Satisfied and with her curiosity satiated, she decided to rest a while before hunting a meal. She found some ground a safe distance away from a geyser, scratched at it until she was satisfied with her loose dirt bed, circled thirteen times, and then curled up there. Her tail was long enough to dust her nose when she tucked her paws just so, and she amused herself while she waited for sleep to take her. "I mustache you a question", she threw her voice deep and gravely as she placed her snout in her tail.