boggy man

With Brandr's departure from the pack, the need to prepare for winter as much as possible was even more urgent. More and more circumstances were making her think it would be prudent to privately take Laisren aside and suggest he - as the pack's only remaining experienced hunter - step up to take the rank of hunter and lead the pack in gathering food. They had more than enough warriors, but what they didn't have was a huntmaster who knew the local prey intimately, and it would be best for the pack to have him concentrate on that rather than on the same thing four or five other wolves were already doing without the benefit of his secondary skill. She also berated herself for not pushing to get Justice the benefit of training with someone outside the pack over the summer. She felt the hot-tempered wolf would do better with a mentor outside of her family, and since the only wolf she was likely to get training from any time soon was Paladin - Solveiga still doing no interacting with the rest of the pack at all - it would be better to have bartered with an allied pack for her to get training elsewhere. But it was a bit too late for that this year with summer gone and the optimum time for healers having passed. She could send her out somewhere to learn how to make things from plants already harvested, and to learn about treating things, but she also needed to learn to recognize the plants while they grew so that she could harvest them, and she'd be needed here for the winter to help hunt when the prey grew lean and few. And - if Gwen were honest with herself - Gwen would not likely be around to make those arrangements for her in the spring.

She huffed out a sigh, clambering over a boulder that canted along the path she was on. She'd left pack lands today, ranging out wider in an attempt to avoid overhunting Celestial's local prey right before they would need them most. The boggy land here wasn't ideal for hunting, but she had already seen signs of moose and muskrats, and had the vague idea that there might be beavers further on. Alone, she would be handicapped as far as what prey she could take, but they were running low on choices. Next time she would take one of her children, Caelia or Cairo perhaps, and teach them the meager hunting techniques she herself had learned over time. Another reason to quietly encourage Laisren to transfer to being a hunter - her children would need to be taught to hunt more thoroughly than she herself was comfortable with her own skill level to do.