Turtleback Lake all my friends are heathens, take it slow

For @Kjell on her way back from OTB. Turtleback Lake was okay, right?

She was almost home -- the anticipation of it only coaxed her limbs to move faster, and the honeyed woman did not question what a rough sight she must have made to any onlooker. She had been gone from her pack for far too long -- and while her family at Oak Tree Bend had been hospitable, she had not indulged much upon their food. She could not bring herself too.

And so she had thinned -- her fur much more haphazard than her usual groomed self, given her rush to come upon Hearthwood River. There was a certain acceptance that now cloaked her as well -- that despite everything that happened in this world, one was destined to travel it alone, in the end. Kisla Baranski had become a queen of ice and stoicism -- and she no longer was willing to bend to the ambitions and misgivings of others.

Her paws carried her along the lake shore, her gaze flitting over its frozen surface.  She took little interest in the possibility of ice fishing -- the hunger that gnawed at her did not overpower her need to reach her pack, and so she kept onward, the snow and winter cold keeping her travels from being as fast as they normally would be. She would be home within a day, she hoped, and her ears swept back to her skull at the thought of what her reception would be.