Log-fall Foss A Dream is Like a River

Fog. 53 ° F, 12 ° C. For @Reyes

While Neko was pleased with the progress she had made towards her responsibilities to the pack, she still felt somewhat overwhelmed with what she had left to do. So far she had gathered a variety of herbs from around the pack’s territory, and she was grateful to Cottongrass for his help in digging the infirmary. With the infirmary complete, she would have to move her herbs from their temporary cache to the infirmary, and she still wanted to visit neighboring packs to consult with their healers, as she knew she had a lot to learn and would feel more confident it they could offer her any kind of direction.

Visiting other packs would have to wait until her pack-mates were able to travel with her, but in the mean-time, she needed to try to find more different herbs for her stores, and she had learned the hard way that she would need to find them before they died off, as some of them already had. For that reason, along with the water rushing down the side of the mountain, the foss drew her attention. She could smell all manner of mosses and fungi growing on and around the rotting logs that lay on the ground. Surely she could find something useful among them. Aside from that, it just seemed like it might be an exciting place to explore.

She gingerly walked out onto a tree limb that had fallen across the water forming a bridge over it. The limb might have been a little shaky, but Neko was small and agile, and it could easily support her weight. She paused about halfway across to watch the water that was swiftly flowing beneath her.

The pups were still asleep.  Which was fine, Reyes supposed – he heard growing was hard work, and quite frankly, he couldn’t exactly remember how much he had slept at that age.  There had been a big meal a night or two before, though, so if they were still sleeping off a food come, that sounded about right.  Kids didn’t have much practice with feast or famine before now, not when they had their mama at their beck and call whenever they were hungry.

With a word to Askan that he was gonna head out for a brief stretch before the kiddos woke (and so that there was someone responsible with their eyes on the main den while he was on his brief stint), the gamma set out with no intention of leaving Wild Rye Fields.  But then he picked up Neko’s scent, still fresh and strong as it crossed over into uncharted lands, and curiosity got the best of the shadowy male.

He trailed his recruit – they’d barely spoken since she’d become a Rye wolf herself – and it didn’t take long to find the budding healer on a branch overlooking one of the streams quite near the territory.  Reyes gave a soft woof, tail waving behind him lazily as he slowed to a walk, watching the yearling with a keen interest. “Workin’ on yer balancin’ act, chica?”

Neko did not hear Reyes approach over the roar of the flowing water. She did not smell him as her nose was focused on the mosses and fungi that were growing among the fallen logs. She did not see him as she was carefully watching her footsteps, not wanting to fall off the log and end up in the swiftly flowing stream beneath her. His bark was soft and calmly announced his presence, but Neko was on edge due to the precarious situation in which she had placed herself. She was easily startled as a result.

Her entire body spasmed for a split second as she turned to face him. Her feet slipped as she knocked some bark loose from the log, and she wound up spread-eagle with all four legs hanging from either side. She quickly recovered, but she wished that Reyes hadn’t seen her slip and fall like that. At least she didn’t end up in the water below. She carefully got back to her feet and made sure she had a firm stance before turning to Reyes. “I guess my balancing still needs more work, huh?” she said sheepishly. “I just smelled some interesting plants around here and thought I should check them out. There has to be something useful here.”

He shouldn’t laugh. It was rude to laugh…but poor Neko just looked so silly, flying straight up into the air like that, all her legs going out in different directions. And considering she didn’t end up falling in when the bark betrayed her, that she was talking instead of trying to swim (or worse) in the turbulent water below, it seemed alright to have a chuckle. Or two. At least it was short-lived.

Reyes cleared his throat, lazy smile slung to one side as sorted herself out, explaining why she was out and about in the first place. Not that he blamed her, quite frankly. He preferred to be exploring, too.

“Looks like. But maybe you should get off the log, huh?” he rumbled, taking a few steps back to make room for the dark yearling, should she decide to take him up on his advice. His tail gave another wiggle and he hummed, pleased that the budding healer was taking her work seriously. Or he assumed she was, anyways. What else could be doing with plants? Not like a wolf could eat them instead of hunting. “Looking for anything certain? Or what you got at home? I ain’t a medic but I ain’t totally useless, neither. Know a few things.”

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity

Neko couldn’t blame Reyes for laughing. No doubt she looked silly, and she certainly felt silly. She liked making others happy anyway, although preferably not at her own expense. Still, things could have been much worse.


As much as she liked climbing, she couldn’t very well argue with him about getting off of the log. She shuddered to think what could have happened if she had fallen into the water, especially if there had not been anyone around to help her. She might not have made it back home alive. She carefully walked along the log back to where Reyes was standing.

“I honestly don’t know what I’m looking for, but preferably something we don’t already have around the Fields.” she said. “I’m still new to this region, and I’m not entirely sure what plants grow around here, or what they would be called, ‘cause the same plants have different names in different places.” That was one thing that had confused her as a child of a nomadic pack. “I’ve mostly just been identifying useful plants by their smell.”

With some uncertainty, she proceeded to list a few things she could think of, although she didn’t know if any of them would grow so far north. “There’s a lot of moss on the fallen logs. There seems to be a lot of mushrooms. Maybe magic mushrooms?” That was not something she really wanted, but they had their uses. “Even cowbane or fly agaric mushrooms?” The last two were poisonous and not medicinal, but that didn’t mean they would never be useful. Although it would go against her nature, she had even considered poisoning a food cache if the pack continued having problems with thieves.

(This post was last modified: Aug 30, 2017, 04:00 AM by Neko.)

“Alright, fair enough.”

It was a sound plan, even if it meant Reyes wasn’t going to be as useful as he was hoping to be. (Not that he would ever hope to be useful. He didn’t need that kind of validation.) He didn’t know much about moss – or mushrooms – having grown up somewhere fairly dry, but the term ‘magic mushrooms’ was a new one for him. The dark wolf pricked his ears forward, head tipped to one side. “Magic, huh? What’s so magic about ‘em?”

Fly agaric didn’t mean much to him, but cowbane… Didn’t know what the plant was, but the word ‘bane’ suggested to him that he maybe shouldn’t be eating it. Or maybe Neko shouldn’t be collecting it. Unless she knew what she was doing, which was entirely possible, but…

“Well, we could keep lookin’. Might have to go further south. Think there are some pineapple weeds an’ stuff around the place. Gotta find hard dirt. But Mama used to feed it to my sisters when they had upset bellies.” There wasn’t much else he knew, but he knew they were spikey and smelled sweet. But if Neko wanted to go further south, they could at least plan something.

Just fyi, I didn’t plan on Neko actually finding anything here. She’s partially trained and not familiar with the region, so she doesn’t really know what to look for or where to find it.

Neko was caught off guard by Reyes’ question, What’s so magical about ‘em? Although she believed in magic, both good and evil, she wasn’t sure that the so-called ‘magic mushrooms’ actually had any magical properties. “I don’t think they are truly magic, she said. I think that’s just what they’re called, but I’m not sure. Daddy said sometimes wolves eat them when they want to commune with spirits, but Momma said they just make you see things that aren’t really there. I’m not sure which is right, but I was never allowed to touch them when I was a pup. I haven’t seen or smelled any around here anyway.”

She frowned when Reyes suggested going further south. It wasn’t that she wasn’t eager to explore, but she had been feeling insecure lately and didn’t want to wander too far from her new home. She still gave Reyes a response and, with some uncertainty, tried to give Reyes more information about what might be useful to her. “That’s good to know, but I think I already have a good supply of pineapple weed. There’s plenty of it around home. Plenty of mana grass too, although I think others around here have called it sweetgrass. I wish I had more prairie crocus, but it already died off awhile ago. It would help if I could find something else to help fight off infections. Yarrow would be useful, but I haven’t seen any of that since I came here. I think it might have died off too. I guess growing seasons are shorter this far north. Even just something to ease pain would be a big help, but I don’t know what to look for or where to look.” Even if she didn’t need any more pineapple weed, she might find some before returning home just to make this little venture appear more productive than it actually was.

Okay, well. The pineapple weeds were about as far as Reyes’ floral knowledge went. He definitely didn’t know anything about no magic mushrooms (or why Neko would want them, for that matter – the idea of hallucinating because of some dumb plant didn’t particularly sound like something any of the pack members needed). The wolf huffed softly, mouth twisting to one side as he regarded the budding healer. For someone who claimed she had no knowledge, he was pretty sure she was lying. Or had absolutely zero self-confidence. Probably the latter.

The gamma gave a soft huff, planting his thick hunches on the ground before giving the girl a small shrug. “No idea what a yarrow is,” he admitted, not at all embarrassed by his general lack of knowledge. His Mama hadn’t been a healer, and he’d had no one else to teach him. Which was fine. No one could be good at everything. “Can help ya look if y’tell me what we’re lookin’ for, though.” He paused for a moment, his brows furrowing closely together. “As long as we don’t go too far from Wild Rye Fields, though. Gotta watch the pups once they wake back up and everything.”

Sounds good!

Neko wasted no time in telling Reyes about the plant she had just mentioned. “Yarrow is... like... well...” She suddenly realized she didn’t have the words to describe it. She had a mental image of it, and she would surely recognize its scent, but attempting to describe it left her momentarily dumbfounded.

She recovered, then tried to picture the plant in her mind and describe what she imagined. “Well... Um... It’s a green plant with white flowers. It can be... maybe as tall as you are?” She might have been exaggerating the height of the plant. She was a pup when her mother had first shown her the plant, and everything seemed bigger to her then. “And the flowers are sort of clumped together, and the clump is kind of flat on top. It’s similar to cowbane but the clumps of flowers on cowbane are more rounded.”


She paused, suddenly unsure of herself as she reviewed her mental images of both plants. “Or is the yarrow rounded and the cowbane flat?” she wondered aloud, forgetting for a moment that Reyes was listening. “Wouldn’t want to get those two mixed up,” she muttered to herself.

“I’m pretty sure yarrow is the flat one,” she finally said, trying to sound confident. If she was wrong, surely she would be able to tell by its scent.