@chaosmultiverse || Continued from here.
Nothing out of the ordinary. That seemed to be the case wherever Faith looked, whatever she was looking at. The trail was already getting muddy, rains seeping through the thin, compacted dirt to make it slippery, pooling in thin rivulets over the path to disappear back into the pine needles around Faith. Everything smelled sharply of them, of the fresh rain that greyed the skies, of the earthy scent of the woods themselves. A rich smell, brimming with life, reassuring.
It was also why the auras weren’t a ton of help, not initially. There were patches of death here and there, more to be glimpsed through the trees and in them and in the very air itself — but considering how it was all struck through with the richness of life itself, this too seemed normal. It was the woods, after all. Animals had to hunt, had to pry up the bark to access the rich grubs beneath, and there was a frenzy of it this time of year as they tried to pack on the winter pounds. Roots were being gnawed on by insects that had retreated underground, and saplings that were too late in coming up had been killed by frost. There was nothing out of place for what she would have been expecting, this ripeness of life before the closing curtains of winter, desperate to survive the coming lean months.
Birds didn’t move through the trees, nor was there much other visible life around currently, but that was to be expected. It was raining, and that put a pause on this hunger and want for food, as they waited out the weather. It wasn’t any use getting caught out in a cold rain like this, which would turn feathers into a soggy mess and render fur as muddy as the ground Faith was walking on. Here and there she would still hear the chatter of some animal life, but they were distant and uncommon, rather trying to hunker down and stay dry, stay warm.
In fact, this hunkering down would procure the first actual animal life of note Faith would have seen on her walk so far.
It would have been easy to miss them. Their feathers were barred, marked in subtle lines that made them blend into the bark they were sitting against, appearing as though some deviation from the trunk of an old, bushy pine tree itself — but there was the unmistakable silhouette of an owl, tucked under a branch where they wouldn’t get rained on. Those great, forward-facing eyes were half lidded, sleepy and dull from their nocturnal habits, but nonetheless still watching Faith as she walked by. The noise must have awoken them, and, following the habit of the wild things, it wanted to check and make sure that Faith was not some predator or another which might pose a greater risk than a mere wake-up call.
But still. It was something, and it was the only something Faith would have come across for some time that she could ask anything to. At least owls had notoriously good eyesight, and good hearing to match.
