Timestamp: Summer 34, 515 AV She had needed to get away, so she packed her bag with whatever she had left, strung it over her shoulders, and left her temporary lodgings behind. Talya crossed portions of the dock, her soles clicking softly against the wooden boards, before shuffling through the grass, near inaudibly as she moved through the green. The sun beating down upon her shoulders, her skin, used to far harsher rays, and heat than what she experienced in Zeltiva, with the cool air and breezes which often blew in from the bay. As she moved, she drew her hair into a braid, and kept her eyes on the ground, the darkness of them, she found, unnerving a fair number of the local people, although on the whole, they seemed far more accepting of her than the humans of Ravok had been. In any case, she still found that she needed to get away from these people all the same, and decided to spend some time out in the Wildlands, enjoying nature before the darkness set in. Perhaps sampling some of the local flora, if not taking the time to be privately childish, and climb a tree or something of that nature. So, Talya made her way out of the city, and into the outskirts of the Wildlands, which was marked by a smattering of trees, and rocky outcroppings. Over these she climbed until the terrain began to change again, into a series of lightly rolling hills marked by either grass laden with aging dandelions, or dirt. If not patches of each. The soil itself parched, and packed hard, easy enough to walk upon if you had the right equipment, (which for the most part, Tal did given that she was wearing suede leather boots). Gradually, more and more trees began to appear upon the horizon, until Talya found herself submerged within a sea of trees about a bell later- a mixture of evergreens and oaks for the most part. Oaks mainly, by the look of things. Talya pushed aside a low hanging tree branch, keeping it from hitting her in the face as her eyes grazed over all that surrounded her. She saw trees mainly, although there were squirrels here and there. Some perched on branches, eating acorns, others simply staring down at her with their beady black eyes, as though to maintain a sort of surveillance, either to see if she would take their food, or try to use them as such. Luckily for them, she had not a single ranged weapon on her person, and could not hunt them no matter how dully her stomach rumbled. Others at least, left her be, as she left them be; scrambling up the side of trees and burrowing into the thicket of several bushes, which served as the forest's underbrush. Sometimes, she'd notice a chipmunk burrowing under a raised tree root. At others, she'd make note of a few rabbits burrowing into their warrens. She'd simply laugh at them, at their fear, as she made her way through, looking for other things she could enjoy the presence of. Things besides the sun's light, whose streamers of golden light continually shone through the spaces between leaves and branches, casting long shadows across the forest floor, to put a smile on her face, and ease the tension out of her heart and soul. She was lucky, she found, that after awhile, she noticed a few wild strawberries settled into the center of a grassy patch. She wasn't sure they would be edible however, and left them, instead simply marveling at their small size in comparison to regular strawberries before moving on. At which point, she spent the next few bells searching, and finding things such as honeysuckle to lick clean, and a few daisies and dandelions to admire momentarily. Wishing she had brought something to practice drawing, or something to press them in. If not harvest them, so she could figure out how to use them to her benefit for later. She would have to remember for later; for next time. A next time, which seemed as though it had come upon her within a heart beat, for as she looked up at the sky, Talya realized that she had lost track of time. That it was long past noon, and heading into the latter portion of the day, where the sun was just beginning to set. She sighed, as she studied the way the sun was sinking, the way the clouds roamed across the sky like a herd of headless sheep, and realized that the sun would set within the next hour or so, plunging the world into the dark blanket of the night. Talya feared that she would not be able to make it back to the port city of Zeltiva before the sun finished setting, and decided that she would have to spend the night in the Wildlands before heading back in the morning. Unluckily for her, since she hadn't planned on spending the night, she had left her tent back in the inn, and would have to improvise for her time spent out in the open. Thus, she made it of the utmost importance to build a shelter, especially before her patron god Leth took to the sky, and she shifted into her more natural form. She began the process by looking for an ample space to build her shelter- once which not only had enough room, but would make her life easier by providing something to work with. A frame by which she could build off of. Unfortunately, there proved little to work with, as the ground was flatter where she was, and the trees younger, their trunks far less thick than in other areas she had seen. There were no rocky outcroppings here either, no cavernous areas for her to build a sort of wall over, and shelter herself for the night. So, Talya realized, she would have to build the shelter entirely from scratch, with whatever she could find around her- leaves, dirt, twigs, branches, maybe a few vines such as ivy. But not much else, if anything else. Knowing this would be difficult given her lack of experience in the field, she set to work immediately in the hopes that she would just have enough time to finish before the night came, or that she would finish shortly after it had, and she would be safe in whatever she produced. |