Bloodroot did not live luxuriously, but she did not mind, for scavenging the lands, cursing people, and eating her skirret was mostly all she knew. She plopped it back on her back.

"Is that how you've been staying alive?"

She asked with great suspicion, the skirret peering over her shoulder as if it had real eyes.

"You do smell awfully clean."

@Ruriska

“I- yes, I guess so.” It sounded a lot more pathetic when she said it like that. “I was born there. My mother started the tribe.”

He started dipping his head to try smelling himself but stopped just in time. “I... bathe. Do you... not?” Now that she mentioned it, there was a bit of smell in the air that wasn’t just the rotten root thing. Oh dear. “I can show you the way there, you’ll be safe and happy and there are heaps of cute foals.”

That was when the irony of it all hit him and he nearly groaned out loud.

So much for running away to start his own life.

@Maxx

She studied his face curiously as he revealed the secrets of his cleanliness, listening to every word.

"Eh, I bathe when there isn’t something else to do," she said offhandedly, in an almost unwashed way, "that’s sweet.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but it also sounds pretty boring - I’m not really a cute lil’ foals kin."

She shifted from leg to leg, almost like she could have been contemplating her bluntness, or soothing an itch on her ankle.

"I think it sounds nice to go back to after falling in a mud pit though," she acquiesced, "for the food.

"But we could go somewhere else first - since I’m here you might die less fast than a blind zikwa alone.

"Shall we?"

The skirret bounced on her back.

@Ruriska

It took Marked a moment to understand what she was offering (mostly because he was confused by the concept of not liking foals).

But it did click eventually and then he stood there, mouth slightly open.

He didn’t have to go back yet.

Instead he could put his life into the (proverbial) hands of this probably crazy, sort of stinky doe and her root vegetable friend. It maybe wasn’t the best option but it was the only other one that he had that wasn’t blindly wandering in a random direction or going home.

“I - sure, yeah, why not?” He laughed, somewhat nervously. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

@Maxx

Bloodroot cackled in presumed delight, violently hip-checking the buck. The skirret jostled on her back.

"Everything is going to surprise you," she said with ominous cheer, "isn't that a wonderful way to live?

"Or die?

"I mean, that won't happen so soon," it was dismissive as she was already urging him forward in a random direction, decidedly away from safety and happiness and heaps of cute foals. Her feral wild little existence had gained a new companion, and this one could talk, though arguably speaking, the skirret could talk through her.

He’d just barely recovered from the far too aggressive hip bump before he was being ushered off into the great unknown.

Oh my Motherfather, he thought as he stumbled along, I’m actually going to die.

Especially if he got hungry enough to get that stinky root.

But despite his misgivings, he didn't look back lol.

Fin!