Okay, technically morels (which for reference, are these!) are way, way the fuck out of season but SHHH. Corona finds what she wants to find. >_>;; [378 words].

In the depths of dark wood, Corona couldn’t really find a trace of the pack that had once been there. Her father had burnt away the cabins that they had built and none that had lived there no longer hung around. They had scattered to the four winds after the illness that had ravaged them, not that she could blame them. But she had never forgotten the place in the woods near the large lake where they had roamed.

Having spent a good portion of the morning combing through the wilted foliage for hardy late season herbs, she had left Inferni behind for the time being. She had been gone since before sun up and didn’t quite expect to be needed, though she had tried to be some sort of present force within the clan. For what it was worth, anyway. Every day was a little step further as far as integration went, and it was minute headway in comparison to what it could have been. The last thing she wanted to do was get in over her head, anyway.

Yet once she had come to this particular place, this little niche in the forest that now appeared pristine (or almost -- the trees that they had cut down were still nothing but stumps) felt something like a wet, heavy blanket. But she didn’t get a prickle of emotion from it, just an unease that was set in motion by her bones and the slow gait that came about. She shifted the lightweight pack she was carrying absently; the finds within it were minimal at best — she was regretting having not started her search sooner in the season.

But it was too quiet. Even underneath the afternoon sun, she heard no animals, no birds, nothing bar the sound of her own steps and breathing. Even after all of that time, the stillness that had come over this particular place in the forest still remained, almost as though the very sickness itself still hung like dewdrops caught in the shadowed cobwebs. But it was no matter and she tried to stay focused, eventually crouching low to pick beneath leaves at the first sight of mushrooms. They weren’t exactly the recreational kind, but rather the edible kind.