The angular wolf-dog's angular path was directed no longer by the weakness in her legs refusing to allow her to traverse steep slopes and too-high obstacles, and now was mainly to do with curiosity. She couldn't rest for a second without soon rising again, wanting to keep finding more new nooks and crannies of the territory. Unlike her journey from home to here, which she'd found tedious and exhausting, this was fascinating. Each piece of the landscape she discovered she could fit together with the others in her mind and start to build her mind-map of the country.
The sun was low and streaked the sky immediately around it with faint rose-pink as she came towards the end of a day that had seen her cross a river, run for miles to dry her heavy coat, and explore myriads of old human settlements that were mostly empty and some ruinous. The smell of well-fed horsehide alerted her stomach to its hunger, and soon following the scent she came to an especially odd collection of buildings, approaching them across a shorter oval of grass. The horses were cooped up in one of the blocks, and stamped as she passed each stall, a faint expression of apology in her eyes for unnerving them with her unfamiliar scent. Of course, these animals were kept here purposefully and certainly not to make meals. She'd known mules and donkeys for carrying burdens, but never a horse and eyed the long-nosed animals with suspicion. They looked rather strong and capable of a good bite with those long jaws and large heads.
At the end of the yard she spotted an open door and entered, finding herself in a tack room surrounded by leather saddlery. Now this was much more to her liking. Caspa ran her paws over the smoothly oiled surfaces, intrigued by the craftsmanship and making an assortment of mental notes as to their construction. Lifting a saddle to test the weight, she almost fell over backwards and wobbled around the room for a few seconds before managing to set the object down, with rather a crash, onto an upturned crate. Well, that was stupid, she told herself, the internal words somehow reminding her of someone who would have been even more excited than she to see these leathery creations. The memory was painful and her deep eyes seemed to blacken, but perhaps it was merely that they turned towards the shadows in the far corner of the barn.
