Word Count → 443 :: For Hotaru! 8D
Wandering away was fun. Dangerous, Sophie knew; there had been that scare with the white-striped black thing earlier who'd nearly made her smell as bad as its butt did, and she had no doubt that there were worse things than that. But it was fun, nonetheless. She hoped Leon didn't get too worried when he realized she wasn't playing quietly outside the den, the way he wanted her to while he healed, but she didn't think he'd mind much. He had Boothe out there, after all; the perfect decoy, her twin. And she'd left Bug behind this time as well, which meant Leon was all the more likely to fall for the trick and suspect that Sophie was somewhere nearby.
Her sibling was getting sick of being left behind, but Sophie swore she'd take him on the next venture. She just wanted to adventure on her own for a while, and while she sometimes regretted not bringing him along, it wasn't very often. Besides, he could go off on his own, too! He was only preventing her from getting in trouble by staying put. She didn't see what the big deal was. Then again, brothers were strange, foreign creatures with strange instincts. She didn't get them at all.
Padding carefully passed what looked to be a den of some kind--maybe for another of those stinky animals, though she really hoped not--Sophie skirted her way deeper into the forest, and finally came across an old tree standing by itself in the middle of a clearing. She padded up to it cautiously, and then leaned up on her hind legs and gazed at its trunk. There were funny carvings in the trunk, all inside what seemed to be a shape of some kind. She leaned back farther to look at it, and finally had to take her front paws off the tree and stumble about on her hind legs, attempting to get a good look at the funny inscription. She had no idea what it was, or what it said, but it touched her with some sort of importance, and so she stood there for some time, stumbling about trying to balance on her hind legs with her front paws curled against her chest before she finally sat back on her haunches in the "begging" position, her head cocked adorably.
Unbeknownst to her, the carving was a heart, and the words "I love you," inside of them. Sophie found herself curious as to why--and how--people would mark up trees this way, and what exactly was so important that it had to be left out in the woods somewhere like this.
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