It's getting late. The spring air is rapidly cooling, fueling a storm overhead.

Time to look for shelter.

Miles back, Lacey had been grateful to see the woods on the horizon. Had promised herself that, once she reached it, she could call it a day. Her every aching joint wants badly to cash in on that promise.

Now, seeing it just makes her nervous.

She knows the woods, but she doesn't know these woods, and rain will put her at a disadvantage. Muted sounds; muted scents.

Still-- it's here, finally. She's caught no sight or scent of her pursuers. And the old bay mare she rides needs a break as badly as she does.

Harriett is a good mare. Hard-working; loyal to a fault.

She'll keep walking, if asked. But Lacey knows that sway in her step; the way her head is starting to hang. She needs much more than a few hours rest. They both do.

That makes the decision easier.

It doesn't take them long to locate a stream. It takes significantly longer to find a place to shelter that isn't prone to flood. By then, the sky is churning with the low rumble of distant thunder, the breeze crisp, air electric.

It's an idyllic find, all told. A small cave that's just large enough for them both. By water; defensible. No predator scent. No bears; no other wolves nearby, of the two- and four-legged variety.

Not much of anything, come to think of it.

A shelter this roomy, it ought to smell like something.

Shouldn't it?

It's reluctantly that Lacey opts to stay for the night.

She stands with Harriett by the stream to let the mare get some much-needed water, and checks the crude map she'd scrawled off some helpful stranger several stops back.

She doesn't know why. There's not much point. There's no destination. Just a route to travel. Everything that's left of her life packed up in Harriett's saddlebags.

No mementos; everything she took, she chose for its utility

Her Sharps rifle, with ten rounds of ammunition; Green River hunting knife at her hip. A couple waterskins. Some pelts and a collection of leather straps, for warmth or shelter. A couple sets of clothes; linens and flannel; two pairs of work pants made of denim and brushed cotton.

None of the items are expendable until she can get some replacements, but they're thankfully in relatively good condition.

There's also Harriett's feed bag, of course, with three days of horse feed remaining. Longer, if they stop to graze more often. She'll have to find a way to buy more of everything soon. That means finding settlements. And having more pelts to trade.

Her own provisions are thin: some dried meats and flatbreads, the latter only slightly more appetizing than hardtack, on-hand for nights where hunting doesn't seem likely. Like tonight, say.

She's sure she can defend her position in her current shape, but spending the night with a fur coat would be more comfortable.

She won't be able to call on her wolf for a couple days after, but maybe it's worth the risk. That sense of smell would help.

What to do?

The mare's been raised with wolves. It used to be, her regard of Lacey's second skin was that of any farm animal towards their guardian.

But it wasn't long ago that she saw those guardians turn. Smells, faces, voices she recognized, using those skins to tear her small, captive herd to shreds.

No matter how tempered her instincts, they aren't gone. Her memory for slaughter remains sharp. It'll take time to build that trust again-- and it won't be happening tonight.

In a cave.

During a thunderstorm.

If they're coming, they're coming. Maybe they should.

It hasn't hit her yet. That it even happened in the first place. Not really.

Lacey had seen to the care of those animals personally. Had taken, with their dams and sires, the first steps towards managing the medical needs of compound livestock. She wouldn't be who she is without them. Now, they're gone.

And she feels nothing.

Save, maybe, the certainty that if Harriett has to flee tonight, she doesn't want the old mare doing it with a bridle on. The less chance she has to snag herself on something, the better.

Harriett nickers when it comes free, and Lacey offers her the only piece of fresh food left in the saddlebags: an apple pilfered clumsily from their last stop.

It was meant to be a reward for a job well done. Now, it's more like an apology. And Harriett, famous for giving herself colic off a pile of crabapples, eats it happily.

Apology accepted.

Harriett graciously receives the offered pets, and shows her gratitude by eating a corner of the map.

Probably for the best. They were done with that corner anyway.

Her form may appear human, but her senses aren't. They're muted compared to what they could be, but not this muted. What's going on?

The cave is-- a cave.

And the only early warning system Lacey looks liable to put together, cumulatively, is one (1) horse.

Harriett crowds the slim entryway, unwilling to stand too far away from the threshold. Maybe because she, like Lacey, still doesn't trust the lack of smell.

It's not just that the owner is absent. It's that everything is absent. All the life teeming outside has apparently decided that this particular shelter is not worth the trouble, and Harriett seems to be in at least partial agreement.

The only thing going for it, currently, is that the stream is far enough away, and recessed far enough into the ground, that flooding shouldn't be an issue.

I'll see you soon.

Outside, it's like the forest watches, holding its breath.

For the storm, she assumes, but it's hard to shake the feeling that something is paying attention to her.

Yes.

It's gone.

Your little fiefdom is gone.

Good riddance.

Prison guards always recoil from their first actual brush with a world outside the gates.

If they didn't, they wouldn't be prison guards.

They'd be here, like you. At the mercy of their own bloodhounds. Small and skittish. Learning for the first time what consequence tastes like.

No one said this would be easy.

Be grateful you're here to experience it at all.

No one said it would make sense.

She's had this conversation often enough that the sound of her own inner voice is starting to change. Like she's inventing new people to join in on the self-recrimination.

Mercifully, she's spared a second round by a shadow across the stream, coalescing into something almost feline. Stitched crudely together and fraying at the edges, ash suspended in air.

It flees when she sees it, darting out into the forest, its passing marked by the violent jostling in the treeline. As if something far larger had just trampled through.

Harriett's reaction is immediate. She snorts, tossing her head, not yet alarmed enough to back further into the cave - or bolt out of it - but certainly enough to stand stock still in the entrance.

Right on cue...

Light rain. Wind lashing through the trees.

Is she so far gone she's not only hearing things, but seeing things, too?

Harriett's still agitated, but with a storm in her face and a stressed-out wolf at her back, it's hard to blame her. Thunder, an apparition-- it's all the same to her, one way or another.

And Lacey's too exhausted to tell the difference anymore. She needs sleep, but--

In an abundance of caution, she'll keep it brief.

So-- just a short, nap, then.

A little recharge.

That's it. That's--

--all?