Nearly two years since his last excursion, the Korcari Wilds had hardly changed; it was summer now, compared to the autumn of his last visit, and that meant the smells and sounds were intensified, the peaty stench of the swamps, the warmth of the damp earth, the calls of crows and the buzz of insects echoing over the marshy water of the fens. Where last he had seen it in its early dormancy, here the Wilds were full in the throes of life, and every breath was an experience - not always a pleasant one, for the oppressive heat did a rather impressive job of spreading the odor of decomposing plants and animals - but an experience nonetheless.
Though he had been born far to the east of here, in gentler climate if not landscape, places like the Wilds were where he felt the most at home. Walking this place brought to heel memories of hunts in that rich, cool autumn, and meeting a fierce and curious Chasind shaman, who had a knife to his neck at one moment and an assault of questions in his face the next. Such thoughts made him carry his ears and tail high, tongue lolling from his mouth in a canine grin, as he circled the camp once to check with his own nose the perimeter of his adopted friends' temporary home. He was fast growing fond of them, his true-men and women, but they were incredibly hopeless when it came to the basic necessities, things he had daily searched for for years without really thinking about it. Bethen, who was one of his favorites, was particularly helpless - not through lack of will or trying, of course, because from what snippets he had overhead she came from some cage cloistered deep in true-men territory, and had never been let out before - and so Garrett was beginning to view her as something akin to a puppy, eager and enthused but.... clumsy, to put it mildly.
Most of the dears, not just Bethen, couldn't even hunt without resorting to traps or tricks. The two dead ones seemed to be an exception, the silent one quiet and serious about his bow - but when Garrett had gone into the swamp and returned with a pair of mallards, their necks in his jaws and wings broken from his pounce from the reeds, he had been unsurprised to see that he was the first, and one of the only, successful hunters of the group.
The time of year was wrong for deer or elk, in the Korcari Wilds, anyway; they were all in the green expanse of the Bannorn, growing fat on summer grass. Still, he was of a mind to bring down something large enough to feed his two-footed companions - perhaps a boar - before they starved to death from bad luck or sheer incompetence.
Padding through the low scrub, one ear swivelled as he detected feet leaving the camp; a deep breath through his nose confirmed Bethen's identity, and he tilted his head and found her dimness, a night fog beginning to obscure her form as much as the lowering sun did. From the set of her back, she was determined to go about her business - and from her singular state, assured that she could complete whatever task she had in mind by herself. That might have been true in the Wilds in the day, but while there were few large predators that didn't mean that the swamps themselves weren't treacherous at night, even deadly, especially to an unprepared pup with a stubborn set in her jaw.
Well, the hunt could wait. Garrett would see that Bethen made it safely back to camp first, a pale shadow with yellow eyes keeping her safe from just out of sight.