Nightmares and sweet dreams

I had made my camp and lain out to sleep for the night and closed my eyes to sleep and within minutes I was asleep but I clearly dreamed of a woman walking into my camp and digging through my few things before approaching me and digging through my few pockets and finding lint honestly it was a great dream after all what guy would say no to a dream of a half naked woman even if it was rather odd and not even a proper fantasy dream yet she seemed to have certain features of a fox in particular her ears were right from a red fox and her tail was larger but clearly from the same fox. I awoke feeling rested and then I had a shock all of my gear and supplies lay disturbed exactly like how my dream had been it was surprising to say the least. Few things are more disconcerting than waking up to find out a dream was real so when I realized that my dream had I was certainly concerned though the fox girl was pretty cute.

I packed my camp and set out along what might generously be called a road in the past but obviously was far from it currently and as I walked I kept an eye out for anything edible and soon I came across a clump of ard grass a nutritious if unappealing food source. I walked for most of the day stomach cramps and hunger my companions and I gathered anything I could eat which ended up being a couple clumps of and grass a trio of wild onions and a hill of tubers that I couldn't remember the name of but I'd seen before in one of my mothers books on herbs I just couldn't remember if they were edible or not. As I wandered following the road I slowly collected a modest amount of food items that if I had not been a herbalists son and apprentice I would never have known was edible and when it came time to stop for the day I built a modest fire and placed the tubers in the coals I was starving but I knew that all of the food I'd gathered would taste best cooked and some could be poisonous if they weren't cooked thoroughly. After cooking up a great meal I had some food left over and since I figured that my visitor might return I left the food on a rock next to the fire and laid myself out to rest.

Once again my dreams consisted of a fox eared lady wearing probably nothing but this time she ate the food I'd left out and gave a sound that I could only imagine was appreciative. My prophetic dreams or maybe awareness always seemed rather odd it had never happened before and it was slightly terrifying because I could do nothing in that state while I could be robbed blind or murdered. After having dreams of a fox eared lady two days in a row I decided to create a illusion that would make me harder to spot and much harder to see mind you it wasn't invisibility but it was a form of forgetfulness basically if I didn't move you would forget I was even there unless you were specifically looking for me and it would do nothing for my scent but when trying to avoid battle every trick counts. An entire day passed by the same as the last with me finding more wild edibles for my meal the ones I would have eaten during the day having mysteriously vanished or maybe not so mysteriously either way I suffered through another day of hunger stopping at lunchtime to build a fire and eat a quick meal before continuing on.

As I made my camp for the night I practiced my magic until I was mentally drained but not to the point of a unmanageable headache and then I cast the illusion on myself and slowly relaxed into sleep. Once more I had the odd dream but it only lasted long enough for the fox eared girl to enter my camp stomp around a while and realize that I had hidden my food and myself somehow so she sat down next to my sputtering fire. I awoke to the fox eared girl poking around in my fire probably looking for tubers I'd missed so I said "it's about time we have met face to face, I don't mind if you share my food but at least ask me first" well this lead to a short back and forth between us and the exchange of some pleasantries and I'd finally learned her name but it was so long and convoluted that I just called her Ann it was about a page shorter. After becoming acquainted with my guest I learned that she had been trying to survive in the area for months and had cleared out much of the small game in the area.

After becoming friendly to the point where we would probably not end up stabbing each other in the back we set out again and this time I had a traveling companion to chat with it was rather pleasant after all she was one of the beast folk a fairly rare and where I came from looked down upon race though I didn't let that color my thinking after all my home village was deathly afraid that spell casters were demons in disguise. Six days of nearly constant travel ended with a surprise twist as we found the end of the road or at least the portion that remained visible instead before us stretched a desert far into the distance and at that point I realized that we were going to either have to attempt to cross or turn back.