A beautiful mountain walk?

I start when the sun rises with cleaning my self in the stream. I then walk down the forest path to the camp finding it abandoned. A lot of things have been left by the running adventurers but not much that can be carried. Taking my time I find enough different parts to get my self a tent and a few dropped bronze coins worth to little to bring while running away. My wolf also joins me in my search and is happily digging through some leftover food. I should really decide on a name for you.

"Maybe I should call you Digger?"

The wolf gives me a disappointed sigh and then keeps digging.

"Yeah you are right, you are a girl and Digger is not that a good name anyway. Well we can talk about it while we walk." Not that she will do much of the talking.

So our walk down the mountain starts, I can feel a chill in the air but it is not much wind among the trees. While leaving the camp I hang the adventures plaque on a pole i put down in the middle of the camp before I start walking. This time the forest does not creep me out as much as before. Not that it is less strange, I just think that I am getting used to it. Or maybe I am starting to feel that I belong in this kind of place. It also helps that my wolf is coming with me, while walking I try out different names for it but nothing seems to really fit.

In the end of the day I think we have come about half way down, I am butting up my camp a couple of meters from a cliff with a view over the valley. Here we have more wind but I anchor my tent on the surrounding trees and spend the sundown sitting and admiring the view with the wolf with her head on my knee. Beneath us we can see some old stone ruins from what I guess is a old fortification. Hard to say from this distance how it ended, but the stone looks broken and spread out. So probably not a peaceful end.

The next morning after packing down my tent and fixing my self some soup for breakfast, I have started to get some stomach pains after leaving the dungeon and my hands ache. I can now see smoke in the north of the valley and not the kind that you get from a settlement. It is a thick dark smoke from fire. First I thought it was a forest fire but now I think it is pyres, one big and a couple of small ones. That is the end of the valley and from what I understand the only mountain pass to the north. From my guess there have been some fighting going on over there. I can not see much berceuse it is all hidden among the forest, but looking closely something like a watchtower can be seen at the side of the pass. This means that it is a high risk that what ever attacked made it through. I need to be extra careful the last step of my travel. I will have poor visibility until I get to the more settled areas.

So the next step of the journey will take a bit more time than planed, I need to move more carefully which means slower. I rather take a detour than meet something I can not handle. So far I have proven that I am not very good at close combat. My expertice seems to be ambushes and creative ways of winning. In a straight up fight I only win by taking big risks.

After half the day I can start to see more signs of civilization Cut down trees, a hunters lodge and wild paths with clear human footprints. So far I have been keeping away from the river in case of ambush so the area I moved through have been almost untouched by humans and the likes. But I also find something worrying, in a small glade i find an campfire. It looks to hav been used just last night. But what worries me is that the footprints are not from humans, unless they started to walk around barefoot and suddenly got claws on their feet. This is not any prints I have seen before, that much I know. But i can tell that it was about 5 of them and they are heavy, almost twice as heavy as a human.

I pick up some things from the camp, lika patch of coarse fur and some scraps of leather. Good to have as proof if needed. I also better avoid the tracks and take another way. I do not want to take any unnecessary risks.

While walking forward into the now more lightly sloped forest.

"How about Vana? is that a good name?" The wolf perks up and gives a weirdly cute yip for a wolf. Looks like she likes it. "Well Vana it is, from now on your name shall be Vana. I think it really fits you and I was running out of ideas anyway. hehe" Vana show her happiness by jumping around me and yipping. All the feelings of a wolf has dispersed, when I think about it she has become smaller and more lean. But it does not take away the aura of danger she gives of, she is still ferocious, smart and more dangerous than any normal wolf.

After one more night camping in the forest, now without a fire to not draw any unnecessary attention, we finally make it to civilization. we standing next to a pasture with big hairy cows on it, a lonesome bull is guarding it and is looking with suspicion at me. From the other side I then see two dogs and a older man walk out waving to me with a staff in his hand. The dogs instantly lay down and wont move when they notice Vana. I should try to get here to go back.

"Vana, you need to go home now. I will be safe among humans, but you will not." it is a white lie, I know that that woman is out there somewhere and it looks like vana understood that even if I tried to hide it. She just sits down next to me and stare at the two dogs. Neither showing any aggressiveness or friendless. Well maybe I can say that I am a tamer.

The old man gives his two dogs a frustrated look and then gives up to come up to me alone.

"Nice wolf you have there. been in the mountains?"