[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgright]The river had, as the Totoma mare had predicted, dried up in one part, leaving, for the most part, a long lake with fish readying themselves to die, and in some cases, falling apart. Oath had been busily stuffing herself the past days, as well as trying her hand at drying and clay-burying some of the abundance before her. The days were getting shorter still, and if a sudden freeze came, that would be, abruptly, it.

Still, whenever the doe saw a large shadow wheeling overhead, or heard something in the brush, she turned, half-expecting the Totoma to show up again. She'd managed to keep her company overnight, and well into the next day beyond, and something about that company had left her... wanting, almost. When she saw a towering figure in the distance, there was nobody else it could be. When it towered even taller, however, her breath caught-- it was not a bearlike totoma, this time, but a bear, the sorts told of in hushed murmurs in the safety of numbers.

She stared, fixed in place as it staggered its way to standing at its full height, with a giant fish in its mouth well dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the creature. She stayed still, heart running in her chest, as the thing sniffed the air. Was she well-enough camouflaged in the grasses? Should she make a run for it? Her stomach dropped as its eye met hers. The thing seemed to grow-- or move, impossibly fast, so it was standing within swiping range.

She turned to flee, heart pumping, pulse in her teeth and her tongue and her ears, ringing as she scrabbled away as quickly as possible. She had to run-- just run-- or it would catch up with her. But as she darted between a standing tree and the deadfall propped against it, she heard nothing behind her. She turned, and the distance between them was greater than it had been before-- the bear that had shambled its way to standing hunkered back down on its fours, and sat there, looking almost forlorn--

Oath snapped awake as a cold splat of water fell on her from above. The tree whose canopy she'd sheltered beneath the night before had now become soaked through with rain, and while the sky had given up on pouring, the forest itself now dripped coldly around her.

She sighed, picking herself up and walking out into the open ground near the reeds and water, and leaned down for a drink and a nibble at some of the last of the duckweed, trying to make sense of the dream.

Was... was there anything to it, she wondered? Without a mare or stag nearby to discuss the portents with, it was simply something she would simply have to watch out for....