She lets out a high satisfied hum, and stretches herself out belly up, before shaking herself off. Her fuzzy fur flicks out, gently swishing off the last little bits of dirt. 

This feels... nice - the light of the day is warm and kind, the air is soft yet brisk and bright, and this is just... right. 

She chuffs faintly, and rolls over. She steps softly over to the mushrooms, poking her snout at it lightly, a little tentative, before just nipping them up. They're soothingly rich on the tongue, and satisfying to chomp. It's filling and fresh but... 

There's something more to fufill? 

She cranes her ears up, to listen to the faded remnants of a half-remembered song, before it slips away like a sneaky little rabbit. Then folds them down, as it slips away again. 

Still, she has a bit of an idea... 

She sets off to follow the river, at least for a little while. 

But first... 

 She goes and stalks a bunny, slinking and sliding and shifting slowly through the grass, feather-light taps of her claws getting her one step closer as it idles, then the chase, the pounce, her teeth digging into the flesh of its stomach and tearing in, sliding atop it and chewing into the carcass, a satisfied little hum on her lips as they drip with her prey's blood. 

She takes her fill of it with a few little sighs and satisfied whines, before embarking off. 

The transition of the pebbles into sand along the shore is fun to watch, and there's something nice about feeling the cool flowing water curl around her paws, the extra little sway of the silt beneath her feet. 

She slides onto the current of the river, paddling gently on it for a while, head bobbing back and forth, cresting the waves with the snout of her chin, tailing swishing out in her wake. 

It's fun, but tiring enough that she has to pop back out soon enough, shaking herself off again and curling up into a little ball on a bit of pebbled shore. Her tail reflexively stretches out, swishing along the curves of the rock, craning up to let her rub her cheek up against it, basking and braying lightly in time with the gentle lapping off the waves. 

A small flock of partridges flies overhead. They would be really delicious if they weren't flying!

Awwwwwwwh. 

She bats her claws up at them, and lifts herself up to take a look at where they're going wistfully. 

They're gathering in a little clearing a bit upriver of her! Picking at the wheatgrass seeds.

She plods along intriguedly, slipping in beneath the cover of the trees to watch them for a while, listening to their squaks and seeing them eat and pick over the stems. 

She'll have to remember this place for when she comes by again later - the rabbit was a pretty solid meal, and she's not too hungry right now. 

At least... physically speaking? 

She blinks her eyes, and sets herself down for a moment, before setting off on her course once more. 

Time passes, and the summer grows warmer and warmer. Very little here is a threat to a magical fox with the natural advantages of alacrity, immunity to all disease and most hunger and thirst, and most of all- High intelligence.

A few times, she feels some foul energy coalesce into what cannot be described as anything other than monsters. Inky black things that wander around, always in seemingly random ways but always downriver eventually.

They're surprisingly hard to spot, made of shadowy goop and lurking in low brush and rocks. She can sense them as clear as day and avoid them easily with something that is not quite scent, but it's obvious that others might not be the same.

The summer is sweet and the air is fresh... 

Save when they come. Her eyes are sharp, sharper than even some of the other foxes she's seen in passing, but it gives her little more than a chance to skirt around their prowling, slipping into the bushes and beneath canopy, replacing their angry inky darkness with a more comforting, familiar shade beneath the leaves. She learns their scent as best she can, and avoids anywhere that their stench lingers, but she can't help but circle back and watch. There's something important, there, and she wants to see it more than she wants the very best fowl and flora of the forest, for all her stomach pouts at her sometimes about that. 

If she follows one for long enough, she begins encountering a great many new scents, at least when the wind blows upriver- Campfire smoke, and cooked food, and fish guts, and livestock manure, and heavy earthy clay.

Ooh! 

Fish is always tasty - they must have a good crop of them, and a lot of skill in hunting them, to have such a harvest. The smoke is lighter than she'd expect from a real fire, too. It sounds like a good place to hunt. 

(and if a little niggling thought pushes her there as well... So be it?) 

This is a little walled village, with fields of grain and vegetables and cows and chickens, and a fishing dock on the river, and what looks like a sizable brick-making operation in a clay pit, supplying the construction of the next generation of buildings in proper brick instead of logs, thatch, and mud. The fishing operation by the river is a bunch of sectioned ponds and funnel traps. The dark-shadow-things are keeping out of line of sight of the place, probing for weakness. The people are some humans, some - tree people? - some bird people, some dragony-looking people, and even some mermaids helping fish!

She circles a little herself, climbing up a tilted tree or two to get a better look. It really does smell just as odd up close, threshed soil and smoke and so many mingling animals and concentrated rows of tall stalks and bushes. Still, it doesn't feel like those cursed things, it just feels... settled, rather than flowing quite as loosely as she's used to. 

After a while of pondering and hunting in the forest itself, she slips out to get a taste of their cabbage, darting into the outer rim of their farms to get a taste of it before scurrying off. 

It's a vegetable! She definitely couldn't live solely off it but it's nice and crispy and green. Nobody notices her opportunistic nibble.

She's a little braver, this time, going down river to nab some fish, and a few other little snacks. She notices an odd trail that leads into their place, and follows it curiously from afar, just watching for a while before she slips back into the sea of grain and grass and trackless forest. 

The smells of many passers-by accumulate on the well packed dirt road. It's one of many, tracking between fields and different work areas around the fringes. She gets a glimpse inside the walls; More buildings, densely packed, and children playing some sort of game.

She finds herself flitting along the road, and slipping into the city itself. There's something horribly nostalgic about seeing the children playing. The sounds of the city are both bracing and beckoning, at times, so she settles in yet closer.

Town life goes on around her. The people who do notice a fox lurking around tend to smile at her, and a few even offer bits of meat, berries, or nuts as a treat, and maaaaaybe try to scritch at her ears a bit? They seem to like foxes for some reason. She even sees one woman wearing a white painted wooden mask that makes her face look sort of like a fox's, and she smells... Special.

Awww! 

She wags her tail happily, and accepts them graciously. There's something sweepingly soothing about being touched like that, and the little foggy faded part of her likes them a lot too. The berries are nice, too, juicier and richer than a lot of the ones not so carefully cultivated. She sleeps beneath the shelter of their eaves, sometimes, now, for all that the dappled dreams of the forest and soft sliding rays of the sun feel good on her pelt and pleasant on her eyes, sometimes. 

The specialness is interesting... Her ears perk up energetically, and she slips in a little closer to get a closer look at her, when she can.

One day as autumn begins to approach and the long harvest season begins, the fox-masked person furtively sneaks around carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle, walking quickly into a walled shrine garden after glancing around to make sure nobody's listening. But there's space for Amber to follow.

Oh sure! She seems fun. 

She idly follows her from afar, before checking to see if she minds a little fox poking her head out alongside her path.