Dawn seems to grow more sociable every day, probably because she’s becoming accustomed to being around people again, even though it’s just me and Niahla’Sen. She has many fascinating stories to tell of her travels, and keeps us entertained throughout the day. The hard part is determining if it’s a real story or something she made up. She told us a story today, but it didn’t make much sense. It involved her flying above the clouds on a giant bat. I doubt giant bats are real, and even if they were, riding one would be impossible. People are not meant to fly, and if we were, we’d have wings. The strange part with this story is it would be the first time Dawn ever mentioned something so blatantly unreal.
The days are quickly warming. I doubt we’ll have snow again before summer, which is only a month or two away. There is the occasional rainstorm, but they aren’t frequent enough to cause any problems for us. One of the benefits we get by traveling so near to the ridge between the Icavor and Toram Rivers is we don’t get any floods the lowlands might have from the melting snow. Any of the tributaries to the Toram River that we encounter are small enough for us to cross easily, and are rarely ever flooded.
We came across a very large herd of deer today. They aren’t the usual types of deer we’ve seen in other places, so they’re probably endemic to this region. What makes these so different is they eat a large type of woody plant that grows extremely fast, not just the leaves or other small plants that are easier for other deer to chew. The teeth in the front half of the mouth are serrated and pointy, allowing them to bite off mouthfuls of the plant. The back teeth are flatter, and grind the plant into smaller portions. I find it very interesting that the deer do not fear predators. We glimpsed a pack of wolves living in the area, and they seemed more afraid of the deer than the deer were of the wolves. I assume this is because of the teeth. If a wolf attacked one of the deer, the other deer would probably attack the wolf, a deadly situation for the wolf. If I kill one of these deer for food, I’ll need to make sure I’m well hidden and safe from any vengeful relatives it might have.