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He could never be a scout -- he'd almost tripped on it, caught up in looking for withered or sick plants while on his travels back to the Vale. It sat in the middle of a clearing like someone had put it there, and it made the hair along his spine stand up. Its eyes -- or where its eyes had been -- stared at him, and from inside one of the hollow sockets the thin strands of a spiderweb glistened.

Shadow had never really had nerves of steel; how Ends-the-Chase had gotten them he had no clue. He left the skull where it lay, stepping gently around it and moving on before he started thinking too deeply about it.

Someone has dropped this on Vale territory, and he paused for a moment, ears pricked and gaze riveted forward. A Tidewalker, perhaps? There was no red poppy or white lily of peace; he had almost stepped on it while out on midnight patrol, only the play of silvery moonlight over the whorls on its surface preventing it from tripping him up.

Someone had left this here as a message. He picked it up in his mouth, careful not to break it, and imagined the taste of the salt water which had thrown it up on shore. He'd have to bring this to Bird, as a message; they'd missed a visitor.

Wintershadow glances up at it, gaze mild -- the same sort of mild, judgement-free tone that infuriated those with .. more volatile temperaments. "I am," he says, musically -- the raven cocks a bright eye at him. "Go tell your friend."

It is exactly what Never Idle requires -- but there's no way he's going to be able to move it; it's almost shoulder-high, and sunk down into the swamp. It is warmed by the sun, though, so it's not unpleasant to wait leaning against, while a friend comes by to help.

"That's what I was hoping for," says Shadow, mildly; he is not a strong buck, though he is also not a weakling. He might be physically fit, but he cannot move a boulder of that size himself, and doubts that even the Vale's as-yet-unnamed totoma could cause the thing to budge. He blows hair out of his face and feathers rattle as he tosses his head. "Let's get to it, then."

By the time they roll it into Never Idle's territory, Shadow's flanks are heaving and much of his long silvery-white hair is plastered to his face, neck, and sides -- but he will turn a smile on Knapweed that lights him up like a sunbeam. "Thank you," he says, though he sounds winded -- a hilarious thing indeed considering he is a Vale caretaker, and the head of the Vale. But for once Knapweed gets to see past that ironclad restraint and through to the less subdued parts of Shadow's personality. "No way I could have done that myself."

Apparently his wandering has led him farther west than he'd realized -- past the unspoken line where swamp gave way to marsh and then saltwater flats. He'd been lost in his own head, humming a song -- composing one, really, a new one he'd thought of in a dream -- when suddenly he noticed his hooves weren't making the same sound. The schluck of sucking mud had given way to the rasp of sand, and before that the rasp of sawgrass, and before he could even think to look around and ascertain where he was ..

"You!"

Wintershadow's head jerked up with a rattle of feathers. Before he had time to explain himself, the mare -- gnarled like a piece of driftwood, with ephemeral wings and a tangle of matted hair across one eye -- advanced on him. He thought, in the confused moment after, that she looked like some sort of large reptile, all sleek and menacing.

"You Vale types, always putting your noses where they don't belong," the mare hissed; "go on, we've got enough on our plates here without you asking about sick plants."

He hauled himself up, suddenly blazing with indignation, a far more intense emotion than he usually presented, and the mare laughed in his face. The indignation suddenly fizzled out like he'd poured water over a salamander; that laugh made him feel like a foal.

"But I--" Wintershadow started, with the intent to promise her he hadn't meant to intrude, and he'd thought the Vale was on friendly -- friendlier -- terms with the Tidewalkers, but the mare narrowed her eyes and actually hissed to cut him off.

"You've stepped across a patrol line. See to it that you don't do it again!"

When Wintershadow tells this tale to Wood Spider, later on in the evening when they are safely gathered around the Vale's biggest tree to bed down for sleep, the other mare laughs her tinkling laugh and regards him with her wise blue eyes -- that he was fooled by Bitterleaf's bluster, when he would likely have been begrudgingly welcomed.