"Hmm, this looks good doesn't it?" A chittering agreement met the gentle mare's words as she leaned her nose down to inspect a mushroom head. Small paws slid down her neck as the ermine on her back rode down her nape like a slide, his body thumping against her ears. Before long he had stretched himself down her forehead and she went cross-eyed for a moment trying to look at him. She snorts playfully, shaking the great mass of her head and sending the ermine toppling onto the cushioned forest floor in a ball of fluff. His tail wavers as he spins around, voicing meager complaints while Willow plucks the mushroom and tries in vain to rearrange her forelock.
"Forgive me dear plant, but I thank you for the offering you provide. May the heads I leave grow bigger in the absence of the one I take," Willow murmurs in an almost religious fashion as she harvests the useful fungus.
Feathered feet stir and sweep across the grasses both dead and alive in this canopy of blossoming decay and unfurling seeds. With each step a great shudder rolls up her frame and sends waves of movement into the willow tree languidly rising and falling with the surf of her motion. Its roots tangle and vanish into the hefts of her hide while its leafy tendrils sway against her back like a lover's touch and entwine themselves in the body of her mane and tail. She is a being of the woods and she waltzes through this forest with an easy grace and comfort awarded not to one who has become familiar with this segment of land, but from one who has befriended all land no matter the region. Her home is wherever she rests her head or plants her feet. For now, it will be Helovia.
Ahead of her Ermine trounces around like a young pup. His tail sticks straight up like a twig as he varies from pouncing leaf to leaf, to leaping up the sides of tree trunks and spinning around them, to scuttling through fallen logs and brush. The world is his playground and he intends to use every speck of dirt and wilted petal to entertain himself.
"Look for roots!" Willow calls out to him, kindly reminding that games are fine but they have visited these woods for the purpose of gathering.
Ermine calls back in a plaintive way, but he pauses in his play to set his nose to the ground. Snuffling like a hound dog and pausing occasionally to scratch experimentally at the wet dirt, he roams around and eventually bumps into Virva. The abrupt softness has him jerk his head up instantly, a hissing sound escaping his maw unintended as his eyes appraise the large pegasus, the least of what he expected. A trill of terror runs up him in the moment of surprise and he turns on his tail and flees back into the grasses.
Not many moments later Willow surfaces from the same direction, Ermine chattering busily upon her backside as his black eyes leer warily at Virva. Willow laughs lightly, the sound shaking the leaves oft her tree and lending a crinkle to the green swirls about her similarly hued eyes.
"I do apologize for my friend," she says at last when her giggles have subsided.
"He has been in quite the mood today. I think it's the change of seasons getting to him." With winter on the way Ermine's coat had already begun to shift. Gray hairs now lined his brown coat and in some areas spread into patches.
"We mean no harm and I hope we did not intrude?"
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