1. If he was summoned to a meeting of some sort, in which case he decided he had better pack up and do what he was told rather than sit around and get in trouble for not responding to the call.
2. If he was hungry and swamp fruits just weren't cutting it anymore.
This was more of a case of the latter, and just like the previous times he had skulked out here, he had to restrain himself from groaning in near ecstasy at the taste of proper grass. Fruits were sweet and delicious, but they were more like treats, desserts, than proper food. And while he could easily survive off of the vegetation that coiled up around the trunks of the trees and sprouted from the peat, it was hardly very appetizing. While his body could make do, and technically speaking, he never had to leave the safety of the murk and the heat, even his ever-present nerves could only keep him bound to that place for so long before the need to eat something more fulfilling bid him to leave his comfort zone.
It was chilly, and snow seemed intent of fluttering down from the sky and soaking into his already matted coat, making him now messy, and cold. Fucking great.
He supposed, that on the bright side, he was a bit cleaner than he had been before. The clean water of the snow melt that ran down his form washing off some of the gunk that clung to his coat, even if only a little. He wasn't so beautiful with the flakes that attached themselves to his form, instead looking rather miserable. An embodiment of the swamplands so rudely covered with frost.
He grumbled his frustrations quietly under his breath as he nosed the snow aside, digging for the tastier morsels to be found below the cold and frozen flakes. Sure, they were fairly deadened at this point, but Vespera did they still taste better than the prickly leaves he had been eating the past few days, unable to stomach the sweetness of the fruits any longer.
He was making something of a trail in the snow, in a multitude of ways. There was the pattern of his hoofsteps as he walked, leaving interspersed imprints from every step. There was the trail of exposed earth, cleared of grass by his jaws and the trail forged by his nose as he pushed his way through the snow in search of more to eat. And even a light trail of dark stains on the pristine snow, markers from where the melting flakes that landed on his back had washed down his form, becoming filthy with the muck on his form and dripping down their dirty water to create small, dark spots in the clear whiteness below.
@Crux
