The rain has stopped, but the sun has not yet emerged. Derek doesn’t know what that horrible howl was, but he knows that if he has been sitting waiting on this large rock for long enough that his socks have completely dried it is probably just procrastinating for him to put off getting back to the search for any longer.

Besides, Bootsie had a nice nap. That counts for something.

They get back up with the determination that their target had definitely either already gone downstream when they sat down to wait for her to return. It was a bad call, and Derek is glad that nobody was around to have seen it.

Not that he isn’t planning to include it in his after action report, but having a witness for the mistake is more of an emotional hit than just having to confess it in silence later.

But to be entirely honest - there was no way he could have kept moving, anyway. He was just entirely too exhausted.

Being refreshed definitely helps.

So Derek takes another gamble. Either she had never turned downstream or she had already turned and passed the point where he encountered the river when he got there. He could either head upstream where the trail continued, or he could move downstream and see if he can find where she would have exited the river.

And he knows Deirdre’s tricks well enough. She knows he knows her tricks, too.

So obviously, the right choice would be to go upstream.

But the choice is too obvious. So instead, he and Bootsie cross the river via a convenient log, two big rocks, and a sandy little beach. They continue downstream, breaking through the underbrush as they go.

Bootsie sniffs the earth with her long ears brushing the damp ground. The conditions are not great for a scent hound, but it is better to have the dog and not be able to use her than to not have the dog in the chance that they can. But sometimes luck is on their side.

Derek inwardly celebrates when Bootsie gives a little woof of alert. There is a scent here.

She is not yet fully engaged. It takes Bootsie a few more tries before she finds not only a scent but a clear boot print in the dirt. It’s the one with the crack and the stuck pebble.

Derek really would know that print just about anywhere.

Bootsie lets out a bay and the chase resumes a lot sooner than Derek had expected it would.

It leads through significantly more brush before finding and following what appears to be a deer trail in the woods.

That makes life for the beleaguered deputy a lot easier. He’s still not quite up to taking off at a run again, but he can certainly get a move on with the easier terrain to follow.

Bootsie keeps close to the trail, with her nose down and tail wagging like a flag behind her.

They encounter a large, dead tree. Bootsie circles it a few times, and Derek isn’t sure if she is confused as to where the scent should go from here, or if the trail has finally gone completely cold.

But then he spots the subtle little eye carved into the wood of the dead tree. And that is a sign that their target has definitely been here. Deirdre used that as her signature before she learned to read.

He can’t remember why she had picked the open eye. It might have just been something that was an easy mark to make. But he knows he has seen it on a lot of documents, including official ones, where it would have been more appropriate to have them signed by proxy than to have a personal mark accepted as a signature.

But when your cousin is the Sheriff, sometimes the authorities make exceptions.

Derek stews on that thought. So they could make many exceptions to keep her from being hung, from having her thieving hands removed, or from simply leaving her in the stocks for a week. Why was she always being caught and stuffed in that jail cell, anyway?

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Surely, she would have figured out that there was no way she would ever actually get away with the crime she commits, eventually? Surely?

Clearly, that thought is some kind of trigger. Bootsie has found her trail. The hound lurches into motion, pulling hard at her lead.

Derek trips and falls face-first into a hole.

A tiny whirlwind of air swirls violently against Derek’s face, pulling at his short hair and scuffing dust into his eyes.

He reflexively puts his hands up to shield his face from the foul wind. It smells of decaying wood, mold, and damp leaves. And it pulses through his fingers to continue fighting against him.

There is a struggle in the damp little hole full of decaying leaves.

Derek has nothing he can grasp to fight back against the creature. He flails uselessly while the thing works sand up his nose.

And the leash tangled in Derek’s hands, so he’s unable to work his way free while Bootsie only makes things worse. The dog circles and barks at the thing, but does not see why her master might roll around in the leaves like that.

She appears to sense that there is something very wrong when Derek’s eyes roll back as he gasps for air.

The thing of wind and dreams did not appreciate someone attempting to share its hiding place in the little hole full of leaves. There is a much worse creature out on the prowl today, and it does not want to be found at all.

It shoves grit up Derek’s nose in revenge. One of its favorite toys is missing, and it is just so much harder to find a replacement when a person isn’t actually asleep. And this man had the audacity to instead step right in its hiding place.

Derek’s sneezing and flailing eventually gives way to the being made wholly of air, simply cutting off his access to that resource. Derek gasps and receives nothing. The ill wind forces him to pass out - it’s close enough to sleep to count.

And as his vision fades into the fuzzy darkness of oblivion, Derek struggles not to succumb to this pointless death. There is no justice in it. He has so much left to do and so much left to live for.

In the few seconds between passing out and having Bootsie drag him away from the hole where the dream eater hides, Derek remembers nothing.

And when he wakes up, he remembers slightly less.

The little wind returns to its hiding place, clutching a stolen memory of a smile. It doesn’t need to kill. It just wants its little treasures. And this one satisfies it. It is so much better than the memories of that previous victim. They had nothing worth taking. And this is a treasure that almost makes up for losing the previous one.

Derek rolls away from the little hole where leaves are still swirling around in a grumpy breeze. Bootsie’s teeth still have his shoulder, and he isn’t willing to scold her for the bite.

But they have a job to do, and this detour is only making that task take longer.

Derek, however, just had a small brush with death and is perhaps a bit justified in taking a moment to take stock of his emotions on this matter.

And he decides that emotions be damned. He’s going to put as much distance between himself and that nasty little breeze as possible.

And the best way to do that and not get hopelessly lost is to let Bootsie handle the directions.

With a quick command to drop it, she does. A second command gets her back on the earlier trail.

And Derek, well, he puts some additional hustle in his steps. There’s a lot of ground to cover and they will not get anywhere any faster by taking their time. Derek tries hard to think about anything but his brief glimpse of his doom.

Instead, he finds a hastily disassembled campsite where someone has clearly taken a nice quiet rest in a dry patch of leaves. This is such a good sign for the chase that he almost misses the fact that Bootsie barely has to sniff about to be back on the hunt.

They’ve gained a lot of ground now. There’s even a usable path to follow through the woods here. And it doesn’t take too terribly long before that little path crosses a larger, legitimate walking path.

Leaves across the gravel of the path show slight disturbance where someone has recently crossed through this area. Derek isn’t sure if Deirdre would be so foolish as to actually follow a marked path like this one where it would be relatively easy for someone on horseback to catch up with her.

He debates, just for a moment, all the things he knows about this frequent visitor to the jail cell below his office.

And he recalls two things that might be useful. For one, they have cursed her with a magic deficiency. And for two, she likes her routine. One of those is to take a path of least resistance, but another is to make a fool of the one who is chasing behind.

So he looks across the path to see what might be on the other side.

And that patch of woods is almost as much thorn as wood.

For a moment, just one tiny fleeting moment, he wonders if it would really be so bad to fail his mission. Would it really be such a loss if the most prolific thief in Aegis Township were to get away and never be seen again? Would anyone actually fault him for taking the easy road in this particular moment of choice?

And while that answer is no, it is also most definitely yes.

Derek wouldn’t live with himself if he’d intentionally failed. But there is nothing to show that she has actually headed straight into that horrible maw of thorns.

So he turns up the path to follow.