In the thick of it, she starts getting her second-circle spells. She's impatient to play around with them, but dealing with the zombies comes first - she asks the forest for the spell to conjure a trident made of lightning - zombies may shrug off arrows and most hits with her staff, but they have no real protection against the raw power of the elements. 

She manages to save a few living creatures mid-zombie-attack, and successfully nurses most of them back to health, including a hedgehog she spends three days carrying around in a sling as she continues her work. 

She definitely doesn't slack off - if anything, when they grow more infrequent, she starts to get antsier, preparing commune with birds more often just in case and spending her free time stockpiling food for the winter.

Eventually consensus seems to be that there are not presently any zombies in the forest. Hurrah!

She's very happy about this! Now she has time to play with her ✨ new ✨ spells ✨!!!

A week after the winter snow coats the grounds, she finds an unusually-small pair of footprints cutting through her territory, heading northwest. She follows them curiously. 

When she hears the roar of a large animal, she speeds up.

She finds... a huge boar, snarling angrily, its fur singed, looking around in confusion and anger. Signs of frantic movement in the snow, including a fair bit of blood. 

A suspicious end to the footprint trail, and - yeah, more blood dripping, right there. She whistles sharply.

A druid... she might kill them for trespassing, but the boar is definitely going to kill them otherwise. "Help me!" 

(The boar sniffs around suspiciously. She spots Kaitiaki, but she's not looking for Kaitiaki, she's looking for the horrible little pest who dared to shoot fire at her. And she smells its blood...) 

Invisible, so a wizard or sorcerer. ...and not a strong one, perhaps, if they can't handle this. "Swear to do me no harm while under my protection, and I'll escort you out of the forest safely."

(She's trying to project confidence and authority into her voice, but she's not very good at it! She sounds like a nervous teenager, give or take the squawking.)

This is just some kid??? (A big one! With a tiger! But if she's older than 18 they'll eat their hat, frog and all.)

...Beggers can't really be choosers, and if worst comes to worst, they can always run while she distracts the beast. "I swear to do you no harm while under your protection!" they call out, and then they cough, more blood spilling out onto the ground.

!!! 

(She charges the source of the scent, tusks bared.)

She walks forward confidently and holds up a hand. Calm Animals

 ??? (She skids to a stop, clearly confused.)

"Great, now finish it off!" They'd help, but they're. working hard on keeping their blood inside of them. (And also out of spells.)

Ugh. "Quiet. And don't you dare attack - I'll help you once I've sent her off safely, and not a moment earlier, understand?"

She walks up to the boar, cautiously, hands open. 

Eep! Druids.

Kaitiaki ends up needing to feed her a few goodberries, but she calms the boar down and then convinces her to head off north, leaving the two of them alone. 

Satisfied, she turns around. "Still alive?"

"Yes. ....Thank you for saving me."

Probably they should drop their invisibility, now. They'll do that.

A halfing, though she can't tell the gender, wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat and a cool-looking cloak.

...and sporting some nasty puncture wounds, too.

She sighs as she approaches, slinging her trusty backpack off her shoulders. "...you're getting blood everywhere. Give me your hand."

Deeply unclear what is happening, here, but that's how entrusting their fate to a druid goes, apparently, and it's better than being gored to death.

They hold out a hand obligingly, looking up at the young druid (she's tall, even for a human (though if she's a human she's a weird one, they don't usually have feathers. ...or eyes like that.)) with a slightly raised eyebrow. "I'm RJ. By the way." 

Cure light wounds. It takes very well - RJ's wounds close up, and they stop bleeding. She drops their hand and looks at them. 

"You would have died if I hadn't tracked your footsteps, and there are more dangerous things than boar in the Forest." (Not commonly in this part of the Forest, unless you count Kaitiaki or Zisel, but she doesn't need to mention that)

"Why are you here."

Oooooh it is great to not be bleeding all over their clothes! And the snow. Their smile is short-lived, though.

"I'm here to collect rare oils for magic item creation. ...I didn't realize it was druid territory, sorry." (Huh, something in that sentence pretty obviously caught her interest...)

"This is my third time here doing this - I'm usually in and out in six hours or so, but I didn't account for the snow. Thank you again for saving me." They bow.

It feels weird seeing someone so much shorter than her bow, but that feeling is tucked pretty far back into her mind, because - "...You make magic items? Out of... plant oils?"

Huh. RJ kinda thought that druids didn't care about stuff that wasn't trees and squirrels. Maybe she's a weird druid?

"Not just oils, you need some spellsilver and then the mundane materials too, but... yeah. Do you want to se-" aaaand she's already casting Detect Magic, so presumably that's a yes.

Woah. RJ's cloak is magical, and so is one of their small bags. "What do they do?"

...awww. "This is a simple cloak of resistance - makes it slightly easier to avoid all sorts of hazard." They hold up the bag. "And this is a minor bag of holding - bigger on the inside, and always weighs the same."

They shiver. It's cold, and the sun is setting.