A spacious clearing by the base of a cliff. The smell had come from this direction, but there didn't seem to be anything there; the clearing was empty, for the most part, save for a wide, flat stone in the center, reminiscent of a stage, encircled by a number of strange cup-like stones.
"I don't see anythi-" Maria began; she stopped speaking, though, when she looked a little bit to the left of the clearing and saw the largest oak tree she had ever seen.
"What... What is this?" Maria asked (rhetorically, of course) as she stepped toward the leviathan arbor to give it a closer look.
The tree was enormous; fifty times taller than the average oak, and fifty times as wide. Its numerous boughs were as trees themselves, and from their "boughs," among an ocean of green, hung acorns the size of pumpkins. How something this large could possibly exist... Boggling, to the mind!
Maria stood in amazement, forgetting her hunger in her awe, looking up and down this wonder of nature.
An enormous acorn fell to the ground moments later with a mighty thud, jarring Maria and returning her attention to the world... And her hunger. She stared at the acorn for a second or two, before picking it up.
The acorn was quite heavy; twice as heavy as a pumpkin would be. "I wonder how it tastes?" Maria lifted it to her mouth, and attempted to wrap her vulpine muzzle around the nut, but found the acorn's curvature and uncharacteristic solidness made it difficult to penetrate. She lowered the nut back to the ground, and grumbled; she wouldn't be eating that.
Only three feet away from the undefeated acorn was another acorn, dropped by the tree long before Maria arrived. She went to examine it, and found that it had a chunk missing from it.
"Something managed to bite it?" She figured it was a wild hog of some sort.
"I wonder if the hog is still around?" Maria began to circle the oak's perimeter, having long forgotten the scent that brought her here. However, it sprang back to her mind when she'd made it a quarter-way around the tree; she'd found its source.
A gargantuan bee hive, hidden within a massive hollow in the tree's side; the hungry vixen had smelled honey.
"Oh, my!" she said, astonished once more. She peered inside the gaping mouth and into the cavernous hive.
The hive appeared to occupy nearly half of the oak's trunk. Its walls were tiled neatly with large, hexagonal honeycombs, all dripping with golden honey. The honey poured like lazy waterfalls down the hive's sides, from farther up than the vixen could see, and pooled at the bottom, nearly 10 feet into the ground below the tree, forming a reservoir of the sweet substance; an edge, of which, was right by the entrance.
Of particular note, however, was something Maria did not see: The residents. The hive was conspicuously devoid of the expected honeybees. None were to be found crawling along the walls, nor were there any to be found buzzing around outside. What kind of bees would build a hive like this? What kind of bees would just leave it?
"How odd..." The vixen wanted to get a closer look inside, but paused. Maria was certain the bees were nowhere around, but she was wary of the hive anyway. What if the bees came back? They'd be pretty angry if they came home to find a stranger had invaded their home, and Maria did not want to meet angry bees.
Still, it'd be a shame to pass up the chance to get any of that honey; she was hungry, after all...
Maria decided to dip a paw into the honey reservoir. She pulled it out, and gave it a lick; this honey was exceptionally sweet, and wondrously smooth! She continued to lick her sticky paw, until the honey was all gone. She licked around her muzzle to get any that she'd left behind, and giggled.
"That's good..."
The vixen certainly wasn't leaving, now... She'd found her lunch. Or, rather, dinner; the sun had begun to set.
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