It was just before the moon hit the zenith point of its arc when the Noise began.
It started low, like a swarm of strange bugs. A distant buzzing, some thumps and scrapes, a chattering on the wind. Finally asleep, but made restless by the Noise, Harriet turned over in her little tent. Guffin, up the tree, didn't move.
The buzzing built slowly, like a thunderstorm gathering on the horizon. And at the exact high point of the moon, the bottom dropped out like torrential rain from a cloud. An ear-bursting high-pitched scream sent every hair on Harriet's head standing straight up, and the mage herself bolt upright and running for the tree, scrambling upwards with a renewed and terrified energy. The scream didn't stop - it got louder, and wavered from note to note, faster and faster, from a warble to a yodel.
Guffin, dangling from their branch, sat up more slowly. They set the strange plushie aside, pulled their legs in from the splay into the forest air, and looked out across the unhelpful stretch of trees, which had barely begun to turn colors, and did an excellent job at screening the view of anything that might be happening. Above, it was no longer raining, but it was misty and damp and showed no stars at all; only the hazy moon.
"WHAT, IN THE NAME OF THE MOON, HOWLS LIKE THAT?!" Harriet wailed, her burst of energy leaving her dangling some ways above the ground, but also some ways below Guffin.
"THAT'S THE PUMPKINTOWN OPRY!" the goblin bellowed back. "I DIDN'T REALIZE IT WAS MIGRATING ALREADY, OR WE COULD HAVE STOPPED FOR DINNER!"
Those were indeed a lot of strange words, and difficult to hear over the Noise. And Guffin didn't so much "pack" as roll their entire hammock into a ball, strap it to the horrible bag, sling the plushie under one arm, and start climbing down.
"COME ON!" they shouted on the way past the hair-raised mage. "NO SLEEPING NOW! GRAB YOUR STUFF, LET'S GO TO THE OPRY!"
Harriet pried herself from the branch and slowly (and a bit painfully, not that she would admit it), followed the beastie back down the tree. Thankfully the howling of the "opry" was enough to cover any un-dignified grunts, groans, scrapes, and squeaks. She reached the bottom just to be handed the tent, folded in on itself in a somewhat haphazard manner, and see Guffin's green-grey heels pattering down a dirt path that had been dismissed earlier as a runoff from the rain.