(Story Starts Here!)
It seemed like the walking mouth had quieted to tend to his little sister, and set up camp. The birds' song had gone, yet the seasoned hunter could not immediately tell why. There were no marks, nor sounds of a predator, yet she sensed something was there. It was how the hairs on her neck stood up, how the very air seemed thick with intent and danger. If Nissa was any less experienced, she would be having difficulty breathing.
Silently running between the trees, it did not take long for her to hear two horses moving at a swift pace. She crouched on a tree branch, adjusting one of her heavy gloves and pulling out a birraga. The trio on the mounts looked well off, and she wondered if bandits were targeting them. She brushed that notion aside as she loosened the clasp on the Henj-Men's Wing. Bandits would not be able to hide from her so perfectly - they were clumsier than an Altai newborn kitten.
"That one," she whispered, examining the woman perched behind another on the palomino horse. That one had the look of a rabbit with a wolf sniffing at her hole. Nissa's attention shifted as she followed, to the tall man with the glasses and a focused glint to his eyes. He kept looking off in what appeared to be a random direction - the same direction each time.
Nissa hopped over several branches, ignoring the light taps against her forehead and shoulders from small twigs that remained undisturbed by her movement. Everything simply felt wrong, and she had always been one to trust her instincts. Even if it ended with her exiled from her home. She tilted her nose to the air, and finally managed to get a sense of something.
It was a cloying scent, yet it only seemed to be half there. She wondered if she was only imagining it, but woe to a hunter who did not take even the most ephemeral of senses seriously. So, she stalked in the direction of the not-quite-there scent.
Her comfortable leather clothing let her move in any manner she needed to as she twisted and leaped from tree to tree, leaving even the most obstinately placed leaves untouched. The Henj-Men's Wing did not hinder her movement. She used every sense, listening, searching. An unnatural wind passed her face, and she turned in its direction with a grimace. It smelled like blood.
She sent Tal'ah to follow the targets for a distance. If she let her guard down at all, the strike would happen. A prickle raced through her bones, making the muscles in her back pull tight. Her lip curled as her sharp eyes locked onto a shadowy figure a few levels down from her in the tree tops. All she could make out was black and dusty green leather and well-spun cloth. The face was covered with a mask of tranquility; the rest of the head obscured by a cowl. It was perched on a lower branch, reminding Nissa of a great owl.
Although the figure was simply observing for now, Nissa disliked the soft growls and mumbles that escaped. She moved closer, and felt her spirit infuse her birraga.
"I do not know your intentions," she said, standing firm as the figure whirled to face her with a snarl, "but I suggest you turn your eye elsewhere."
Ruby stones set in the eyes of the mask glittered at her, and she saw needles slip between the figure's fingers.
"This one wonders who nosy one is to get in this one's way," the figure spoke from the throat, making it hard to determine gender.
"You are targeting those people with malicious intent." Nissa pointed in the general direction of the trio with her free hand.
"Ah, nosy one is hunting one," the figure growled. "This one wonders why hunting one is so swift to side with prey. Prey might deserve this one's intentions."
"I will not let you hunt them, now stand down." Her instincts guiding her, Nissa prepared to route this figure, this predator. The girl so cruelly labeled as 'prey' did not have the eyes of one deserving to be stalked. Nissa would trust her own judgment before the words of a malicious stranger.
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