Hunter - VK

[OOC: Anyone, everyone, etc.]

Griffinhart knew well this feeling - it was a constant companion in the old days, in the cold days, on the barren steppes of the Anderfels. It wasn't a problem; it was just something that, like all things, would have to be attended to eventually.

'Eventually' was now.

The Griffin hungered.

It was not his turn on watch, and the sun was not low enough in the sky for him to hunker down and have fitful rest. And since he hungered, it meant that time had come for him to hunt for food. Nygozy was still in the midst of her talks with other members of the caravan, and Griffinhart suspected that she would be in talks for a while; hopefully he would have a catch of some sort soon, and be able to clean and cook and eat it before his own personal meeting with her. The warrior thought better on a full stomach than on an empty one (though he fought equally bad on both).

The swordsman stripped off his kit and gear, and all of his armor, down to nothing but the leather trousers and boots; and he retrieved a small - especially small in his hands, against his considerable frame - shortbow and several arrows, spares that he had packed himself, from one of the pack animals.

The skill of archery was not unfamiliar to Griffinhart, even if it was not as oft practiced as swordwork. He knew it was a failing on his part - his was a capable archer, but by no means excellent or exemplary. He knew how to maintain and operate a bow properly, and that was all; and for a warrior to have such mild skill at archery... was just par for the course for a warrior, and far below the stringent expectations of a weapon master.

And so he strode forth from the camp - bare but for his trousers and his boots, a bandoleer from which hung the shoulder-sheath for his knife and a quiver of arrows, and two scabbards at his waist: one for a sword, one for a bow. He had long familiarized himself with most of the larger, easier-to-hunt wildlife of Ferelden on his way in-country. It was just a matter of finding such an animal...

The warrior dropped into a calm rhythm, a hunter's rhythm, as he let himself slip into the Fade, and walked away from the caravan's camp.

Hunting, stalking through the woods, feeling the earth live and grow beneath her feet. The trees opened their branches to her, and invited her to share the night with them. She wanted to share it with them, after spending so long in the company of humans. She wanted their trust, desired their acceptance, but the threes would forever be her only real family.

Her bare feet padded along through the dirt and grass silently, her own path creating itself before her before fading back into wild wood as she went along. The sun dipped into the horizon above them, and its departure signaled for the awakening of the countless spirits of the forest. She sung to them as she walked, a silent song which they answered in kind. It brought a smile to her face - she wanted to learn about the human world, but she'd never understand it as perfectly as she understood this one.

A footstep sounded at the edge of the forest, far from her but near, because when those trees heard it, she heard it too. Someone was walking into the forest along with her, unknowingly following the trail she'd blazed. It brought another smile to her face - hunting or haunting, it didn't matter. Spending some time with one of her new companions (for a companion it must have been, since no other humans were in the area) would be a welcomed, if unexpected, treat for the night. She wasn't used to sleeping, and while the company of the forest was all she could ever ask for, she'd have to spend time with the humans if she ever wanted to have a hope of understanding them.

She turned in her path and ran through the trees to where she'd felt the presence enter. She flitted more than ran, like a faerie, and she never once looked down at her feet or the ground - she felt as secure running through the darkened forest as she did a day-lit plain, and perhaps felt even more secure, running over and around the obstacles with her brothers and sisters as her guides.

The forest was full of life - and that was troublesome, bothersome. It seemed even livelier now, that evening was coming to settle in, than when the sun was high in the sky; back then, Griffinhart could actually keep mindful of all the rustling and bustling. He had to stay even more alert now as he walked quietly between trees, for he suspected that he was not the only predator that stalked the woods.

It was a curious path he had weaved, one that seemed too... deliberate. The warrior had heard the stories of wild-witches, and though he did not believe in them, he knew better than to scoff at them. And not only was there life all around him, but there was life ahead of him as well; life that he was vaguely sure was sapient as well as sentient.

Paranoia gripped the hunter's faculties - safety on higher ground.

Griffinhart hadn't the need to look for higher ground, for it was right there beside him. Quickly, with a natural litheness that was entirely unlike his normal directness in combat, he climbed up a tree, his form twisting and turning like a cat's. He pawed along one long, strong branch and laid himself out to listen; to watch; to observe.

The forest was full of life, and the Griffin planned to take one before the evening settled.

She leapt, finally, into a clearing, where moonlight hit the ground as clear as it hit the tops of the trees. She stopped, for a moment lost in its ghosting warmth, and turned her face up to it, her eyes closed and mouth gently smiling. For a moment, her quarry could wait - the moon sung to her. She began to sway a little to its music, her torso and hips moving to some rhythm only she could feel. The trees around her longed to join, and their branches swayed with her even in the windless night. No, not a good night for hunting, she thought, performing a fanciful twirl in her spot - there was no wind, no draft to alert a hunter to his prey, but then, there was no breeze to warn the prey of its stalker, either.

Ah, but she was doing something, was she not. Now, let us see - what had it been? These human minds were so easily lost, and yet they so desperately tried to remain on track. She felt like a war was being waged every time she wanted to lose herself in the feel of the roots and leaves, as she once had, even when her new mind insisted she focus on more human things. It was all very distracting, and was, frankly, the worst part of being now-human. Maybe she'd become used to it - maybe not. But for moments like this, where she could lose herself and become no more tied down to this body than the spirit she'd once been - she would live for those moments, now, until the time she returned to her forest again.

Her swinging and swaying had distracted her, though, and after a moment, she forced her mind to return to the task at hand. She had company, and she intended to find him. She closed her eyes and listened, asking for him all over the forest, and then a surprised smile crossed her face. It seemed she had less far to look than she'd thought.

She lifted her eyes to a tall tree overlooking the clearing and smiled at it, nonthreatening and inviting. Won't you come down?, she asked silently. The fade was strong around him, and he wore it like a cloak - not like the mages, who were soaked in it, who lived in it. For him, the dream-world was another tool, like his boots or dagger - she could feel it in him. It made her a little sad, to think that her beautiful home was being used for such a thing, but then, wasn't the human saying "to each his own?"

He watched her move, the motions as alien to him as the concepts they embodied.

He watched her, almost lazily, a lion surveying his territory, a king perched on his throne.

He watched her, even as he kept an eye out for something he could kill and eat.

(He didn't doubt that he could kill her; but that would have only been pointless exercise.)

He watched her, and felt her watching him back through a different set of eyes. It did not surprise him, though he was ruffled nonetheless; he should've anticipated another being aware of the Fade in the forests. After all, wasn't the Veil weak where nature ran its course, where the wild things grew, where civilizations had not enforced their will?

(Or was it the other way around?)

She beckoned to him with her smile.

She smiled through the moonlight, through the fire. Sin, and penance, and rotting things, and beautiful things, all were laid bare in her smile. But it was not her smile.

He rolled off the tree branch, hooking hands on the bough and letting his weight bend it low before releasing, dropping to a lower branch - landing, squatting, rolling backwards - tumbling, falling - catching a hand on another branch, righting - coming down to the forest floor with barely a noise even as the sibilant shaking of leaves announced his descent. The bow was held loose in his worn hands, for it had come loose in its scabbard as he had come down, but no arrow rested in his other, empty hand.

She was elven, dark-haired, tattooed. A girl - woman? It was hard to tell, for time had yet to take its toll - a maiden of the forest, pale, almost white where she stood as the moon shone down on her. She would have been a thing of beauty to any outside observer; but he only knew the word "beautiful" and its use, not its meaning.

Beauty scorched away, meaning flayed from his flesh.

Griffinhart strode into the clearing, straight-backed, now a warrior, a soldier, a weapon master, a weapon; worn with battle. The scars on his body ran ghostly, ghastly, shadows playing along his rippled, wrecked, wracked flesh. As pale as she, unkempt hair shining in the moonlight, he stood before her, proud.

The boughs told her of scarred hands, and the leaves whispered of deliberate movements and efficient strength. She smiled as she swayed in the moonlight like a reed in a gentle breeze, planting herself in one spot like a reed, too. She wasn't afraid of him as he approached, only watched him curiously like she did the rest of the humans she'd bound herself to (if not officially, then at least in her own mind). He wasn't like the others - but then, none of the others were "like the others," either. To each, it seemed, there was some manner of eccentricity or inimitable trait that separated him or her from the others, until all of them were as unique to her as each of the leaves on her tree had once been. Some, perhaps, were more unique than others, but she wasn't one to go into specifics.

Finally he stopped before her, and she watched him, just as unflinching. Her gaze was not held in pride or assessment, however, but in an ancient curiosity. What is different about you, then, that I have not seen in the countless humans who have passed under my wood? It seemed that there was much different about this one, though, and her smile brightened a little more.

A mage, most certainly. Not as connected to her hazy song as the Symphony from earlier had been, but it was a strong connection nonetheless. Serethiel was glad that she was meeting so many mages - they were so much easier to understand than their un-touched brethren.

A warrior, to be obvious. The way he held the fade about him was, as she had previously felt, fit into him like a dagger in his palm, at the ready. If he dreamt, she thought sadly, it would not be about the beauty of the earth that sang to her every moment of her life. She felt a moment of pity for him, and was not yet human enough to understand that there were men like this who neither wanted nor needed her pity.

And unafraid, clearest of all. She did not pose a threat, but even if she had, his stance, she could tell, would be no different than it was now - solid and confident, ready for whatever end might come from trading blades. She'd seen men like him come into her forest before, ready to defend or kill as they saw fit. Some of them hadn't been half as brave as they'd thought, but the certainty in this man's eyes removed the idea that he might be one of those men.

Hello, she said pleasantly, the greeting reaching out through the fade rather than through her lips. Oh, but maybe she should speak, too? The Melody from before had heard her, and her Symphonic sister had understood, but she couldn't know if this man would hear her song, what with the way he chained up his own anthem. The absolute last thing she wanted was to mistake herself as a stranger or enemy to him.

"Hello," she tried out loud as well, the words heavy on her lips as they always were. Human speech was so clumsy, so inefficient. How could they stand to get anything across to one another when they couldn't simply project their thoughts and feeling - relying on a limited vocabulary ultimately limited their understanding. It was a deeply troubling truth she'd learned in her first days in her elven body. Ah - but her mind was wandering now. It came dancing back to the task at hand when she called it, and her eyes re-focused on the white-haired specter in front of her.

It was a sound that was not a sound; it was a sound that was a breath, a touch that lacked the physicality of breathing, of touching, of hearing. It was the moment the darkspawn came up from their hell-holes, but it was not the same; it was surprise, but it was not malevolent. Griffinhart had heard it before, he knew; in her smile. It was... nonthreatening. "Or so I am to believe," he thought. He knew not the word she spoke through the Fade, the sound she made, the note she played; for if what other mages and Fade-spirits made were melodies, then what Griffinhart did was unmake them: in song, in spirit, in form.

"Hello," she said for the first time again; and the physicality of the sound reached him even as the immaterial note played against the deafened - not, not deafened, deadened - dreamer. The word was caught and the sound strung; in his head, Griffinhart tore it apart, analyzed its every possible meaning, intent, from the mere way she had said it; from the way she had formed it; from her expression; from what he knew of her already.

Only a heartbeat had passed between the two in the moonlight. "Hello," Griffinhart replied. A voice like the steppes he came from: flat. Cold. Barren. A voice that lived hard; a voice that barely lived. He wondered, then, who she was and from where she had come from - and more importantly, if there was anyone else nearby that he was not aware of. He wondered, too, why he had descended to meet her - what had compelled him to yield the high ground to an unknown? Paranoia flitted in the creches of his mind, turning every thought that was not directly related to analyzing and interacting with this elf to the task of staying aware, staying alive. One of the thoughts not bent to that task recalled what he had been taught of diplomacy - "Don't try it, Griffinhart. You're as diplomatic as a rock and half as subtle." Then of politeness? Names.

"I am Raphael Griffinhart. You are?" he inquired. Good, he thought. Direct and to the point, and revealed information that was valueless: his name had no meaning, no use that an enemy would have for it. He was just a weapon, but she didn't know that.

He was the sword and she was the shield.
Now she was the sheathe.

She smiled at the man as his lips moved, and for a moment, simply watched as the moon played on the ground around them, casting their shadows and then calling them back before letting them dance around once more. The leaves up ahead were responsible for the ever-changing light, and she glowed along with them. Perhaps a human would have been more concerned with the cool look, the deadened greeting, but she didn't know enough of human trivialities to worry about such things. For her, all that mattered was the call of the Fade within him, and the human matters were simply the trappings placed to contain it.

Evidently, though, this companion preferred human speech to open communication, so she responded in kind. "Good night, Raphael Griffinhart. The moon is beautiful in this place, is she not? I think she chose it especially, to light our way. Were you out looking for her light, Raphael Griffinhart?" She raised both of her hands out at her sides, like a plant soaking up the morning sun. She loved the morning sun, too, but the moon called to her just as strongly. She felt like dancing with it, wanted to partner with the swaying shadows in a romp that would last the whole night long. Perhaps this human would dance with her. Could he hear the tune they played as well?

Beautiful? Just a word and an unfamiliar concept, devoid of any meaning to him.

Her red radiance was beautiful against the white snow.

If anything, the moonlight was unusually bright. Perhaps it was just a play - or ploy? - of the canopy overhead. There was a worrisome thought - what if the entire forest was alive with a hostile will? Not even Griffinhart was sure that he could raze the whole wildwoods to the ground single-handedly; and further, that was a matter of strategic force, not tactical.

"No," replied Griffinhart to the elf's question, "I am not." He noted that she had not specifically answered his inquiry. No matter; there was not much in a name. Warily, careful of her hands - for though she was unarmed, he knew her to be one with the Fade, for there was that unnaturalness to her - or maybe it wasn't that she was unnatural, but that she was more natural than he himself? - he gestured with the bow in his hand, indicating his purpose out in the dark. A far more mundane thing than dancing in moonbeams and enjoying the nightlife. A base urge - necessity - that required fulfillment. That was all there was to him.

He wanted to ask her what her business was out here, why she was dancing in the moonlight alone, on her own - but those were not matters that concerned him. For all Griffinhart knew, these woods were her territory, and he was trespassing. Well, if he was in the wrong, he would leave, and find some other manner of feed; it would not do for him to get into a fight here, with an unfamiliar faction.

"No," she nodded, repeating the statement of it, and her voice a little sadder for the word. She cast her eyes downward, feeling the grass between her feet in an effort to buoy her spirits, and when she next looked up, her ghost of a smile was back in place. Not a fake or a mask - she didn't understand such human theatrics. So he was not here to bask in the light of the moon - she should not feel the burden of that sad choice on her own shoulders. Besides, he had given her his true reason for being here, and that was enough to lift her back to her previous peace.

A hunt then. A chase, a thrill, a predator looking for his prey. Eating was a thing she had been forced to take up after taking up in this body, and was a thing she had enjoyed very much in the past, feasting with her Clan. She didn't eat of the meat of animals as she assumed this man did but hunting was by no means a foreign thing to her. It was as natural to many creatures as dining on the sun and rain had been for her, and she could not hold it against a creature for ensuring its own survival, even if her heart ached for any loss of life.

Perhaps Raphael Griffinhart was out to feed his comrades of the camp, or perhaps he was here only for himself - either way, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that he was a guest in this forest, as was she, and he held the fade within him, as did she, and he was stalking for his dinner, as was she, even if she stalked for a different meal - their goals had crossed so cleanly that she was now assured that meeting this new traveling companion was the will of her brother spirits, and her smile grew faintly.

"If you are hunting, a brace of buck-deer graze further in," she supplied. Humans did that, no? Offer advice to others in friendly rejoinder? The trees and plants might have welcomed her touch as readily as her own forest once had, recognizing her as a mother and kindred spirit, but she had no control over the beats of the wood. She could sense their dwellings and their comings and goings, but they were creatures of their own, disconnected will, like humans, but not nearly so violent. Once, she had liked to watch the animals very much, and she found that she still enjoyed time spent watching them, but if this human needed to hunt them, then let him win them in fair sport, and she would do her part to see their spirits off to the fade when the deed was done.

He paused a moment.

The workings of his mind grinding away at the statement, processing the words.

A trap.

It had to be a trap.

The voice in his head screamed it loud, screamed it terribly; a trap. No stranger would volunteer such information, especially not in the midst of a midnight forest, to someone so blatantly, obviously unfamiliar to the lay of the land-

Griffinhart nodded. "Thank you," he said, looking in the direction the elf indicated. There lay his path, then; onwards, and towards food. Towards a trap. It had to be a trap. The feeling could not, would not be shaken. It was in her smile, that faint thing that told of a killing night that awaited him; there was not even a question of "why" it was a trap. It was a trap. His entire being screamed at him it was so, and that he should run her down, run her through, and depart quickly-

His thoughts concentrated, his will coalesced, and the Fade wrapped him like a warm cloak once again, drowning out every mad little sound that chittered in his head; the hunter brushed by the elven maiden with no further words, taking her words as an indication of permission to hunt. But as he passed her by, a thought took hold of him; a thought that was not his, but the warrior's. What manner of trapper would walk into their own trap?

"Join me," Griffinhart stated, without turning, without looking, without a question mark. He did not pause a moment more for a reply; she would come or go as she pleased.

A Griffin stalked on into the night.

As a Griffin stalked, a spirit flitted, smiling and calm as she strode beside, behind, before, never quite staying in the same place or position. As she followed, led, walked beside, she would sometimes go off path altogether, flitting up to a tree to jump from one branch to another before descending once more, like a leaf falling from the canopy, to stop at the side of the path, inspecting some so-important, trivial thing that caught her eye before falling into step once more. Through it all, she didn't make a sound, and if she did, by chance, rustle a leaf or crack a branch, the forest swallowed up the sound for her, so that she seemed more a ghost treading through the night than a mage-elf.

She could feel some negative emotion follow through the fade from him to her, but she had no name for it - distrust, or something like it. But she could deal with distrust, had expected as much when she'd first come to the Commander, begging a spot in her caravan of soldiers and sorcerers. She would only have to show she was worthy of trust and then everything would be set right. And even if it wasn't as simple as that, she would take it one step at a time. Centuries as a tree, as a spirit only of thought and of in-action, meant that she was very, very good at waiting, and at taking things one step at a time.

Scent on the wind.

Something stirred in the dark forest, something large and monstrous and deadly, something that hungered fearfully, terrifyingly. But the grazing deer did not know it, could not hear it, had no scent of it; for their death crept and crawled and prowled in silence; and their death stood not on level ground, but had taken the trees to be his territory.

Dead on the ground.

Griffinhart stood in the eaves, amongst the leaves, eagle-eyed; picking out a fitting buck. The elf-girl flitted nearby, somewhere; not exact, but he could tell she was present. No trap lay here in the trees for him that he had found. It was almost unfair, he mused for a moment; had she not told him of their presence, he would not have had the presence of mind to creep up high, to kill from above. He would not have had such an easy kill.

Finger on the bone.

The well-worn ash bent back without protest, an arrow nocked; not ephemeral, not ghostly, far from beautiful; a hard thing, a long and strong and straight thing, stretched to its head and glittering in the moonlight; resting lightly against the side of the riser, gripped tightly in the hunter's hands. His breathing slowed, stopped, halted, ceased, and the world slowed for a brief moment - his aim shifted to one side to account for the spine of the arrow - and his arrowhand released its binding force, letting the string snap forward with a whisper, propelling the missile forcefully forward.

Lips on the horn.

The buck, singled out in the middle of the brace, dropped to the forest floor, kicking; and if it made a noise, the sound went unheard as the others dashed and scattered, their peaceful grazing no longer peaceful. The Griffin dropped from the wildwood with infinite surety, drawing his shoulder-blade as he fell; and advanced on the dying deer with the inexorable, steady finality of Death. The kicking, dying, bleating buck was grasped in a scarred arms, in a terrible, firm, inescapable hug from above; the knife did not flash as it entered the soft sinew of the neck from behind; and the deer kicked no more as Griffinhart twisted, the sound of its vertebrae cracking muffled by muscle and blood and skin and that terrible, scarred figure that held it in its last moments.

She landed in the final step of her newly invented dance, not far from the Griffin and his kill, as the blade struck its precise way. She looked up, as quickly and as surely as a startled deer, but she wasn't startled, and no sound had been made to spook her. Instead, she could feel it, the spirit departing into the collective spirit of the forest. Once, that spirit would have joined with hers, like all dying things had done in her ancient home, but now, she could only sense its passing. Pity the creature its death, and mourn, but not overmuch. All things must come to end, and all things must eat. Once, she had learned that humans cried at death, but now she smiled, and started in on one last slow, mournful turn, dedicating this last, amended step to the departing spirit. The forest carried on, her dance the only indication that another spirit had joined with it.

Her romp finished and the hunt complete, she bounded over a large stone into the clearing, and then came to a full-stop, standing now at the edge of the hunting scene. She tilted her head this way, then that, and watched as the man worked with a surety that came from neither training nor confidence but rather practice, the movements of his hands almost mechanical in their control. For a moment, she was mesmerized by the hands before her attention returned to the whole.

"That is enough for the camp?" she asked. Humans were so difficult to feed. On occasion, men would enter her forest and catch herds of deer at a time, and on others, they would leave with only a spring rabbit or two. She'd never been able to discover how much they truly needed, not, at least, in the sure way she knew that a wolf could live in hard winter on a hare, or that a cricked only needed to nibble a leaf from her tree.

In the darkness, the blood on his hands ran black; glistened, but did not shine; was warm, but did not heat him; and perturbed the ghost of a memory - a lonely moment in time. It was a phantasm in his head and he could not, for all the intense staring at his slick hands, chase down and take to ground.

"That is enough for the camp?" she asked, her question waking the warrior from his reverie. Griffinhart rose, slipping the corpse onto his shoulders, around his neck, taking the fat buck's full weight onto his back, the barest of grunts escaping his lips from the exertion. "It is enough for me," he replied; and that was what he had come into the forest for.

But instead of departing, the swordsman stopped. A peculiarity in her words-

"You know of the camp," he stated - a peculiarity of his own; it was not a question, and it would not have been a question. She knew of the camp, from her words, and he knew he had not spoken of it before, and would not have asked her of it, lest he reveal its existence - "'Reveal' its existence? As if there was much I could do to reveal it."

The soldier looked at her expectantly, wondering just who she was.

She looked at the dead deer - only a skin now, with none of the life left in it, a bottle with its contents drained - for a long moment, not avoiding his question, just taking her time with it. She took her time with all things. There were very few things of real import that did not require time and care in their doing.

Finally, she looked back at the hunter, with dying blood dieing his shirts and gloves. She supposed that a human like him wouldn't care overmuch about the stains. With a smile, she remembered fondly how she knew of the camp, of how she'd spoken to the white-haired elf-kin who had been so kind to her. It made her remember 'Serethiel.' Being in the forest had made her forget.

"We met the small Stone-heart in the city called Denerim," she, now they, could still remember the absence of Song in that dwarf-woman, but that hole that so unsettled her about the dwarven race had been filled in, in that one, with a mighty and solid feeling that felt very much like a Song. It was why they liked the Commander much more than the other stone-hears. "She allowed us to follow, gave us leave to lend out aid as we wished, but we thought it better to keep our presence a secret for now. We do not mind - we like to watch the humans. We are fond of them. And you are one of them, so we are fond of you as well." That seemed an ample enough description. Surely, it was very like the descriptions humans often gave each other, and now that she remembered 'Serethiel,' the ways of humans came more easily to her.

"Ah," Griffinhart grunted. That explained, then, why she had first beckoned to him. Curiosity. Curiosity was a dangerous thing. But she admitted to knowing things that he knew he had not admitted; and so either she was a good fabricator of tales - which, all things considered, was something Griffinhart had no specific training to counter - or she did, in fact, encounter Nygozy back in Denerim. It was odd that such a wild creature - for she was of the wild, no doubt - would take any sort of fascination with the plights of humans, and human-like creatures, but that was not for Griffinhart to ponder about; he would let and let live.

The cooling hide of the dead deer against his bare shoulders and back, Griffinhart turned towards the camp. "Excuse me," he said quietly as he left, his voice just audible beneath the breeze. "I will be at the camp."

Why had he told her such a thing? She would know that. She probably already knew that; there weren't many other places for him to be. With the solidity of the steppes of Anderfels, Griffinhart began his short journey back to camp - and to food.

She smiled as she watched him go, the buck thrown over his shoulders. She didn't move from where she was, standing lonely and so very un-alone in the middle of the clearing, and watched until he had disappeared out of the forest entirely, far beyond what her elven eyes could see. The forest watched his departure in her stead, and when he was well and truly beyond that reach, she smiled, pixie-like, once more.

"I know," she replied to the thin air, and then turned, and once more ran to enjoy the night under the moon.