The Hunt

Reynault jolted awake, his spine colliding with the tree behind him as he shot upright. He gave a low groan, ignoring the pain, and looked around for the source of the disturbance that had brought him from a sound sleep. Shrubs nearby rustled, but his sensitive ears could tell that it was just a family of hares. A twig snapped a few feet off, but that was clearly a deer, grazing in the cooling evening.

The tips of his ears twitched, and he tilted his head slightly, turning to catch the slightest of sounds. There, in the next clearing, he could hear someone moving. He closed his bark brown eyes, shutting off the sense with the ease of practice, and listened harder. A hunting party, it sounded, with five men. Two were armed with nothing but bows, but the others, when they moved, had the distinctive clang of metal.

He sighed and looked up, gauging the distance to the nearest tree branch. Just close enough, if he stood. Reynault stood and stretched, taking his time before he reached up and grasped the lowest branch, swinging himself into the tree in a move his father had drilled into him day after day for nearly a summer.

Steadily he climbed, making his way up into the tree, until he could easily see the clearing from his hiding spot. His coloring - tan with brown hair - gave him decent enough camouflage, but the clothes, a hunter's mottled brown, green, and black, completed the deal, allowing him to blend into the canopy with little issue.

He stayed completely still, barely even breathing, as he watched the hunting party. Like most elvish hunters, he relied mostly on his hearing. Sight was fallible, but sound was nearly impossible to duplicate, making it much more difficult to deceive someone with good hearing.

Still, it never hurt to use both senses, just in case. But even from here Reynault could tell that the hunters were a human party. Doubtless there wasn't a single decent sort in the lot.

He would have left, then, to warn the village, but he stilled, confusion flickering across his features. One of those in the party wasn't a man at all, but a woman. She was nearly the height of her comrades, kitted out in all the same gear, but she moved with a graceful fluidity that made the men look like clumsy bears.

Reynault was entranced. He could see from here that she didn't have the customary points on her ears, a hint that elvish blood ran in her veins. She was entirely human, but the way she moved... it was just like his mother, even his sister. He'd never seen a human woman move like that before.

He grinned. They weren't on the best of terms with the humans, true, but even so, there was no harm in giving them a little sport, just to see what the woman was capable of doing. It looked to him like they'd be able to take care of themselves. And besides, they'd come to hunt. Maybe they wouldn't mind a bit of a challenge.

A stag, just past its prime, offered itself as prey for the humans. It was old enough to no longer be useful to the group, though wise, and young enough to still be spry and clever. Besides, it would be fun.

Reynault agreed, and sent the old one on his way with a blessing, and then settled into a comfortable position to watch. Oh, this would be very interesting indeed.