Catania woke with the morning sun peeping into the cave through the tiny crack around her door.  She sat up slowly, stretched her arms, and pushed her tangled hair back from her face. She wormed into her tunic and belt, and crawled outside. The crisp morning air was cool—cooler than any midday would be, this far North. Syrelia was just between North and South—never hot nor cold, always just warm enough to raise a sweat in a day’s hard labor, yet cold enough to make the nights chill. Catania knelt beside the creek (wary of the mud), wetted her fingers-tips, and scrubbed the sleep from her eyes; but it was too cool to wash her face and hair just yet. She ran her fingers through her blonde locks, and tried to catch the wisps that would most likely get in her eyes. She braided these on either side, then twisted the braids back with the rest of her hair, which she knotted into a bun and secured it with a snatched fern frond.

She ate a dull breakfast sitting beside the laughing stream. She ate grains and meat in the forest, and occasionally such things as berries or wild honey if she could find them. She could scarcely remember what bread tasted like–which she was glad of: she could not get bread in the forest; there was no point in her craving for it.

She rinsed her pot off in the runlet when she had finished, put it away, swept up the ashes from her fire, dumped them in the rill, and fetched her bow and quiver. She didn’t really need to hunt today, after bringing down the deer, but it was good to have it with her in the forest. She tugged on her bracers and wrapped her feet in leather, but didn’t bother with her fingers, as she was not planning on shooting much.

The top of the trench was almost as high as Catania’s head, but it was not hard for her elfin fingers to find a hold along the edge and swing herself up. She set out, leisurely walking northwest, keeping her keen elfin eye out for food of other kinds. It was too early for most fruit, but there might be nuts from last autumn, a few berries, or edible sprouts of some kind. Such things were more plentiful northeast, but Catania felt a strange reluctance to go that way. Strange, but not unrecognizable—Lord Nightseer’s tower was north of the city. She could not say why she was often unwilling to see the lord’s swineherd, but she always obeyed the impulse to stay away from Jéru’s haunts.

~*~

It had been a long search, but not a bootless one; and Catania carried a parcel of leaves, filled with wild strawberries, and gnawed on a fiddle-head as walked. She drew up near the creek’s deep channel. She had followed a wild sparrow that had a hazel nut in its beak eastwards, hoping to find the tree it had looted. She had come back west towards the creek, and had come to the channel’s eastern beginning. It was not gradual in the rocky ground here, as the western end, but dropped suddenly at least three feet, with the spring—which began several yards east—pouring over its edge in a small cascade. One could look far down the trench from this view. But as soon as the young elf drew near the tiny waterfall she stopped short and drew back:

A human Man stood on the muddy bank of the runlet, his knee-length boots sunk almost to the ankles in the mud. He was dressed for the forest, with leather boots and gloves, a quiver and hunting dagger at his belt, and a tall recurve bow in his hand. His tunic and cloak were made of dark grey fabric, patched with brown and green cloth, which blended with the trees almost inseparably.

Catania saw, at one glance, that he was looking for something—and what could he be looking for but her? No!  Her thoughts raced frantically. Did we not agree?