She was perched, poised with a spear and a bio-luminescent light, over the water. The night was calm but far from silent, birds were calling to each other, insects chirped, buzzed incessantly, and the water swirled around her with each movement of the creatures that dwelled within.
Varenshi remained focused on the shapes that drifted beneath her, attracted to the light she hung over the surface. The fish were skittish and a wrong move would scatter them quickly.
It came on without warning, without protest, she simply slipped in it like a second coat of bark. She was the hunter again, the predator who terrified lesser courtiers and slaughtered those who failed to follow suit.
She had nearly died beneath the desert.
She promised she would never need this again, that she would never need to be like this again.
The accusation was never voiced as such, but she felt it burning against her all the same.
She plunged into the water needlessly, her spear hitting its mark and trailing red in the water as she surfaced. She climbed back onto her perch and watched the fat fish she had caught twitch and flop uselessly on her spear. The tip had skewered it closer to the tail.
She set it down and took her knife, ending the creature's life quickly.
Licking the blood on her knife, she eyed the fish with an undue level of intensity.
Her stomach rumbled and she ground her teeth, resisting the urge to tear into it with the ferocity that simmered beneath her bark.
The thought of Lhree soothed her enough to return to herself, wrapping the other in comforts and shared memories to keep them calm. She blinked it away and rose to her feet, taking the spear and light with her as she picked her way across the rocks and shallow pools back to camp.
