Closed How Hard Can It Be? (Azira)

[Zhol]

|.42 Summer, 514

Zhol breathed out a slow breath; probably the most the air had moved all day inside the unsettling bubble of magic that shielded Wind Reach's cliffside archery range from landslides and the elements. It was impressive, granted, but for Zhol it was also humbling: given his shortcomings with his own reimantic abilities, he couldn't even begin to imagine conjuring something of that scale or precision.

Small as it made him feel, being here at the Bent Arrow was considerably less daunting than the alternative. Somewhere amid the warrens of Skyinarta was the Second Quiver, a range set aside exclusively for the use of Avora like himself. The priority was of course was to cater to the all-important hunters, whose efforts kept the terrifying prospect of a repeat of WInter's famine at bay. It wasn't lack of space that drove him out here however, but rather the sense of unworthiness that impacted everything he did. Avora was the label that the Inarta had given him, in recognition of the skills he brought to the city: but to Zhol's mind he was still an outsider, and out here was where an outsider belonged.

Zhol's fingers flexed uncomfortably on the grip of the bow he'd borrowed, feeling completely foreign in his hands. He had sat and watched the Inarta, everyone from Endals to Yasi, wield such bows with effortless ease; but now he stood here holding it for himself, it did not appear as simple as it has previously seemed. The bow felt as if it didn't belong in his hands; but he was determined to force it to, just as he was determined to force himself to feel that way as well. That was why he was here, teaching himself one of the most stereotypically Inarta skills. One step at a time, he would learn to belong.

Another breath, and he reached for his quiver; even that was more complicated than it looked, but grasping persistence eventually snagged an arrow, and fumbled it onto the bowstring. He drew back, shoulder still grumbling in protest from the mishap of a few days ago, but he persisted none the less. His wrist and elbow locked with all the strength he could muster, determined that no matter what happened, he would not lose his grip on the bow. Carefully he sighted down the arrow, convinced that the targets hadn't seemed so distant or so small before. Tightness wrapped around his chest and held his breath. His muscles shuddered in effort as they fought against the tension in the string; he forced himself to count backwards from three. Two.

One.

"Petching son of a grass snake!" Zhol cursed in a hissed string of Pavi, doubling over and clutching his arm to his chest, an angry red welt already forming where the bow string had struck his bare forearm. He barely even noticed the arrow, impaled in the wooden supports holding up the target he had aimed for.

Teach yourself archery, the voice in the back of his mind mocked, sounding uncomfortably like his father. How hard can it be?

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

x

Too many people, far too crowded, Second Quiver was a no go zone. Normally she'd put up with the bustle on a day off, going to the range earlier in the day than on her work days but not today. She was in a sour mood, her willingness to deal with so many currently non-existent thanks to another one of those people. It was still in the heads of many that her short hair meant that she was a Dek or a Chiet. Her clothes if someone bothered to look at them pointed her out as a not being a Dek but proved little else. Coming back from the Aviary, a man had stopped her in one of the quieter areas of the Warrens and asked her, no commanded her to come back to his rooms with him. She'd told him very simply that she wasn't a Dek and he'd had the nerve to accuse her of stealing the clothes of a higher caste. She'd blown up and luckily for him others had come along and saved him before she could take a knife to him. Unable to get at him, she'd become determined to get at something and so her normal archery practice was going to turn into a fantasy of shooting various parts of that man's anatomy.

She just couldn't deal with a crowd right now. Just stepping into Second Quiver had set her on edge, the hairs on her arms rising as she suspected that everyone was looking at her and seeing what that man had seen. She felt that they could see what had almost happen on her skin or something and so the huntress had escaped outside, the confines of the mountain suddenly too much for the emotional Avora. So it was to a lesser range for this girl, the grip of her shortbow clutched so tightly that her knuckles had turned white and her fingers begun to ache. The Bent Arrow range wasn't too busy. It was still busy enough but she wasn't heading back inside and she wasn't leaving until she'd shot a few arrows into some heads, well... targets. The Avora section was the main thing to focus on and it wasn't too busy. There was just some guy doing she didn't know what with his bow. She suspected he didn't know what he was doing with his bow either. A twang and the slap of a string on flesh made her head turn to see where the welt had been left upon his arm.

Idiot! Serves him right for trying to shoot when he doesn't know his arse from his elbow, she thought, settling on a target down from his. Yes, she was annoyed and yes, she didn't want to deal with people right now but that didn't mean that she couldn't show off how it was done. Rub it in his face, maybe make him slink off back to whatever hole he'd come from in shame. He wasn't Inarta anyway, or at least not a pure one. Not with hair like that. Unless he was a throwback. Her lips curled into a sneer. Could definitely be a throwback with bow skills like that. If he was really that stupid though, he'd be a Dek.

Stretching her arms above her head until the joints cracked, she switched her bow from one hand to the other. Fingers stiff from gripping it too hard before were flexed until the feeling came back into them. Once it came back, she positioned herself perpendicularly to the target, took an arrow from her quiver and nocked it carefully. Turning her torso towards the target, arrow pointing down, she focused on the centre as she straightened her back. She breathed in, the bow coming up and the string being pulled back at the same time. It still wasn't a completely smooth movement but it would still look impressive to someone who had little or no skill with a bow. The briefest of moments to readjust her aim and then the exhale had the arrow sailing towards the target but not towards the point she wanted. The arrow lodged itself above the centre point, a few inches too high.

"Petch," she growled under breath, scowling at the centre as if it had moved or something to spite her. Another arrow was taken from the quiver, nocked carefully and positioned downwards. She focused on her breathing for a few moments before raising the bow again. She aimed lower this time, squinting slightly as she positioned it correctly, releasing on an exhale as before. Below the target by several inches and slightly to the right. She glared at it again before reaching for another.

x

[Zhol]

|.

It hadn't taken long for embarrassment to entirely outweigh any of the pain he was feeling. Regret made itself readily felt as well, and the prospect of taking a running leap off the cliff face behind him was looking far more appealing than it should. Pavi curses flowed through his mind, more condemnations of how true to form it was for him to fail and to give up.

His jaw set, his mind wrestling his father's voice back into the depths. He found another arrow; readied it on the bow. He drew; aimed. He would do this, he would learn this, even if it took every scrap of willpower he could muster. He breathed. Fired. Swore again as the bow string took another bite out of his arm. Frustration transformed his words into a grunt; the only solace came from the defensive numbing of his arm that his body obligingly provided.

He heaved out as much frustration as a single sigh could carry - which wasn't nearly as much as he would have liked - and looked around him, gaze settling on one of the few other Avora who graced this end of the range. He watched her fluid grace; watched her scowling focus as the arrows buried themselves into her target, rather than the anything but that his arrows seemed drawn towards. He looked at how she stood, his eyes tracing the position of her legs, the angle of her shoulders and arms, the curves they made as she drew the string across her chest. He stared, analysing every detail of her form, desperately trying to work out what she was doing that he was not.

He copied, as best he could. He positioned his feet carefully, spaced the way hers had been; angled the same as well. He twisted his body, squared his shoulders; tried to copy the way she'd raised the bow, and felt like the biggest fool each second of it. He dropped his elbow, parallel to the ground rather than tucked up beside his cheek as it had been before. His face grimaced as he stared at the injuries his arm had sustained; gingerly his elbow shifted, twisted to the side to keep his arm as far out of harms way as he could muster. Another arrow nervously settled himself in place. He drew slowly, tentatively; counted himself down once again; winced in preparation -

He blinked, eyes not sure whether to focus on the arrow or on the arm that the bowstring had finally, thankfully missed. It barely even counted as in the target, teetering precariously outside even the widest of the concentric circles, but a hit was a hit, and the flicker of a proud smile that snuck uninvited onto his features couldn't be helped.

He glanced in the other Avora's direction, and for a fleeting instant, part of him hoped that she had seen.

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

x

She must have seen something from the corner of the eye, something that her brain had registered but her conscious mind hadn't. It set her skin crawling, hair raising across her body. It left the huntress uneasy and uncertain, making her pause in the act of drawing out another arrow. Her head turned ever so slightly to the man at the target beside her as she set about preparing another shot. Feet apart, shoulders back and down, turned towards the target but in such a way that she could still see the other Avora in her peripheral vision. As she nocked her arrow and prepared to aim, she saw it then: he was watching her. His eyes seemed to roam all over her as she raised her bow with string pulled back. An exhale and the arrow was gone, her worse shot yet with that man watching her like that. She was lucky that she hit the target at all with her arrow only just a little way into the outermost ring. It was a horrific shot but she hardly noticed, her head turned to watch the other Avora instead.

He wasn't watching her now, too focused on his shooting but he had been watching her, Azira was sure of it. Except... she wasn't completely sure that she'd interpreted the way that he'd been looking at her correctly. What if he'd only been watching her form? No, she couldn't believe that, even though he did seem to be positioning himself better now. He'd been eyeing her up, he had to have been yet there was no proof, nothing to show that her limited view of him hadn't twisted somewhat. The huntress kept watching, not making a move to continue her shooting. Perhaps she expected to do it again, or was looking for some sort of sign to confirm her suspicions.

The twang of the bowstring again but this time there was no rebound upon flesh. He'd obviously worked out how to keep his arm out of the way so he might just be improving a little. It wasn't hard to improve on nothing though. Her eyes flicked to the target, scanning it quickly until she found where the arrow had lodged at the very edge of the target. What she'd seen as a bad shot seemed brilliant in comparison to his. Her gaze moved back to him and froze. He was looking at her. It was a sideways look, sly and accompanied with the slightest of smiles. That expression seemed to confirm it in her mind: he'd been eyeing her up before. Well she wasn't putting up with that, not again today.

"What do you think you're looking at, huh?" she snapped in Nari, taking a menacing step towards him. "Maybe you should keep your eyes to yourself. Wouldn't want to lose one," she threatened.

x

[Zhol]

|.

The familiar gut-wrenching guilt wrapped itself around Zhol's innards as the unfamiliar Nari words met his ears. Here he was, basking in the mediocre victory of equalling the abilities of an infant child, and he couldn't even manage to string together more than a few phrases in the Inarta's native tongue. So much for integrating himself with their culture. So much for fitting in.

"Sorry," he offered, one of the few Nari phrases he had managed to learn. His voice lapsed into common. "I do not speak your language well."

His brow twitched into a frown as he tried to gauge his fellow archer's mood. There had been something about her tone that had sounded angry, though without words it was hard to decipher. She seemed irritated, frustrated, and on edge to Zhol's eyes, but then who didn't seem that way around him? You didn't live through a city famine as an outsider welcomed into one of the higher castes without earning the kinds of scowls and sour glances that lingered even after the fact. He didn't recognise the Inarta, and he made a concerted effort to do so - being a foreigner was bad enough without being one who couldn't tell one redhead from another - but even without his abysmal archery skills, the fact that he was an outsider wasn't hard to spot, and coupled with where he was standing to shoot, there weren't many foreign Avora to help confuse his identity.

Still, her bearing suggested more than disdain aimed at him: there was something regal and interrogating about her, which triggered the hesitance one felt in the presence of a regal yet dangerous animal. Something about her amber eyes, more threatening than beautiful, made him feel like prey under the gaze of a predator. She was not Endal, that he was fairly sure of, but everything about her made him feel that perhaps she should be: birds of prey like she and the wind eagles belonged with each other.

"You shoot well," he observed, as friendly a tone and as friendly a smile as he could muster. Hesitation tugged the frown back to his features. "At least, you seem to be. I'm not exactly skilled enough to tell." His smile returned. "You are a huntress?" he inferred, idly wondering if this Avora was familiar with his friend Khara.

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

x

Her expression wasn't what Azira would have expected. Annoyance, anger, fear even, but not that look of blankness, of incomprehension. It was almost like he hadn't understood a word she'd said. His apology seemed to disprove that theory though as he must have known from her words that he'd offended her. Her mouth opened to snap back at his pathetic attempt at saying sorry but shut it again as something clicked in her mind at the moment he began speaking Common. His Nari had been accented slightly. It reminded her of the way Turrin spoke it. It didn't sound quite right but it wasn't as laughable as the half-Myrian. He really hadn't understood a word she'd said, or probably very little of it. An outsider then.

A hiss of irritation came out from between her teeth. She didn't like having to repeat herself but her words and warning would have meant nothing to him so if she wanted to keep his eyes off her, a speech in Common was necessary. Her tone and her demeanour had been the cause of his apology so he probably didn't even know why he should be sorry. He must have had an inkling though. Surely he'd caught her watching him watching her, or something of that sort. He was speaking though before she had the chance to even think of words to rant in his direction. His friendly expression angered her further. How dare he act as if he'd done nothing wrong, like she had no reason to be angry with him!

Angry or not, she couldn't resist the opportunity to appear superior. "Oh course I shoot well, I'm a huntress," she replied haughtily in Common, tearing his compliments to pieces. "And you'd have to be completely blind to not see just how hopeless you are with a bow. Don't try to distract me either, pretending to be all nice and friendly. I caught you looking at me. I'm not blind, you know," she snapped back at him. The huntress wanted to wipe that smile off his face. A hand ran through her hair, her fingers snagging on a tangle before pulling through it as she thought over what else to say to him.

"You think that you can come here and do whatever you please, is that it? What rock did you come out from under? You're aren't from here, I know that. Not a half-breed Inarta, not a throwback. An outsider. You should keep your eyes to yourself, or I'll take one out," she growled, patting the hunting knife sheathed at her hip. There was no way that he could misinterpret her meaning. She wasn't sure that she could actually take his eye out but she would certainly try if he didn't heed her warning.

x

[Zhol]

|.

There was a delay before Zhol's reaction manifested, as his mind struggled to coprehend what it was he had just been accused of. As realisation dawned, his expression fluxed through the genuine horror at the insult his misconstrued observations had caused, his overwhelming desperate desire to rectify the misunderstanding, and the sting of her belittlement of his admittedly paltry achievement. What lingered however was the sad resignation; the painful acceptance of having ones fears of social rejection validated by the words of a total stranger. There was an odd clarity to it; what had been frantic and anxious worry melting into a dark pool of bitter acceptance in the pit of his stomach.

There was something else though, swimming around in the emotional maelstrom. Inept, untalented outsider he could accept - that he believed of himself already - but the other accusation was something he refused to be, in his own eyes or anyone elses. He knew how the Inarta looked at each other; how to many the lower castes were just objects to be used and exploited on a whim; and had witnessed how at times the Inarta regarded even their own peers the same way. Perhaps it was their way; perhaps he had no right to judge that aspect of their society; but being regarded as that kind of man was beyond even his ability to shoulder in silence.

"Don't flatter yourself," he shot back, readying another arrow and loosing it towards the target; he barely even registered where it struck. "I may be some backwards outsider, but I'm not so hard up for affection that I need to seek it from every sour-tongued vixen that crosses my path. Besides," he added, one last glance cast in her direction, an indifferent shrug added to it, "Sorry to shatter your illusions, but you are not as distracting as you think. You'd have to look like a goddess to outweigh that bitter attitude of yours."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

x

He didn't react immediately, perhaps too stunned by her sudden outburst. She caught the expression of horror when it came although she had no explanation for it, it could have meant anything from horror at being caught to horror at being spoken to in such a manner. As an outsider he wouldn't be used to the forthright manner of the Inarta. The intermediary expressions she couldn't read but the last was one of sadness, or something related to it. A slight crease appeared between her brows as she looked at him in confusion and wonder.

And then suddenly his entire attitude changed. He was giving as good as he'd got from her. His indifference towards her was completely unexpected. Either, he was amazingly good at acting or she'd read into his actions incorrectly. It wasn't in her to apologise. Her normal reaction to insults was to fire some right back but his words had left her in a rare state of speechlessness. She had no quick comeback, no reply at all in fact to his words. Her mind was left reeling, her thoughts only capable of repeating his words over and over, each reiteration leaving a new crack in her facade. It was pushing her far too close to breaking down into tears in front of the strange man.

His words had stung! Considering the trouble she'd gone to in an effort to stop men from taking an interest in her, her reaction was bizarre. Except it wasn't. She didn't want to feel ugly, didn't want to be treated as nothing and didn't want someone else to poke holes through her defence of anger. Her defence hadn't even come to her when she'd needed it, instead allowing her to fully absorb his words and the implications of them without such much as an attempt to hurt him in return. Her fingers began to tremor, one hand tightening on her bow until the knuckles turned white while the other she tried to hide behind her leg as inconspicuously as possible. Her teeth bit into the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood in an effort to stop it from trembling. The only thing she succeeded in doing was adding a metallic taste to her saliva as she tried to swallow it around the lump that was forming in her throat.

What had given him the right to say that to her? To insult her, to hurt her. You insulted him first. You just don't like being on the receiving end and he probably doesn't either. The thought came unbidden and unwelcome to her mind. There was too much truth in it and it meant that the anger that was warring with the hurt within her was unjustified. She'd lashed out first, threatened and insulted him. He'd simply retaliated and if she'd been in his position, she would have done the same. The fire in her died, quenched as the waves of hurt smothered it.

"Petch you." Words were forced out, lacking the force and anger that should have gone with them before she turned from him, moving to the furthest target from him that she could. Moving away did nothing to improve her control, the trembling in her hands grew worse with each step, the hand not gripping the bow raised to slide through her hair. The action did little to hide the tremor, instead more likely draw attention to her hand. She might not have mastery over the trembling, at least not yet, she did have some control over herself. Azira refused to cry, knowing that there would be no way to hide it. In her room she could sob to her heart's content when there were no witnesses whereas in public, like here, it was a no-go. At least, it wouldn't happen again after the last time.

Like this she couldn't nock an arrow, let alone shoot and her insulter would notice the lack of action from her end no doubt. She closed her eyes, locking away the moisture that threatened to slip out. It did little to help, liquid instead pooling at her lachrymal ducts. She blinked rapidly struggling to clear them before shutting her eyes tight and attempting to calm herself down enough. Her focus shifted to her breathing, concentrating on each inhale and exhale in an effort to shove the hurt downwards by ignoring it. If she ignored it then it might bury itself just enough for her to be able to wait until she returned to her room to cry in privacy. Her eyes would not open again until she had achieved that control, eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to adjust to the light that seemed painfully bright after the forced darkness.

x

[Zhol]

|.

"Yeah," Zhol muttered under his breath as he readied another arrow and glared at the target, wondering if it was possible to compress all of his agitated frustration down into a tiny ball and fire it away from him in the arrow's wake. "Petch me."

This wasn't like him, at all. He wasn't supposed to be quick to anger, and while he was certainly sensitive to the words and opinions of others, they usually provoked guilt and sorrow. Yet, what he felt right now was a far cry from that: fury coursed through his veins like fire, every extremity hot and agitated. Anger possessed him, desperate to be shouted from his lungs, or propelled by fists into the nearest inanimate object. How dare she assume he was like that? How dare she judge him without knowing a single thing about him? How dare she run away from the kind of screaming argument he was suddenly so desperate to have?

Those questions drifted through his mind, but the answers were already there, provided by the same knowledge that had been the source of his anger. This was what the people of Wind Reach were like; not without exception, but certainly in the majority. Children could be entirely unaware of who their father was, because they were just some Dek or Chiet plucked from the warrens by their mother on a whim; a mother they often only knew by virtue of having crawled out of them. The Yasi were raised collectively, rather than parents nurturing their own; and while the concepts of family and romance were not extinct amongst the Inarta, they were certainly endangered species. For someone raised in the pavilions of Endrykas, where family mattered above all things, that part of Inarta society was a jarring abomination.

Of course she assumed you're like that: she has absolutely no reason not to. The voice in Zhol's mind was bitter, mocking. Congratulations though, at least she's not treating you like an outsider. Isn't this what you wanted.

The nocked arrow was finally released, and Zhol's shoulders took the opportunity to slump deeply. The angry fire that had been fuelling him had subsided, leaving tiredness and ash in it's wake. A glance in the huntress's direction only made it worse; he didn't know her well enough to infer what the change in her demeanour might mean, but he could tell enough to know that he had struck a nerve. More guilt was piled on top of his already ample reserves.

"I am sorry," he uttered in Nari, one of the few phrases he had made a deliberate effort to learn. He frowned, wondering how best to proceed without triggering the seemingly volatile woman into anger again. He took a cautious step in her direction. "I know nothing about you, and I have no right to blindly judge. It is just -"

He trailed off, words failing him again. Another sigh drew his eyes to the ground, his brows knitting together as he searched for words. "You're not an animal, and nor am I. There is far more to a person than can be learned in a single glance, and the surface seldom reveals the true story: gemstones hide inside the simplest of stones, while the most beautiful fruit can be rotten at it's core. Perhaps for Inarta men a glance is enough, but -"

He trailed off again, mustering enough effort to force his gaze to focus on Azira again, a mix of sadness and anger tugging at his expression. His voice took on an air of bitterness, as memories he didn't want to recall replayed in his mind yet again. His hands curled into fists as the fear in her eyes and the venomous lust in theirs resolved in his minds eye; it took all the self control he could muster to stop his res from leaking and wreathing his hands in fire.

"I have seen the way Inarta men treat Inarta women, and the way they try to take that which isn't offered. I would rather be a hated outsider forever than let a single person believe I am that sort of man."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

x

Words carried to her despite the distance she'd tried to put between herself and him. It was to be expected given the quietness of the range and the lack of anyone else between them to muffle it, throttle it even, before it reached her ears. It was in her own language, an apology that he seemed to be going to the effort of making despite the fact that he could not really speak Nari. Childishly, she wanted to pull her ears and ignore anymore words that he might utter and she could certainly sense a speech coming. Her head slightly so that she could see him, watching him slowly start to narrow the gap between them. The huntress was right, this would not end with a simple apology.

His words in Common began to gnaw at her normally merciless resolve, threatening to cause guilt to leak unwelcome into her conscience. She had judged him at a glance after all, made an assumption from the single impression. First impressions were the most important after all and they were normally enough to get a good grasp of a person's character, at least in Azira's experience but then she hated that people did the same thing with her, or rather when they got an impression that she didn't like. Either way, he had her attention, her amber gaze fixed upon his figure, meeting his own eyes when he raised them. The anger is in his eyes was startling, making her own eyes widen but she didn't look away instead transfixed by the emotion within his gaze.

It was clear that he did not agree with the way that men used women in Wind Reach, although such treatment could just as easily go the other way as well. It was beyond mere disagreement though as there was such rage in his eyes to perhaps justify her thinking that he hated such behaviour. It was clear that he did not want to be associated with such behaviour, a sentiment that made her more at ease around him. He was not like them, would not look at her that way, he was vehement about that. She would not have to suffer such unrestrained lust in his presence. It was a relief, one that made her sigh quietly and close her eyes for a few quiet ticks. When they reopened her gaze was softer than it had been since their meeting had began. As much as she hated apologising, amends needed to be made with this foreigner. He had no power over her anyway; he was not Endal. It would not be grovelling as she had had to do with Lavira but more of a mutual apology for what had been a simple misunderstanding.

"Perhaps it was wrong of me to jump to conclusions but I'm somewhat accustomed to it, not to mention sick of it," she replied, her tone resigned but becoming bitter towards the end. "I forget that outsiders are not us. We bring you into our city, into are city but you are still somewhat separate. You were not shaped within our city. I know two, although only one of them is entirely without Inarta influence. The other is half our blood." The huntress was rambling to herself, hardly bothering to separate what was relevant from the rest of the drivel. Her eyes fell on the bow in his hand and nodded in its direction. "You still try to be like us though. I doubt you considered picking up a bow before you set foot here. I know a Symenestra who took up archery here but she wasn't stupid enough to try to teach herself." Fingers tapped against her arm, matching the place where the bowstring had left a weal on his.

The Avora turned from him, planning to go back to her own practice now that her head was clearer and her hands no longer shaking. He could do what he liked. Just because he couldn't shoot didn't mean that she had to teach him. It was not her job to help every outsider that came to her attention. He could go and ask some other hunter for lessons, she had no obligation to get involved. She drew an arrow from her quiver, giving it a cursory glance before nocking it. The huntress was too aware of the other's presence to really be paying as much attention as she should have been. She got into a shooting stance, mindful of her posture so as not to do herself an injury. Bow was raised and string pulled back almost simultaneously, the arrow making a strange sound on the release. It didn't bury itself in the target, instead snapping violently and leaving pieces strewn in front of it.

The huntress groaned. She hadn't hit anything that hard so that could only mean that she'd fired a damaged arrow. He'd messed up her concentration enough already that she hadn't even remembered to check. The huntress placed the bow on the ground and began to take arrows out of her quiver, checking each one for signs of damage. The urge to glance in the man's direction to see if he was watching her trying to rectify her previous carelessness was strong, too strong to resist in fact and so she glanced quickly his way, wondering if she even had his attention still.

x