Closed A Day of Gloom

[Khida]

Khida's search of the ground uncovered... well, ground. Grass and earth and more tufts of fur which seemed to be the same short squirrel-stuff. The ground proved too dry, or maybe too matted with roots, to have taken any prints.

The girl settled into her own search, complementing Khida's efforts. Glances towards the stranger proved that she seemed to be looking at a piece of the rope, as well as conducting her own examination of the grass and/or ground. The Kelvic made sure her own investigation didn't go over the same area twice, expecting that if there was something worthwhile to find, the girl would find it.

After a while, the girl asked after other traps. Straightening and turning towards her, Khida shook her head, though the accompanying gesture suggested uncertainty rather than negation. "Not see. This one first," she elaborated. "More next."

As she spoke, the girl turned her gaze back towards the earth, suddenly pausing and plucking something from among the flattened grasses. Despite her own sparked curiosity, Khida waited patiently, looking on while the girl studied her find. Finally, as the girl held it out, the Kelvic walked over to examine...

...a wiry and tapering fiber, a whisker, mostly dark in color. Not something she could recall being a squirrel feature, which suggested an origin with the thief. "Not... not squirrel, prey in trap. Not glassbeak." Obviously. Predatory mammals had whiskers. maybe think not think... her hands signed, sloppy and inattentive, a reflection of her concentration rather than deliberate communication.

The cats, she thought -- the hunting cats with her little family all had white whiskers. Did that mean all kinds of cats did? "Maybe not cat. Other hunter?" Khida ventured, half conclusion and half question.

Then she took a last look around the area, breathing out a sigh, before gesturing off towards the distance. "I go to others. Nothing here."

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Dinah]

Other hunter, it wasn't a definite but at least they both seemed to be on the same thought pattern regarding the whisker. Not that it would help either of them find the petching thing, though. The woman didn't seem too opposed to Dinah following along, at least. Hunting down something that was poaching from traps wasn't entirely how the girl wanted to spend her day, but it certainly sounded a lot better than trying to explain how she had wasted bells losing a battle with a snare.

There was a bit of a feeling of discouragement in the lack of information the current site could give them. She could enjoy a good mystery as much as anyone else, but her patience was thin at best and it never was long until she was more frustrated than anything else. Today's mission seemed to be an exercise in trying to keep that side of her under control. It was rare that Dinah really cared what others thought of her, at least outwardly, but for some reason it seemed important to keep herself under control around the stranger. Don't need her telling her pavilion about the undisciplined reimancer, her thoughts chimed in and she begrudgingly had to admit there was a point there. Bad enough she was a novice at hunting unlike most of her clan, she didn't need that added on top of it.

As Dinah followed towards the next trap she tried her best to keep her eyes open for other signs the predator could have left behind, but aside from a few stray drops of blood that must have come from the squirrel as they first set out, there wasn't much she could discern. The girl shoved off the thought that it was only another thing to add to her list of incompetencies.

Despite the woman's attempts at Pavi, Dinah got the feeling she was better understood when her words were in common. At least the stranger seemed to understand signs well enough, though. "I haven't heard any rumors of predators in the area," she spoke, trying to keep her voice low. "Usually we're warned if anything really dangerous has been spotted."

She wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Maybe everyone was too busy to worry about such things, or maybe the more dangerous the animal the more prestige it would be to kill it. Dinah wasn't quite sure how the whole Great Hunt thing worked. The first year of her marriage into the Emerald Clan had been a whirl of simply trying to adjust so she hadn't really picked up on the nuances the first time it had come around and this year wasn't exactly faring much better what with everyone's preoccupation with the actual hunting part. Oh sure, she could ask her Ankal but she always felt bad when having to ask about such simple things, not in the fearful way that her father had inspired, it was more that Dinah felt she was letting the man down; a poor way to repay him for all his kindness, really.

Her attention returned to the woman and Dinah felt a crease form across her brow as she regarded her. The broken Pavi accompanied with the fearless way she carried herself was conflicting and before she could stop herself the girl found words tumbling from her in a curious question, "Have you been doing this a long time?"

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Tukant"

[Khida]

The girl seemed inclined to follow Khida to the next trap, which she didn't really mind as long as the girl wasn't disruptive. She proved to be attentive, not too talkative, and kept her voice down when she did speak -- all characteristics the Kelvic appreciated, if she was going to have someone in tow.

Khida turned down into one of the gullies she had crossed before, following its curving path down towards the south and east. She listened for any warning of possible predators -- rustling in the grass, the silence of birds -- but watched the landscape, matching its features against her memories of yesterday's journey. Here the sharp bend around an outcrop of stone, there the heap of bramble which had died in the summer drought, now gone dull brown and leafless but still as thorny as ever. She gave it a wide berth.

The girl spoke of predators, and the Kelvic glanced back towards her, then shrugged a shoulder. Prey eat, danger maybe not, her hands sketched. "Anything will take easy prey," she continued in Common, speaking no more loudly than she needed to. "It could have been one of the black-footed weasels, a fox or coyote, even hawk or eagle. Though not today; hawk or eagle would have been... different." A bird of prey would not have chewed the rope the way that one had been. But as trap robbers, Khida could not discount them; she had done as much herself.

Further down, the gully joined with another, broadening out and flattening. Here there was water, a shallow puddle whose silty bottom might be easily stirred up, but water nonetheless. The other gully, steeper and more choked with brush, contributed a steady trickle into the puddle. There was the place she wanted -- but before Khida quite examined where she'd left her trap, the girl spoke up again. Impatient, puzzled by the question -- did it matter how long she'd been doing anything, and what was this supposed to stand for, anyway? -- the Kelvic's hands flashed a quick, silent reply. Hunt always. Trap not always.

Then she continued forward, squinting towards where she had left the trap -- a darkness under the brush near the puddle. A place where prey animals might shelter after drinking, or pause to check that the coast truly was clear of danger. A place she could very reasonably expect to catch something...

...A place also devoid of the rope that had been fashioned into a snare. Crouching by the shrubbery, Khida reached out to brush her fingers over the pale ends of broken twigs. Something had taken her prey from this trap as well, and the whole trap along with it, snapping branches as the captured prey had not.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Dinah]

The woman wasn't a very chatty one, Dinah could respect that. Still, there was something the girl felt she was missing about her. The girl wouldn't describe the other as wild, necessarily, but there was something... Different. Overwhelming curiosity wasn't something that Dinah would consider to be a trait of hers, but still it remained.

Before the Drykas girl could think on it further, or slowly begin to feel the seeds of annoyance start to sprout about the fact, they came across the next trap; or at least where the other clearly expected one to be. There were clearly more signs of disturbance, though in the form of broken twigs that Dinah was fairly certain weren't caused by the trapped animal in the first place.

She eyed the small silty puddle of water, briefly wondering if there was something she could do to get a better idea of what may have passed through, some way of feeling what had happened there with the liquid. If there was such a thing, she had never heard of it, and the only person she knew who might have been able to teach her such a thing was long gone. That thought was shoved aside rather violently before it begin to drag out the bitterness she felt.

Get a hold of yourself, Di. You have more important things to be paying attention to, she scolded herself, allowing for a purposely longer blink and a subtle shake of her head to try and refocus her thoughts.

With the woman inspecting the immediate area with the trap, Dinah turned her attention back to the small puddle. It was small, murky, and could easily have been hiding any clues that laid under the dirty water. It wasn't much of a lead, but at least it would take concentration and would keep her out of the way.

Dinah couched down near the puddle before letting a knee rest against the dirt nearby. Her hand reached towards the puddle and she felt the sensation of the djed within her racing towards her palm before she let out a slow breath and let the unearthly inky res slowly seep out across her hand. Another deep breath was taken as she willed the water in the puddle to be pulled towards the res on her skin, a flinch crossed her features as she could feel a small stab of pain that shot through her right eye.

There was no way she could actually see what the puddle had been hiding and keep up the pull of the water and with one last shove that felt far more like she was pushing a large boulder than just a small amount of water, her inky colored res left her hand, thrown off to the side of the indent in the earth, drawing most of the murky puddle with it before changing to join the element it had been attracting to it.

The palm of her hand was crushed against the eye that now had a dull ache behind it as she looked to see if the effort was even worth it. While some of the water had seemed back into the lower section where the puddle had been, most of it was successfully done away with to soak into the surrounding earth. A small smile was forced as she spotted exactly what she had been hoping for, an animal print. It wasn't perfect by any means, marred by water soaked mud and whatever movement the animal had made when it had been created, but it was better than the nothing they had spotted at the last trap.

Dinah nodded towards it and regretted the uneasy feeling in her head that accompanied it. "Don't suppose you know what made that? Might be the thief. Looks a bit too large to be whatever you caught, I think."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Tukant"

[Khida]

oocSorry for keeping you waiting!

Khida concluded in short order that her trap had snared a bird. The loose feathers scattered about were ample evidence to justify that conclusion. She picked up one, then another, then another -- two body coverts, gray and drab; a tuft of down, fluffy and soft between her fingers. Size, shape, texture, and color all suggested they had belonged to a mist pigeon, or maybe the other similar breed. A mist pigeon would have been a nice catch.

While the Kelvic studied her feathers, she could hear the Drykas girl moving about, apparently carrying out her own investigation as she had at the previous site. Khida took only absent note of her continued presence, until the rustling noises stopped. Curious of what might have drawn the girl's attention, Khida looked over her shoulder to find the other kneeling beside the pool, intent upon the mud. No, intent upon the water, she realized, seeing the contents of the pool leap up and aside as if it were a living thing in its own right.

She found it a positively unnerving sight to witness. Water simply did not behave like that.

Except, evidently, when it did.

Khida rose then, continuing to watch the girl who studied the revealed earth in her turn. She summoned Khida with a look, a nod, and a query, to which the Kelvic walked over after only a moment's ephemeral hesitation. Laid bare as it was in otherwise featureless silt, the lone track immediately drew her attention. Did she know? Yes. Yes, she had a pretty good idea what creature would leave that mark.

Crouching beside the girl, Khida pointed out features on the print. "It has four toes, and pads," she remarked. Or at least the suggestion of four toes, arced across the front of a central impression. "That is probably feline or canine." She paused to study the tips of the track very closely.... but the silt was too soft to hold what she was looking for. "If I could see claws, it would be easy to tell. I can't say for sure," Khida added, with accompanying silent maybe, maybe not, "but I think it was made by a coyote. Cat toes go more across, they're wider. Coyote toes are... are almost stacked, two left and two right."

And while any predator might raid a trap, Khida would probably put coyotes up near the top of her list of likely suspects. It fit -- if this track did indeed belong to the robber.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Dinah]

Dinah squinted as if it would help her to see everything that the woman was that allowe her to seem so certain of what had made the print. The impression of where the toes were didn't seem stacked to her so much as just there, but the girl was far from even remotely experienced in such things. She could make out the large pad at the bottom clearly enough, though and tried to freeze that shape into her mind for future reference.

A coyote made enough sense when she thought about it, though. They weren't exactly above scavenging, that was for certain. Dinah had heard their yelps and calls to one another in her more sleepless nights so they certainly were in the area. A small frown threatened to tug at her otherwise neutral expression as she wondered why she hadn't even remotely considered the thief being one of them. The same lightly annoyed expression persisted as she let her eyes wander over the scene again and the overall lack of other prints.

"Only looks like it was one of them if that's the case," she mused aloud before the reality that she was only making a guess hit her. A quick glance was given towards the more experienced trapper. "Is that normal?"

It didn't sound right, but Dinah had to admit her knowledge of coyotes was limited to their ruckus evening choirs and the fact you usually could scare one away from the tents with a decently lobbed rock if it ventured too close. Dogs were pack creatures though, weren't they? And coyotes didn't seem all that different from the stories her mother used to tell her about wolves and the like.

Her annoyance persisted far beyond what it probably should have. After all, it wasn't her traps that were being raided - never mind the fact she couldn't even seem to manage to set one. Still, an animal desperate enough to steal meals from man-made things could become a bit of an issue if it got more bold. You heard horror stories of such scavengers sneaking into camps at night and stealing away young animals, even people sometimes. Not that Dinah thought the coyote was exactly going to escalate to such things, but the day's frustration let her imagination start to run a bit wild.

"It'll have to be dealt with, either way." A more obvious statement couldn't have been made and Dinah instantly regretted blurting it out. Another look was given to the woman, trying to once again figure out just what it was that made her seem so different. "Don't suppose you'd like some help dealing with your thief? If it's stealing from you, that's as good as stealing from all of Endrykas as far as I'm concerned."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Tukant"

[Khida]

The girl studied the impression with intent, but Khida thought she mostly seemed mystified by the sign. She didn't, however, disagree with the Kelvic's conclusion. At least... not directly. Only one, the girl observed, as if coyotes must always come in multiples.

Normal, she asked. "What is normal?" Khida asked in return, somewhat mystified. Creatures did what they did; that was normal. Perhaps she wondered if it was sick? But there was no way they could tell, and so she could only shrug.

The girl went on to affirm action, something which which the Kelvic wholeheartedly agreed. Yes. The traps, the prey, these things were hers; while she understood the thief's poaching, acknowledged it as an occupational hazard, that was not nearly the same as choosing to tolerate it. But what surprised Khida was when the girl continued on, implicitly tying Khida to Endrykas and the welfare of the Drykas.

Stealing from her was like stealing from all Endrykas? How could that be?

Surprise, her posture conveyed, and her hands sketched out confusion without conscious direction. "I am not Drykas," Khida stated. Not quite, though her own ties to the culture now ran deep. "Endrykas is... bigger." Which did little, truly, to convey her meaning -- but she couldn't find the words, small and finite words, to encapsulate the distinction between one little Kelvic and the vast congregation of humans, tents, horses, and cattle that was the Drykas city.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Dinah]

What is normal? Dinah was sure the woman hadn't meant it in any sort of mystical way but the question still seemed to have a strange air to it. It only added to her curiosity about the other. Especially with the shrug that followed that seemed almost dismissal of the entire thought.

Just as Dinah was managing to stow the feeling away the reaction to her statement came and completely baffled the girl. She wasn't expecting that. Her familiarity with Common more than Pavi had let Dinah know the woman probably wasn't from Endrykas, but the thought that she wasn't actually considered one of her people didn't even cross her mind. There was too much confidence in her actions, too much ease in the way she moved about the grasses.

"Sorry, I just assumed," Dinah cringed slightly, a small gesture of apology conveying her embarrassment far better than words ever could. "It's just how my father raised us to think a certain way, I guess. If you called Endrykas home, then you were expected to contribute. And so, you become a part of it, like a hand or even just a toe of a body. So, I guess it's the thought that even if just some small piece like the tip of a finger or similar is injured, the whole body will end up being effected even if it doesn't realize it."

Dinah laughed and shook her head, trying to shrug off her growing embarrassment. "Sounds stupid when I put it that way."

She left the unspoken accusations of hypocrisy aimed at her former Ankal unsaid though they tumbled just beneath the surface. For all his talk about unity and family and loyalty, she had seen all too quickly how that was turned once something went unplanned and unwanted. Dinah shook off the thoughts with a deep breath and looked back over to the apparently not-Drykas woman.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd like to help if you'd let me. I don't feel like I'm really doing much good today with my own trapping, I might as well help eliminate a problem for someone else who actually knows what they are doing."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Tukant"

[Khida]

The girl explained her statement, and as she made her analogy, the Kelvic contemplated one of her own hands, wiggling her fingers idly in the air. A hand. A toe. A little, little piece... and even a little piece, she might feel when it was injured. She closed her fingers, turned her hand over, opened them up again. If Endrykas was a person and people were toes, fingers, hair...

Well, what exactly that made Khida, to Endrykas, she wasn't sure. But the city did eat her kills, make use of the pelts she brought in, and she could allow that she might matter to the city -- if only maybe about as much as a stubbed toe. No, she gestured, as the girl declaimed her own words. No, is good.

She went on to offer help. Canting her head, Khida regarded the girl for a moment -- the girl who trapped no better than she did, and used magic on water. All told, there really wasn't much for her to debate. Yes, the Kelvic signed. This coyote was clever; clever enough to follow her when she laid her traps, clever enough to stay out of sight, clever enough to come back later and take what the traps had snared. If she didn't confront it, it would likely continue to take her game until Endrykas moved on -- and perhaps even after. Help could only be a good thing.

Khida turned away from the girl then, looking down at the puddle now refilling itself, the shrubbery under which her trap had been placed. Trouble, her hands spoke in silence. "The first problem is finding it. The ground today does not hold tracks." As they had so manifestly demonstrated already. They couldn't just follow the trail to its den. "It will come to snares. We could set another and watch it?"

If someone was willing to wait out all night. If the coyote had followed them and knew where the trap was. Or, maybe, it would check places where it had already found easy meals. Maybe. She just couldn't think of a better plan.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Dinah]

If someone had asked there was no way that Dinah would ever have been able to come up with a reason as to why this whole ordeal mattered to her. She would have loved to have played it off as simply being a way to pass time, to keep from boredom, even maybe just for entertainment; it wouldn't have been the truth. Whatever the reason, it wasn't worth thinking on too hard, odds are whatever reasons were lurking just beyond her perception were far too deep for her liking.

Her offer was accepted though, and Dinah couldn't help but smile slightly at the lack of hesitation that came along with it. Considering how her day started, it admittedly felt good to have someone actually willing to have her around.

As the woman looked away, Dinah couldn't help but follow her gaze, watching as the print she had revealed was once more obscured. Her eyes lifted as the other began to speak again and it sounded like a reasonable enough plan. Tracking the animal was going to be far more trouble than Dinah was prepared for or capable of. Setting another snare and waiting for the petching thing to come back, though? That could be done. It have proven more than willing to go after more than one trap already, luring it in once again couldn't be too hard. Or, at least, Dinah hoped it wouldn't be.

A quick sign of agreement was easily made though Dinah could feel the afterthought forming long before the soft hum ever left her. "Will it come if the snare is empty? "

It was hard to tell without any extra prints or signs if the animal had been deliberately waiting out the traps or if it had only come when prey was struggling to survive. It could very well have been a combination. The thought that the coyote was still possibly lurking about, waiting for them to set another trap for it's easy meals was unnerving, even if it was what would have benefited them in the moment. Maybe it was due to an over active imagination already running with the idea of what could happen if other predators started thinking there was such easy game so near where the city currently rested.

Resignation took hold as Dinah turned to face the other woman again. "I suppose we will find out one way or another."

A thought stumbled forth and the girl admittedly found it a bit surprising, usually that sort of thing was taken care of rather quickly, but well, if the two of them were going to spend a night staring at snares together, best to get the expected out of the way. "I'm Dinah, by the way. Sorry for not saying so before."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Tukant"