36th Day of Spring, 515 AV
Early morning
Something had gotten into her belt pouch again.
She had taken to carrying dried meat in the pouch at her hip to tempt Banti, her hunting cat, into behaving. Something, though, had gotten into her bag of cat treats, so together the two inexperienced hunters were going in search of the culprit.
Narrow prints edged the tent where she and her family slept, four toes, claws, and a fifth imprint of an oddly shaped pad with three bumps at it's base. A dog, she would have guessed, but on the small side of the Drykas's hunting dogs.
She hoped to find the owner and explain the situation. While buying foul from the spit fire wasn't extraordinarily expensive, she certainly didn't want the cost to go to feeding someone else's dog.
So she had called to her companion - a signal achieved more through the bribery of the small cuts of dried meat than any sort of real understanding of intent - and went off in search of the origin of the tracks.
Quite quickly Naiya realized that the tracks didn't belong to anyone's pet, for they veered sharply out into the Sea of Grass. Reassessing her guess that the creature was a dog, she turned tail and found her camp once more, retrieving her bow and stringing it in preparation for a hunt.
If the creature, maybe wild dog, was desperate enough to come into the Dawnwhisper camp, soon it would be desperate enough to come after the animals found there, particularly the young, nearly hornless Zibri bull.
She returned with Banti to the edge of camp, finding the tracks with a little snooping around in the grass. Where the damp of rain had been protected by the growing blades, the prints were easier to find, and when the ground became dry, Naiya often had to move in slowly growing circles seeking the next spot where a print might be found.
From the outside, it likely was quite an odd show. Naiya pawing through the grass with a mildly less than excited hunting cat trailing after her, nosing the girls hip in hopes of finding her way to another morsel of meat.
She was, Naiya quickly discovered, not a good tracker. Really only luck had brought her out so far into the grasses, and for all that work, she was still within easy distance of camp.
She would have benefited from some help, but she was not going to return home so soon with so little effort. She just needed to figure out how to get Banti to seek out the smell of the creature.
She would spend the next few minutes inviting the cat to sniff at the tracks they had found, and perhaps the reluctant creature would take an interest then.
Early morning
Something had gotten into her belt pouch again.
She had taken to carrying dried meat in the pouch at her hip to tempt Banti, her hunting cat, into behaving. Something, though, had gotten into her bag of cat treats, so together the two inexperienced hunters were going in search of the culprit.
Narrow prints edged the tent where she and her family slept, four toes, claws, and a fifth imprint of an oddly shaped pad with three bumps at it's base. A dog, she would have guessed, but on the small side of the Drykas's hunting dogs.
She hoped to find the owner and explain the situation. While buying foul from the spit fire wasn't extraordinarily expensive, she certainly didn't want the cost to go to feeding someone else's dog.
So she had called to her companion - a signal achieved more through the bribery of the small cuts of dried meat than any sort of real understanding of intent - and went off in search of the origin of the tracks.
Quite quickly Naiya realized that the tracks didn't belong to anyone's pet, for they veered sharply out into the Sea of Grass. Reassessing her guess that the creature was a dog, she turned tail and found her camp once more, retrieving her bow and stringing it in preparation for a hunt.
If the creature, maybe wild dog, was desperate enough to come into the Dawnwhisper camp, soon it would be desperate enough to come after the animals found there, particularly the young, nearly hornless Zibri bull.
She returned with Banti to the edge of camp, finding the tracks with a little snooping around in the grass. Where the damp of rain had been protected by the growing blades, the prints were easier to find, and when the ground became dry, Naiya often had to move in slowly growing circles seeking the next spot where a print might be found.
From the outside, it likely was quite an odd show. Naiya pawing through the grass with a mildly less than excited hunting cat trailing after her, nosing the girls hip in hopes of finding her way to another morsel of meat.
She was, Naiya quickly discovered, not a good tracker. Really only luck had brought her out so far into the grasses, and for all that work, she was still within easy distance of camp.
She would have benefited from some help, but she was not going to return home so soon with so little effort. She just needed to figure out how to get Banti to seek out the smell of the creature.
She would spend the next few minutes inviting the cat to sniff at the tracks they had found, and perhaps the reluctant creature would take an interest then.
