When the outskirts of Gridania ended and the forest finally began to push the noise, the smells, the narrowness of the city away, the Miqo’te was able to breathe properly again. His steps grew slower as he now could shake off the feeling of fleeing from something, of being stared at. But stares didn’t bother him that much anymore. The citizens could think whatever they wanted as long as he would just trade his seeds and fruits from his garden or the prey he had last hunted without being involved in any kind of conversation or unnecessary interaction. His natural scowl kept most of those annoying other people away on its own. And if that wasn’t enough, it usually took just seconds until the rest often realized that this greyhaired tall Miqo’te-Man was… strange. Maybe it were those shoes on his feet that seemed a bit too big for them. Or that he wore gloves even in the warmest summer. He appeared and disappeared without any word and in irregular intervals. Someday Gridania almost forgot about that odd Keeper of the Moon when he did not set foot into the city for months.

He didn’t know how many weeks or months will pass this time, until he couldn’t delay a visit to the City markets any further again, but for now he already had enough of other people again. Rishka’sae disappeared into the deep parts of the Twelveswood like a ghost into the mist. He knew his ways around here since he was a child. Even the parts of the forest close to the city. But the more he moved away from the Central Shroud and more into its beating heart to the east, the more he felt finally home again. He shortly placed his bag of freshly traded supplies on the forest ground and freed his feet from these annoying boots. Carrying them too now in his other hand, he continued his walk on his bare paws. The lower half of his lower legs grew grey-white hair until they endet in Wolflike paws. One of the first changes that had remained after awaking from one of his earliest shapeshifts. Rishka’sae tried to not think too often about his own body, or about the shifts or the voices of the elementals. As the years had gone by, he had understood that asking your destiny why it was how it was would give you no answers. As his paws made their first silent steps on the soil, he immediatly felt that something was different. Not directly around him. But far in front of him, still an hours march away. At his home. It felt, as if something… or someone altered the usual aetherical connection that usually spread like an underground leyline from around his house to where he now stood. The whole forest was a net of energylines, hidden from ignorant physical eyes. Rishka’sae had carefully learned the way of every aetherconnection in the heart of the forest over his years of solitude. After his senses had awoken in him. What other choice did he have to do otherwise.

He now was able to feel the weight of a stag lying on the ground some 200 Yalms away to the south. But not of any stag but of an old friend, whose aether signature was so familiar, it basically sent an aetherical postcard through the energyline towards the Miqo’te. But Rishka’sae tried to concentrate more on the difference he felt ahead of him as he continued his walk. It didn’t feel like an imbalance. He would have sensed that through the Elementals immediatly and painfully. No, it was just something that did not belong there.

The forest grew wilder and darker around him, as noon slowly turned to evening and he arrived at his home. The small River next to the old wooden house sang excitingly and the surrounding ancient trees swayed in a short unexpected breeze as if they wanted to tell their Keeper: ‘Look. Something is there. Look.’

Rishka’sae smelled a foreign scent of hair…skin…blood. His ears moved back even more and he carefully placed his bag and shoes on the doorstep to his house before starting to stalk around it. It must be somewhere outside… on the ground. And there at the edge of his garden patches it was. A body. Only scarcely visible through the last spots of evening sunlight coming through the treebranches above and around. Lightbrown hair. Clothes dirty from mud and the blood he had smelled. Furry ears. A ruffled up tail. It was another Miqo’te lying there in his garden on their belly, the face turned away to the other side. Rishka’sae froze there, still some steps away from the body. He wanted it to disappear. Immediatly. It didn’t belong here. And with pure horror he realized after some seconds that the body’s back still moved up and down very slowly. It breathed. It was still alive. With a wrinkled nose he carefully stalked around one salad patch towards the intruder. It was a young Miqo’te-woman, he could see now. Some cuts on her face with dried blood on it, the hair falling wildly around it and her shoulders. She looked as if she had escaped a fight and had broken down here. Of all places, why must it be here. Rishka’sae felt sick, as the woman slowly and shakingly moved one hand…one ear.

He made some steps back again, his face a mask of disgust and his turqoise, in the dusk glowing eyes fixated on the obviously hurt person on the ground. All he could think of was: She was not safe here. She was not safe with him.