The air whipped past Ennari's face and through her black hair as she ran through the forest, longbow and quiver of arrows across her back. The leather armor she wore was not intended to defend herself from blades and other weapons, but rather from the stinging branches, thorns, and briars that whipped past her. Somewhere ahead of her, an elk tried to escape the oncoming huntress. Ennari would occasionally catch a glimpse of white fire from its back end, the glistening of its eye as it looked back at her, but for the most part, Ennari pursued the beast by sound. Although the elk was easily faster than its hunter, Ennari had been trained for this, it was what she was meant to do. Still in full sprint, Ennari reached over her shoulder and selected an arrow, she never slowed as she notched it to her bowstring, she had no need to aim as she could only hear her prey and not see it, the small amount of moonlight filtering through the trees only let her see vague shapes around her. Ennari released her bowstring and heard the tell-tale whoosh of air around the arrow as it sped towards its target, then there was screeching sound of the elk as the arrow found its target. Ennari smiled, she knew that call, that was the elks dying call, the hunt would not continue for much longer.

She found the elk only a few moments later. Her arrow protruding from behind its foreleg, she'd hit in the heart. The elk lay dying, but like the noble beast that it was, it refused to give up. It snorted in fear, and made the attempt to stand and run again, but Ennari wasn't worried, she knew that the hunt was over, and that she had once more been favored as the victor. Ennari reached behind her back, where she had always kept her dagger, her dar'misu and withdrew it. She bowed her head briefly in respect to the creature, and the magnificent hunt that it had provided her, then she grabbed it's raised head by an antler and cut its throat. As soon as the elk lay dead, Ennari removed her arrow and quickly went to work skinning and cutting apart the meat. The others in her hunting party would soon catch up with her, and they would build a fire, cook, and eat their fill of the meat, then all that remained would be carried back to the clan.

The other hunters did in fact soon arrive, and the gruesome work of field cleaning the elk carcass was soon completed. As Ennari poured water from her water skin over the blade of her dar'misu, she remembered…

She looked up into the eyes of the shemlen that had almost certainly saved her life. She found it strange that someone she had known, and had in fact been her enemy only few days previously could come to be her friend. Her lethallin. She took out her dagger from behind her back and placed it in the shemlen's hands. "That is for you," she had said, "For your kindness." She turned to leave, but before disappearing into the thick underbrush she had turned and addressed the shemlen one final time. "I will tell my people about shemlen like you."

It had been three years since the unfortunate meeting between her and the shemlen called Gideon, and in that time she had thought about him at least a few minutes of every day. He would always be her friend, even if the shemlen himself had forgotten her.

"Ennari!" It was Teren, the newest addition to her hunting group, and still an apprentice. Most of her clan still considered him a da'len as his face was still unmarked. "Shemlen… in the forest…" He said between gasps.

Ennari grabbed her bow without even thinking about it. "Where?" She demanded, "And how many?"

Teren pointed back in the direction he'd just come from, the hunters were between the shemlen and the clan's camp. "I think… I mean I saw… three of them… but… could be more!"

"Tamlen," Ennari said, "Take half of them and circle around to the right, I'll take the others and go to the left… And this goes for all of you, do not kill the shemlen except to defend yourselves, or unless I attack them first. Let's move!"

It didn't take long for Ennari and her group to find the humans that Teren had told them about. At first Ennari only saw two of them. They were obviously soldiers, one wearing leather armor and was armed with a crossbow, the other in chainmail and with sword and shield. They were looking for something, but she didn't know what. Only a few seconds later however, She saw the third shemlen that Teren had spoken of, this one lay flat on his stomach and crawled forward in almost a slithering motion. The shemlen that was being hunted was also wearing chainmail, but Ennari could see no weapons.

The sight of seeing human soldiers almost took her back three years, when she'd been captured and tied up like a wild animal. She swallowed hard and motioned for two of her hunters to follow her as she began to creep forward. The humans remained oblivious to her approach, either they were too absorbed in their task to notice her, or as Ennari suspected, their shemlen senses were too poor to detect her.

"This is our forest." She said quietly in the language of the Elvhen. She knew they wouldn't understand her, but anyone with a brain should be able to get the message. "This is your only warning, leave this place now… while we still allow it!"

The two soldiers immediately began turning around, trying to locate the source of the foreign sounding voice. "Dalish!" One of them hissed, Ennari could of course understand him, although she doubted the humans knew that. "I told you they were going to find us! Come-on, let's get out of here. I've already shot him twice, there's no way he can survive that!"

"Have you lost your mind?" The soldier with the sword growled. "You know what the boss said, he wants all their heads on his table! You think he's really just going to settle for our word on the matter?"

Ennari didn't like the way this was going so far. Still speaking Elvhen, but putting more venom in her voice, she said, "Leave! Now!"

The soldier with the sword held his shield in front of him and began advancing towards where he'd heard her voice come from. Ennari made a short whistling sound, and on the other side of the two soldiers, Tamlen stood, aimed, and fired. The shemlen with the bow moaned softly as Tamlen's arrow pierced his heart, then died. Without waiting another moment, Ennari fired her bow as well, her own arrow taking the shemlen swordsman through the eye.

Notching another arrow, Ennari slowly began to make her way towards the third shemlen, the one who had been trying to get away. "Don't move, shemlen." She ordered, still speaking in her own language, then she grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him over. Her bow fell to the ground, and she quickly went down to her knees. "Gideon!" She whispered, looking down at his face. At first she thought he was dead, and her heart skipped a beat and she shook him, "Gideon!" She said louder, and his eyelid fluttered but remained closed. "Don't you dare die on me now!" She said, this time in Common, which confused her fellow hunters. Reverting back to her own language, she ordered her hunters, "Make a stretcher, now! We're going back to the clan, and we're taking him with us!"