NightEye

When Sunlight Touches the Fire

Pux's POV

I stalk it from the trees, smelling the sweetness of fresh meat. My mouth waters at the idea of deer meat, a rarity this early in spring. My prey stops, and I stop as well.

    Senses alert, I draw my arrow back. Fletched with pure white feathers gathered from swans, the wood glitters gold from polishing to smoothness. The metal point is clear like my knives, and trained on the doe’s heart.

    Suddenly, a stick snaps, and my arrow flies a heartbeat before the deer bounds away. Instead of striking the heart, it strikes the lungs. A messy kill. I swing around, searching for the source. I catch sight of black hair and hear loud voices talking jovally.

    Two males close to my day, walking through the woods as if they own it. The left one had cost me my clean kill, and so he will pay. I nock another arrow, and pull back. It is soundless as it flies, the black raven fletchings glittering the color of the boy’s hair.

    The arrow nicks the boy’s left arm, drawing blood. With a yelp the boy leaps back, looking around in fear. His eyes are drawn to the tree in which I perch, drawn by my flaming hair nonetheless.

    “Usea, you’ll be punished for that!” he screams at me. His friend simply looks at me, wonder filling his green eyes, which are rimmed in thin strands of freckles that trail away from his right eye toward his ear. Gand, his name is. His friend, the one shouting curses at me, is Yawl. Yawl’s freckles dot the right side of his jaw before abruptly jutting upward to end in a curl on his cheek.

    Yawl seems to notice his friend’s attention on me, and slaps his arm. Gand doesn’t even glance at Yawl, his eyes trained on my face. “Got something to say to her, do you? Well, go on then, you big swala.” Gand glares at his friend, which is earned after being called a scaredy cat.

    Gand’s green eyes fix on me once more, and he ask, ”Why did you fire the arrow, Pux?” He is one of the few who uses my name, which startles me. I have noticed his gaze on me for the past few moons, but have never heard him speak about me.

    “Yawl’s aggravating noise scared my prey. The arrow felled it, but it was a messy and painful kill. Yawl should be lucky I intentionally nicked him. If I had aimed to kill, he would be dead now.” Yawl scoffs, and fast as light, my bow is in my hands with another arrow, this time with eagle feathers, already nocked.

    “Care to test me?” Yawl’s face turns white as the moon when he sees the arrow pointed at his chest. Gand’s eyes try to lock with mine, but my sight is set on the quivering boy a few feet away. Yawl shakes his head fervently, and my bow dips slightly. Yawl chooses that moment to change and fly at me.

    A yelp sounds from somewhere far off, and another form slams into the leaping Tilvani. It is slightly smaller, slimmer, but strangely familiar. It is pure wolf: head, body, and tail. But its eyes are too intelligent, its claws too curved, its frame too large to be a normal wolf. The creature snarls, thunder booming from its chest, and the two Tilvani run as fast as their feet can carry them.

    The great beast turns toward me, and I see something in its pine green eyes that makes me know who it is. Without speaking, the creature stretches its foreleg out to me, inviting me to climb upon its back. I accept, if only from curiosity.

    Wind rushes by over my head as the wolf bounds forward. We pass by my dead doe, and the wolf stops to allow me to pick it up and sling it across its back. Then, we are off once more.

    Finally, we stop in the clearing from the night before. I climb off, unslinging the deer from the wolf’s huge back. I set it on the ground, then turned back towards the wolf with my arms crossed.