Finn woke up early, just as the sun began to dip past its zenith. She had meant to sneak away and let Adi sleep, but Adi woke as soon as Finn left their makeshift bed.

Adi helped her pack, insisting that she take the bag and a lot of the leftover dried food. She also pushed the boots and a pair of socks on Finn, but they were tied to the pack for the time being. She wouldn't need them until she tried to enter the human settlement. Adi tried to get Finn to take the knife, but Finn had argued that it was unique enough that someone might recognize it. In her heart, she just couldn't leave Adi alone in the woods with nothing to protect herself with.

When Finn set off into the forest, it was with the sun moving steadily lower on the horizon and the majority of their supplies on her back. Adi still had her knife, the other rain cloak, some of the dried food, and the soap, but that was it. It wouldn't be much to live on if she had to make it on her own, but Adi had argued it would be too suspicious if Finn wandered into town without most of what she needed to survive.

Finn tried not to glance back at Adi as she left, but it was a hard thing. Every time she looked back, Adi was watching her with an equally concerned expression. But, she would tuck her concern away and smile at Finn. Finn did her best to do the same.

Before she knew it, she was in the woods and out of eyesight. She felt a little lost without Adi, but she had a mission. That, at least, was a familiar feeling.

The first thing she did was stop at the stream to dig up some mud and rub it onto her hands and neck and face. It was cold and wet and grainy and smelled of green living things, which made her a little nervous about smearing it so close to her face. But she needed to disguise herself somehow, and she still hoped that looking like a wild woman of the woods would discourage most people from trying to look too closely at her.

After that, Finn turned to the grim task of hunting something impressive enough that it too would draw attention away from her. Her options there were limited and her chances of finding any of those options low, but she had to try. They couldn't afford to wait much longer to go to town, with the caravan likely moving steadily farther away and winter steadily approaching.

Finn found another tall birch tree halfway between their campsite and the edge of the forest and climbed it with a determined set to her mouth. The tree was perfectly straight, it's white bark soft beneath her clutching fingers, just old enough that the bark had begun the process of shedding its outer layers. Once she was halfway up the three, Finn straddled one of the thicker branches and pressed her spine against the trunk of the tree. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. She let her senses sink down through the tree and into the forest.

Something big. She needed something big...

She stretched her awareness across a big circle of the forest, but felt only smaller animals moving among the plants and shrubs and trees. Finn could wait, but not for long. She needed to find something big enough to be a good excuse to take it into town.

Straining herself, Finn stretched her awareness deeper. It made something in her headache, like a muscle that had never been used being stretched to the limits of its endurance. But, it worked. The circle of her awareness got bigger and bigger and THERE! She felt it, a big animal, as big as her, maybe even bigger. It was relaxed, chewing something pensively, confident in its safety.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Finn tried to focus her attention, trying to force her awareness toward the animal in a rush. She wanted to gather as much information as she could before she began her pursuit.

As Finn pulled her thoughts in the direction of the big animal, she felt something strange and foreign brush against her mind. It felt like a cold finger running down her back, a sibilant whispering tongue millimeters from her ear.

Yelping, Finn slapped a hand to her ear, the sensation of that voice and that tongue so real that she thought someone had really been there. She flailed, the sudden awareness of her physical body slapping her in the face like a wet fish. Before she knew it, her center of gravity informed her that she was tilting, but she was too far gone to right herself.

Finn crashed through the tree limbs below her and landed on the forest floor with a loud thud. She groaned and writhed on the ground as every bone and muscle in her back screamed in pain.

Finally, Finn was able to draw a complete breath without whimpering and stared up at the gently waving leaves above her.

"What was that?" Finn said to herself, but quickly regretted it.

She looked around the forest as much as she could while lying on her back. It would be just her luck that whatever that had been touching her would answer her aloud.

After a few pregnant minutes of Finn lying on the forest floor and waiting while nothing happened, she relaxed with a big sigh. Finn laid there, wasting precious time that she didn't have, going over the experience in her mind. It had really felt like someone was there, so close that it felt like a threat, like a flirtation, like something that sent fresh shivers of dread down her spine.

Admittedly, she didn't really know what she was doing when she communed with the forest. It felt like it came naturally, but she had never had call to do it before. She certainly didn't have any adult elves to teach her how to do it properly. Was she doing it wrong? She didn't have the faintest clue.

Finn had a very vague memory of that summer years ago when her father sent her away to practice her survival skills. She remembered one of the old grandmothers, one with long pointed ears like her own, but skin as thin as onion skins and folded over into a thousand wrinkles. The grandmother pulled her aside as she was packing to leave. "You can call to the forest for help, if things seem dire," the old woman had said in a voice like wind through the reeds, but with eyes as sharp and observant as any woman in her prime. "But be careful, girl. Sometimes what answers back is not always the forest."

Frowning, Finn turned those almost forgotten words over in her head. An ominous warning at that time that turned out to be for nothing. Finn never managed to connect with the forest that summer, despite struggling for food the entire four weeks.

After thinking it over, Finn gave it up as not worth the effort needed to work it out.

"No more communing with nature," Finn muttered as she slowly climbed to her feet. Her back protested painfully at the movement, but she ignored it. It didn't feel like anything had been broken, but she expected she would be black and blue from her shoulders to her hips within a day.

"Fuck nature," Finn grumbled to herself as she picked up the pack and, wincing, gave up putting it on her back as a bad job. She slung it across her chest instead. "Pigeons for us from now on. Not that I'm complaining. I like pigeon," Finn declared to the tree, to the forest at large.

Nothing answered her, and she was glad for it.