“So, hunting?” I asked as we all sat around the fire, preparing to leave the forest.
“Hunting,” Fen answered.
“Oh, should we make it a competition?” Wren asked.
“Might as well.” He shrugged.
“Girls against boys?” I asked, smirking.
“I’d hate to give the new girl unfair odds.” Kai pursed his lips to conceal his contagious smile.
“Challenge accepted. Nothing so big we can’t carry it through the mountains,” I leaped to my feet.
“Deal,” Fen said, grinning at me as he rose and slung his own weapon behind his back.
We separated from the guys, Wren and I going one way, them going the other.
“Shall we go invisible?” she asked.
“Might as well use our advantage.”
We walked back-to-back, me checking the treetops and her scouring the ground.
“Bunny,” she whispered, pulling an arrow.
“Got it?”
She nodded and shot it right through the eyes.
“Nice shot,” I whispered.
We kept moving. I took down two birds before she had another, and again, her shot was perfect. I hadn’t given her credit for weaponry skills. But she was a southerner, of course she would have them.
“Deer,” she said.
“Too big,” I answered.
We moved forward, and she yanked on me. “Troll.”
I should have known from the sour smell in the air.
“I have an idea,” I said with an evil grin, though she couldn’t see it. “How far do you think the guys are?”
“Hard to say, but they have Lichen. I bet we can find them. He is hardly quiet.”
I picked up every small stick and rock I could find before the troll got too far away. I threw a rock, and he stopped, turned toward us, and took a few steps.
“Start moving in their direction, I’ll get him to follow. Fen will see us, so we still have to stay behind the trees.”
“Trolls are that dumb?” she asked.
“Not all, but some are. I don’t think we have a real winner here. His trousers are on backwards.” I paused. “And definitely inside out.”
“You seriously want Fen to hate you, don’t you?”
“Something like that.” I threw another rock.
We wound our way through the scattered trees. The troll stopped three times. Once to use the bathroom, once to smell a tree and the third time to try to catch a firetipfly, on which he burned his hand, whined, and kept coming. I had to replenish my rock supply four times until I finally heard a twig snap up ahead.
