2
The hairs standing up on her arms were finally starting to go down.
Bianca waited a while in her hiding spot, listening intently for anything that might have followed or found her. When her heart finally stopped thudding in her chest, she hoped it was safe enough to make her way back to her troupe’s camp.
Horace wasn’t anywhere in sight, and neither were any of the tracks he’d made on the way into the woods.
For the next hour or longer, she scrambled through full, prickly bushes with the quickly fading light, stumbling shin-first through many plants.
One thicket of trees was so dense and so wide she supposed to herself that she had turned entirely around the other way trying to get around it.
She wouldn’t really. She had only been walking a few moments, and as long as she continued in a straight line, she would be able to find her way around the thicket.
Or, no, that wasn’t it. It would be a curved line, hugging the edge of the thicket.
Bianca frowned, glancing around. No, she had lost the edge of the thicket too.
Oh no.
It was so dark. If only she’d thought to bring a torch and flint earlier. She turned around in circles frantically, looking for any bit of campfire light to peek through the treeline. It was dark in every direction. She could barely see her hand before her.
Worst came to worst, perhaps she could curl up in a tree for the night if she had to, and find her camp in the morning. Though that heavily depended on whether she could actually climb a tree.
She turned around again, hoping she was headed back where she came from. She kicked through the undergrowth, trampling one plant after another as she made her way forward. Finally the first glimpse of a flickering light caught her eye in the distance, and she hurried towards it.
Normally the Hyphae circled their camp in fallow fields barely off the main road when there were no nearby towns to find a bed at. There was no such open space here. When she’d last seen it, trees stood even in the middle of the camp, and to fit the circle some caravans were awkwardly placed almost flushed against trees and rocky outcrops, some angled drastically against the tumultuous landscape.
Her relief was short lived, however, as she drew nearer and realized the light was from a single campfire tucked against the underside of a small cliff.
Bianca stopped short, hiding partially behind a tree as she looked on.
The orc from before.
Finally she let herself exhale, just a bit. There was a fallen log he had made his seat at as he turned a skewered giant rat over the fire. The rat looked almost normal sized next to him.
His cowl was pulled back, revealing the little tuft of tied back hair, the shaved sides of his head, the pointed green ears, little tears and piercings decorating the edges.
The fire crackled and popped. Every few seconds a bit of fat melted from the blistering rat and dripped, sizzling onto the fire. It was making her stomach grumble just looking at it, and she’d never liked eating charred rats.
He looked up from the skewered rat when she approached. He said nothing, but regarded her cautiously. Of course.
“Thank you for…earlier. And sorry for um, any inconvenience right now,”
she whispered, eyes downcast to the fire. She went ahead and sat down on the fallen log next to him.
His frown deepened. He didn’t say anything, just grunted. “Hm.”
Bianca swallowed to get her fear under control. She needed to show a brave front. “Scared me half to death with that silent act of yours. Coulda let me know we were allies.”
“We’re not,”
he said quietly, and Bianca suddenly felt that she was far too close to him for comfort.
She pleaded with her eyes silently, hoping that whatever reasons he had spared her in the woods would also preserve her now. Maybe halflings were more trouble than they were worth to orcs. She didn't really know, being only a traveler through these parts.
“W-we could be allies,”
she stuttered, trying to think desperately for anything. “What’s your name?”
He was quiet several long moments, to the point she did not think he would deign to answer her further. At last he sighed and nudged the campfire with the tip of his boot, rolling a log deeper into the flames. “Tanis, son of Dhane the Bloodthirsty, son of Dhullen the Unwise, kin of Garac the Bonecrusher, daughter of Res—”
“Bianca,”
she interrupted him before he could trace his entire lineage and their exploits. She was half afraid he would list someone in his ancestry named ‘Halfing-Eater’.
After a long moment of staring, he prompted her, “…Kin of?”
“Just, um, Bianca Chanterelle,”
she shrugged. She could try to name her parents to him but it wasn’t like he would know who a couple of random Halflings were.
Tanis lifted one quizzical, near judgmental eyebrow. Oh, so the weirdos that don’t do second names at all will judge her for a perfectly common Halfling name? She wasn’t about to let that pass.
She dug through her basket until she found the particular orange floret she was looking for.
“Chanterelle,”
she said, waving the mushroom that shared her name.
Tanis’ eyes followed her hand as she waved it. She tore the chanterelle in half and offered one to him, biting into her piece.
He took it, and tried a nibble. She watched as he contemplated it, then added it to the long thin skewer with the singed rat.
“Kin to mushrooms,”
he said, a grimace of a smile playing on his face, like he had a fishhook caught in the corner of his mouth. He made amusement look positively morbid.
“I… yeah,”
Bianca nodded, trying not to back away suddenly. The firelight dancing across his tusked grin was definitely not helping with her heart rate. She returned her gaze to the basket, though only a few mushrooms were left in it. “I like finding them all over the Warlock’s Coast. It makes new places feel like home, y’know?”
He didn’t answer, and for several moments there was only the sound of the wind and the fire before them, crackling as more fat sizzled off the giant rat. Maybe it was a little silly to talk to an orc about mushrooms. The Hyphae troupe could talk endlessly about all the different variations and species and where they’d spotted some, but that was easily interesting to most halflings. And Silvan forbid– if there was a pair of lookalike species, that would spark debates for weeks.
“Do you have uh, friends in the area? Or family? Are uh, Dhane and Garac there?”
Bianca tried, looking earnestly at her orc companion.
The light from the fire flickered across his stoic face.
“There’s a camp. Northwest. Some other rangers in the wood.”
“Oh! That’s nice. It’s so good to have people to keep you company. Were you all hunting for food?”
“No.”
Bianca huffed a breath. This guy was like making conversation with a wall.
After a few moments, he added, unbidden, “There were some… betrothal rituals I wanted to avoid today.”
“Like a friend’s? Or ex lover?”
She asked a little too quickly. It was hard not to have a nose for gossip in her own acting troupe, where there was always someone being cheated on or broken up with.
“My own.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
It looked like a touchy topic. His face had darkened somehow even more than its usual less than cheery state. His hands had curled into fists. Bianca quickly tried something else.
“...Did you end up bringing down that huldira? From before?”
she asked. Those in her acting troupe with training in stage fighting often liked to dissect the choreography of a fight they’d seen, even spontaneous ones. “How many, uh, arrows did it take?”
He shook his head. “I wounded it, but it got away.”
Suddenly, the impenetrable dark depths of the Whispering Woods seemed that much more hostile, with the thought of a wounded, angry huldira skulking about.
“Oh. Are you going to… get it tomorrow?”
she tried, hoping that it might be that simple. The beast seemed a lot more ferocious than any game she’d eaten, but maybe it wasn’t unusual for this neck of the woods.
“I was never going to kill it alone. We were tracking it so a larger hunting party might stand a chance of bringing it down.”
On that, Bianca scooted a little closer on the log to her orc companion, allies or not.
This forest might become home if she didn't make it back to her acting troupe’s camp. And considering this evening’s events, she would not make it very long.
Bianca felt a pang of guilt for Horace – the poor old thing didn’t deserve to get eaten by a vicious monster.
She wondered if they were worried about her, if they had realized she was gone too long. Would they look for her? Or was she one less mouth to feed as their supplies ran low? If she could find her way back, would they care about all the brushes with death she’d had today, or just that she came back empty handed? It wasn’t like she was bringing a lot of value to their shows. Anyone could open and close the curtains on cue.
“You were looking for these?”
Tanis asked, suddenly a conversationalist. She followed his gaze to her near-empty basket of foraged mushrooms. “Before.”
She nodded.
“I know a clearing full of them, stone’s throw from here.”
Bianca couldn’t disguise the hope that leapt into her chest. If she could bring some back with her, then she wasn’t useless. Her head whipped around. “Will you show me?”