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You narrow your eyes as the deer totters slightly, clearly doing its best to remain upright. It tries to still itself in an attempt to stay hidden, as though you aren’t staring it down even as it slowly but surely succumbs to blood loss. Seeing such vulnerable prey almost begging to be devoured sends your predatory instincts raring, even more so with the emptiness in your belly, but you rein your baser compulsions in.
Any lackwit could see that this deer is being hunted, and not just by yourself. But that begs the question, if the prey is here, where is the hunter? Nearby, you’d venture. But of what sort could they be? Some furred predator of the warm woodlands? The southern kin of the ice bears, or perhaps a great feline?
You look more closely at the protrusion and you at once deduce its nature. Many of the stories you were told involved clouds of these things whistling through the air like bolts of killing intent, burying themselves deep beneath the scales of many an overconfident drake. You have even seen some of their like before in your mother’s hoard, of dwarfish make with broad gilded heads and shafts of rich black wood, fletched with the feathers of some long-dead raptor.
There is no doubt in your mind. The object sticking out of the reindeer is an arrow, sunken deep into its side and likely grinding against its organs with every movement. And that can only mean one thing.
Two-legs. The people of the south.
Anticipation burns like a flame inside you. After years of hearing about them from your mother and gazing upon their stolen works, your first encounter with the southern folk is finally at hand! You wonder what manner of beings you have come across. Will they be dwarves, members of a remote surviving population, remainders from their great exodus from the Ered Mithrin after your kind drove them from their stone halls centuries ago? Or perhaps a roving band of the orcs that replaced them? Or are they men, or even elves? The deer lets out a low moan and stumbles, only barely catching itself.
Different options begin to array themselves in your head, and you watch all manner of scenarios play out in your mind’s eye. Should you claim the kill as your own, standing over its corpse as a conqueror from the north? Wait in ambush to slay them while they celebrate a successful hunt? Flee into the skies and hide your presence until you choose to reveal yourself to the world?
Eventually you choose another, wiser option. You elect to simply watch the situation unfold, staying unseen if you can and observing the situation before making any hasty decisions, and you press your body down into the marshy shoreline to hide your shape among the mounds and tall grass. A creature of fire and impulse you may be, but you can be a truly wily creature when necessary.
