For all that his hometown had been turned upside down, life out in the forest felt as if it had never changed. He'd nearly lost himself once his feet found their way across the old, familiar paths. The winding, wooded trails that he'd walked as a child somehow still leading him to the secret places of his youth. He'd felt a weight leave his shoulders upon stepping through the underbrush into a secluded clearing he'd claimed for himself back then.

Life was simpler then, and this was his little hideout. Still was. A little smaller than it had been back as a boy, but it felt like even the trees had welcomed him back into this nostalgic little hole after so long. Branches wove together tightly overhead, filtering through rays of orange-tinged evening light across a carpet of dried leaves. It was warm. It was a home, just slightly away from his home.

He spent so long just soaking in that feeling that his camp had only barely been constructed under the sleepy watch of those last, few dwindling lights. A whole day wasted, just like that. He would have beat himself up over it, but couldn't bring himself to stay disappointed as for long.

The next day his hunt began. Crisp, morning air filled his lungs, carrying with it the heady scent of loam and resin. He was a hunter, like his mother before him. She'd taught him how to set camp, how to track his game, how to care for and use the tools of his trade. There was a relationship to be maintained between the hunter and the land. To not try and take more than necessary, to respect the boundaries it set. This far from the fae forest it wasn't likely to run across the sort of monstrous serpents Ser Valen's knights had hauled back, but it never hurt to be careful. It wasn't difficult for a hunter to become the hunted.

There were, after all, scarier things out here than snakes.