Within the town the barmaid nodded her head, wife to the tavern's owner she was well past her maiden years. Hair once auburn brown now was heavily flecked with grey and kept back in a crowning braid. Her face freckled from the work under the sun and the hands steady as she delievered two mugs of barely ale to the early drinking huntsmen, one hand going to Andre for payment. "Two coins." She stated simply, her voice neither hard on the ear nor light on it. Common enough, this woman. The first rays of the sun's light were breaking through the pre-dawn and filling the small tavern as she took what payment was given, stored it away, and resumed to sweeping the floors free of the prior night's debris.

One huntsman looked the the young stranger, for incredibly strange twas he. Older and more haggard than his companion, he spoke with a raspy voice of one whose been about mountain or wood for some time. "Ol' Lutter went out hunting. Suppose to be he's got inter a scrape with a wolf. Worse thing- says aint no weapon ken hit the spirit that rides it." The other hunter- younger, his beard thick with crumbs from his meal. "Oh, sure. Thinkin' I'm a old fool!" The aged hunter admonished the younger. "But if that spirit wolf wants blood... It'll be from our herds and our lot. A spirit needs blood to hold onto the natural plane."

"So the Shaman says," The younger argued. "But that spirit you're so fond of would get it's blood from the wolf it's ridin'! Let them feed each other." Draining the ale he was brought he spoke to Andre. More assured of his own knowledge. "If yer askin' me I'd say it was just a wolf and Lutter was drunk. A old wolf and a old fool to match." The younger declared, chuckling a bit at the thought. For it was well known wolves were clever creatures and the old ones especially so. It would not be a stretch to think a old wolf outwitted a drunk old man.

The sun was still walking it's course within the forest, while there was talk within the tavern. As Cassandra reached the forest's edge the birds were singing their first songs of the day. Wood life was shifting from the night to the day creatures and leaves were a rustle with the hungry squirrel looking for breakfast. A small trail of the prior night ran across the entrance she took, a young deer fromt he looks of things. Wandering towards a stream perhaps a good quarter of an hour away. Not a bad place for a herd of them to pause for rest and grazing. Sheltered under trees with the river near by and high grasses and brush. They could have bedded down or perhaps grazed and moved on. The rustling of leaves further ahead signaled some other game as it moved deeper into the forest. A flash of color as a partridge scurried from one bush to another. Keeping to cover and feasting on the berries summer brought.

Deeper into the forest however, Kyranna was led. The tracks she followed were not so much tracks as signs of passing. Broken twigs and bushes. The odd indent of the grass. The tracks she did find were odd. Too small for bear and too wide for wolf. Not enough heel for a human either. A squirrel scurried from her path and up a tree, barking obscenities at her for disrupting his meal of nuts and berries and his work of storing away the former. The low call of a bird echoed as it fluttered from branch to branch. Assured in it's safety thanks to a pair of feathery wings. If she continued to follow the tracks they would lead to a stream, the sides of it rocky and strewn with debris such a stream would leave. The leaver of the tracker not there, and no obvious sign as to where the beast would go from there.

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