For all his perceived dick-like behaviour, the absolute-loving Dunmer was not wrong in his assumptions, for a mere eyes distance away among the tall grass and vegetation was the spot where they had been watched ever since their arrival. Covered in the earth of her land and the sweat of her body she had waited, watching, [i]studying[/i] the strangers with a state of mind and attentiveness as ingrained into her mind as the green markings were into her flesh. A couple of feet behind her was a scene that would have been scoffed at by most 'experienced woodsmen'; a small gathering of grass and river reeds for a bed, a stone for a pillow, the smallest fire she could get away with building, and a half-day-old carcass of a roasted piglet – it was from this place that she had watched and waited, and now decided that it was time to approach her apparent [i]employer[/i].

It had taken some weeks to travel from the interior of Valenwood to, what to her and her people at least, was the farthest away from home that she dared travel. She had never even been to Arenthia before, in spite of it laying upon her very doorstep, and place of outsiders and stone buildings – odd sights, odd smells, no good to her - and even coming this far out of her life among the tall trees made her feel vulnerable and consistently on edge; for this reason she had rarely let the smooth feeling of her bow leave the grip of her hand, her palm feeling empty without it.

Why was she even here? A question she could not really answer, the messenger – and the Clan Mother besides – telling her very little, perhaps neither really knowing much, and it was even as she stood and began to make her way out of the long grass that she began to think that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all.

Ah, the feeling of riverbed silt between her bare toes, now [b]that[/b] was something she did not mind the feeling of! Something made quite obvious by the way she moved out of the fringe of grass, her pure black eyes constantly moving this way and that – not that one would be able to tell without the presence of a visible [i]sclera[/i] – as she knelt down and rummaged a fistful of it through her digits. It was different to the soil further in the forest, drier due to the sun that beat down upon her exposed skin and yet more absorbent for all that, just another oddity to remember on the return journey.

Remaining squatted down, already short enough but becoming even shorter, she duck-waddled over to the edge of the river and knelt beside it. Ever guarded she had waited for the Dunmer to take his seat at the camp sight once more before making her way to the waters edge, her bow and quiver pressed against her bare back and her hatchet and dagger secure on each hip (just in case...), dipping her cupped hands into the water and allowing it to slip between her lips and sharpened teeth. It bought a sigh of satisfaction from her, and only now did she even bother to look back at the clearly nervous Imperial and his dour friend.

Why was the Man, the one she assumed was the Imperial by the way his ears rounded at the tips and his almost rotund face, wearing a shell of metal? In this heat? Perhaps he was touched in the mind?

"Hector!"

The shout from nearby was enough to snap what little bravery she had gathered to meet these strangers, her nerve finally snapping, and in milliseconds of motion she had snatched her bow from about her shoulders and levelled an arrow directly at the thin interloper. 

"It's me, Roland."

Row-land?

She must have looked slightly ridiculous stood in the middle of a river, the water washing about her feet (and pleasant it was too), a bow with a nocked arrow threatening to impale one who may well be important to this endeavour. Aye, dressed as she was in almost nothing, and with her diminutive height, to many it may well have looked comical...but to those who knew anything about the Bosmer, well, there was much less reason to smile at her expense.