Lyriia blushed deeper at the praise, wishing she was somewhat more used to dealing with flattery. [color=7bcdc8]“I’ve learned everything I know from Master Longarm. If anyone is to be commended, it’s him.”[/color]

She let herself be pulled along by the hand, though it was rather odd to her, physical contact with a fairy who wasn’t one of her brothers. [color=7bcdc8]“He’s got better things to do than run around a forest picking herbs in the middle of winter. He does seem to forget that I always get cold, but… I suppose it’s for the best.”[/color]

Distantly, she heard Ahmal say something about his own satchel of herbs. She didn’t miss the hesitation in his voice but didn’t press; she had a good idea of what those herbs were for. She knew many hunters used poison darts and arrows, especially fairy hunters. She knew her brothers, Gaeven and Kintaer, used poisons almost exclusively. They had to; they simply didn’t have enough strength to inflict a killing wound on any prey. 

What rather surprised her was that Ahmal made his own poison. Usually her brothers would ask her to make it, or they’d have to buy it at one of the shops in Silent Rise. It struck her as rather odd that a hunter would know enough about herbs to make an effective poison, as Ahmal’s had proven to be. Too often hunters who tried that would botch it and leave their prey ill and weak, but not dead.

She forced herself out of her thoughts, having seen a cloth sack on the ground, with various roots and berries scattered around it. [color=7bcdc8]“Oh, that’s mine.”[/color] She mumbled, releasing Ahmal’s hand—wait, she’d been holding his hand this whole time?—and touching down on the ground to throw the herbs back into the bag. Within a few seconds she had her satchel over her shoulder and was up in the air again, looking around worriedly. A snap of a twig in the woods made her flinch, but it proved to be nothing more than an extremely curious deer, staring at the two fairies with wide brown eyes.

[color=7bcdc8]“I’d imagine your own backpack can’t be too much farther along.”[/color] She said, flying back to Ahmal’s side. Arguably closer than politeness deemed necessary, but the woods were so dark, even with the intermittent moonlight, and he seemed so sure of where he was going.

She totally wasn’t staying so close just so that he’d hold her hand again.