He waited, staring between the trees, listening with a ready focus, eager for any hint of a reply. But none came. And he was startled into a distracted flinch when the woman in charge of his chain lay back. He’d forgotten her, for a moment. When he turned back, the play of light and shadow had changed. Ripples across a surface now, eyes blinking. The trees were whispering.

Shaking himself out of his hopeful daze, the youth stretched out of his squat until he was standing upright. His head tilted; the shadows shifted in their turn. He huffed; a breeze returned the favour, curling across his skin and running gentle fingers through his hair as he lidded his eyes and purred. 

When he looked again, the air was empty, dancing light once more. Matiir sneezed, licking his lips and yawning at the vanished watcher before dropping back to his knees and finding a comfortable place to curl up in the roots of the tree where he was chained. He was tired, and here was safe. Sleep came quickly, and he didn’t stir when the lights drifted near on an invisible current, nor when the fire extinguished itself with a hiss of smoke and shifting branches. 

High amongst the leaves of the tree Matiir was curled under, eyes blinked open, borrowing the flame’s vibrant light as the tall figure leaned down to look upon her visitors. The bark paled and shifted, stretching as she moved, until a slender body pulled free to crouch over the chained youth. Clothed in the wisps of moonlight that reached through the branches around them like skeins of silk, the nymph was dark, rippled wood, too thin to be human, too tall, too stretched. Her fingers were twigs as she bent them beneath the chain and pulled it away from the trunk as though it was a living snake, with gentle care, but no concern for knots or connected links. 

And free it came, curling around her hands just as she imagined it should, so that when the rasp of leather and desperate breaths that heralded Samaire’s awakening reached her, the chain had been sliding up her arm. Distracted, however, it crumpled back into limply hanging between her fingers as she turned to stare at the human come into her grove. [i]Sal shuor… Ivenna?[/i]

The voice came from all directions, creaking faintly, in what was, for a tree nymph, a youthful manner. She’d made herself no mouth, not knowing its importance amongst other creatures. And had started with an admonishment about the fire, before thinking to ask if she was understood.