Ryathane felt Aeylisia’s body tense beneath him, saw her muscles clench as if ready to strike. The boy backed away with feline reflexes, his hand hovering over the hilt of his short sword, ready to draw it from its sheath in an instant.
	[i]This is madness![/i] he thought with a quiet snort. He was helping someone who could very well turn against him in the blink of an eye. And, from the looks of it, she intended to do so.
	“If you want me to finish sewing your leg,” he began in a low growl, “then you need to [i]calm down.[/i]” He enunciated the last two words carefully, forcefully. “I take it your kind has never heard of sarcasm? I [i]meant[/i] that I didn’t expect them to declare who they were.”
	A silence fell between them. Ryathane crouched, still as a statue and eyes focused on Aeylisia, his hand frozen above the hilt of his weapon, wondering what was running through the elf’s mind. She could be plotting an attack--perhaps weighing the pros and cons of killing him here and now--or had simply fallen quiet, lost in other thoughts. Either way, he did not so much as exhale until the elf finally spoke again. As bitter as her tone was, getting an answer to his question was a good sign. At least in part.
	“That’s [i]all[/i] I wanted to know.” Slowly, Ryathane returned to finish up Aeylisia’s leg. “They were likely peasants. Villagers,” he said more thinking aloud than speaking to the elf. “Or maybe hired hands to expand a town.” He ran a list of the various towns north of their current position. He had not heard rumor of any needing to expand, but perhaps he had missed it.
	He quickly tied off the last of his stitches on Aeylisia’s leg, wiped the needle clean, then put all but the bandages back inside his small medical kit. He wrapped his sewing job up with the wad of bandages.
	“Done.” Ryathane wiped his hands on a fairly clean part of his hooded scarf, then put the medical supplies back in their box. He would need to pick up more. The thought made him sigh. “Don’t try walking on it for a while. It might feel fine now, but you wouldn't get more than half a step.”
	He closed the box, replaced it in his rugged pack, and stood. He looked into the shadows of the forest the way they had come, as if he could still see the body of the manticore they had slain, though even [i]his[/i] eyes could not see further than a couple yards ahead of them before the darkness turned into a black wall.
	"I have to take care of the manticore before something tries to run off with its carcass." Ryathane looked to Aeylisia, debating on if he wanted to waste time on asking and potentially following through with his next question. "Do you need me to build a fire first?"