[I]DAY 4 (I HOPE)

Dra gged underwater by some   big fishman. Diffic ult to write with ch A RCOAL stick but I try. POTIONS LOST - food an d water gone.--- driEd everyth ing else up on   the beach. Just packed. I think   fishy has go ne back to mainland.

Smells like d eath here but im ok. My nose hurts fr o m the seawater thouGH. I see   a boat. Wont  be     long.[/I]

Abigail sighed, binding the buckled pages of the book shut and tucking the burnt twig behind her ear. She was no stranger to hardships; physical exertion and sleeping rough were part of the job description when it came to becoming a huntress, and before that she had her own taste of what the world really had to offer. She watched the silhouette of the ship on the horizon as it slowly drifted towards the desert island and, with a smile, she scooped up her backpack from the floor and climbed a tree.

Captain Drystan found it first; the dusty ash in a circle of rocks, the embers still warm to the touch...scuff marks in the sand and the dirt, footprints scattered haphazardly about. There was no doubt that it was a campsite and a recently abandoned one at that...but the tracks lead to a point in the undergrowth and simply vanished as the trees became thicker. The camp was set up just on the shore, where the grass met the sand dunes - far enough from the gloom of the trees and the inky depths of the sea. There were smiley faces scratched into the dirt.

[i]I DON T. THINK THEY A RE HUNTERS[/i]

Abigail scrawled it quickly into her diary and rummaged around her backpack as the bedraggled men and women spilt over the beaches. She pulled something from its depths and left it to hang in the branches by tying the straps to the tapering boughs. Tree climbing, for a rural girl who got lost in one of the largest and arguably dangerous forests in the land, was a piece of cake. It required three simple skills; an understanding of how much one weighs, a good judgement, and enough body strength to carry one's weight. In most situations, climbing was the best form of hiding. You were out of your opponents imminent line of sight and, provided you were light footed and slow enough, there were few reasons to look up. There were exceptions to the rule but it was obvious that these...pirates, were seeking to find the monster Abigail had affectionately named 'Mr. Fishy’, slaughter it, and acquire all of its treasure. The monster was unlikely to start trying to leap into opponents from above, so Abigail took the safest route and scooted along the oaks and Aspens.

Abigail spotted Donnel first, a few leagues away from her position and intent on finding something - presumably the aforementioned monster. All she really did was stop, stare, and let the pirate pass before circling around him and eventually overtaking him. She was high enough in the canopy to manage it without making too much noise and far enough to avoid suspicion. The rest of her trip took her across the island, creeping over the heads of several simpler pirates and spending a great deal of time squished against the trunk of a tree. Compared to one seamonster, an island swarming with pirates seemed like the greater of two evils. There was another problem too - she was running out of trees.

The smell of rot was pungent enough to make Abigail gag as she reluctantly slid down from her vantage point and his in between the algae-slick rocks near the cave. She was hidden in a crescent shaped alcove that opened to face the cliffs instead of the sea; a crack eroded by waves long ago. It was a tight fit, even for a little runt like Abigail, but it was the best way to take a good look at who comes in and out of the beast's front door. It also banked on the assumption that at this distance the pirates would be wholly focused on actually getting into the cave itself and certainly did not account for Iva, who was more focused on everything around the cave.

If Iva could track the monster on smell alone then she was more than capable of seeing Abigail. What Iva saw was a girl - barely out of her teens, with a physique that brought to mind a blonde stick insect. She had lengthy straight blonde hair tied back, tight fitting clothes with patches on them, and was traversing the rocks in a pair of knitted socks with leather soles stitched on. She looked like a civilian but moved like a natural, almost (but not quite) as good as Iva. Even from such a distance Iva could see the girl consider her route, crouch down and traverse the inhospitable landscape without so much as losing her footing. She could easily see where the girl went to hide and once she had wiggled inside the crevasse, Iva could see her no more.