Were Kelter paying as much attention as when he had found the girl, then it would not take him long to notice something out of place when he returned home. A strange smell permeated the air, one of uninvited guests. It wasn't quite human, but it most certainly wasn't dragon either, masked by the scent of the oils commonly found on the residents of Essyrn. This discrepancy was not without good cause, as a visitor had indeed arrived soon after the dragon left. More accurately, this visitor was still within the cavern.
Emma White, petty thief and treasure hunter extraordinaire, was following a lead. It had come to her attention recently that, despite their usual lack of presence in the Essyrn area, a greater dragon had decided to take up a roost near the mountains not too far from Zantaric. While this was still quite a distance away from home, it was an opportunity that could not be missed; after all, where there were greater dragons, there tended to be treasure as well. So, with little hesitation, the child of the desert had packed up her meager belongings for the trip and set out towards the city of rouges and it's nearby mountain range in search of dragon gold.
While the journey had been longer than her usual ones, Emma took the obstacles the sand provided in stride, her only real issue being supplies lost in a sand worm attack. Still, this seemed of little consequence, as she would easily be able to replace them with the money she would make from this venture (assuming there was money to be made, though such a prospect had long since left the burglar's mind). The forests weren't difficult to traverse either, being both much smaller than the desert and with more readily available protection from wildlife in the form of treetops. Mountains as well provided little resistance, as a feline's balance and climbing abilities were far superior to the usual traffic of humans.
Finding the cave itself had been, quite frankly, a very lucky break. Having been exploring the cliffs for only a day and a half, our light-fingered heroine had decided to sleep on a plateau she had spotted not far from her intended course. Despite having little more than an empty sack to her name by this point, Emma had quickly nodded off to sleep, and passed the remained of the afternoon this way. She only awoke when a large mass rather abruptly shot out of the hillside near her perch, very nearly causing her to fall down the tumbling slope to a bitter end on the rocks below. Fortunately she had caught the root of a nearby scruffy bush, and hauling herself back to safety wasted no time in rushing off towards what must have been (and indeed was) the den of the dragon she sought.
While it is true that the initial discovery of the cave had brought the girl great joy, the intervening hours since her discovery had done little for her temperament. No matter how hard she looked, how long she searched, Emma simply could not find any sort of treasure. While the initial opening was of a decent size, the cavern soon funneled off into various small, twisting pathways that never seemed to end, and which rapidly grew too dark for even her to see in. She had not thought to bring a torch, a fact that irritated her further, and it was quite some time before she thought to go back and salvage a few branches from the bush that saved her to use for fire. Fetching this had consumed quite some time as well, as it quickly became clear that getting back to her ledge took much more work than leaving it had, the only way back up being treacherous and loose. Even once she had acquired the tinder, it only served to irritate her further, as she soon found her flint had been lost in the incident with the sand worm. This new grievance was enough for her to lose her temper completely, throwing sticks and sack about the mouth of the cave as if hoping to wound the stones themselves with her wrath.
Luckily, Emma was nothing if not aware of her surroundings, and the distant beat of wings picked up by her sharp ears had interrupted her mid-tantrum. With the reflexes of a seasoned criminal, she had immediately found cover crouched behind a large rock near the back of the main cavern, before the first turn. She'd recovered her sack, but was forced to surrender her hard earned tinder to where it lay strewn about the space, hoping that a creature so large might simply fail to notice the tiny things on its way in. Reflexively, a knife found its way into her right hand, a fistful of sand from some hidden pouch in the other. An afterthought brought her goggles down over her eyes in case of fire, and knowing full well that despite her small size the hiding spot was just the tiniest bit undersized.
