Praggy thanked the Night Mother for her luck on this night. She knew that a hunter's patience was often rewarded, and Praggy was not as impulsive as she was in her youth. And yet despite this, she had still grown bored and hungry from being in hiding, and so couldn't resist rising from the underbrush and trouncing into the flaming paradise in walking distance. The flames licked at her legs and arms compellingly, a little more hunting wouldn't do any harm, the night was still young after all.
She ventured into the blaze, and delighted in the carnage. She swung her weapons absentmindedly at the stray elk in flight, as well as attempted to pin some birds to nearby trees with her skewer. Yet, under the smell of cinders, the sweetness of humanity touched her senses, and so she quickly abandoned her cruel sport and skulked through the blackened trunks of the forest until she found them. It was a mere handful of menfolk that she found, who were stripping the branches from the surrounding trees or outright cutting many down as they tried to manage the fire's spread, endeavouring to save as much of the wilderness as they could as well as their homes. They did this even as they had to dodge and fend off fleeing wild animals. It was admirable in a way.
Focused on their task, none noticed as Praggy approached. With each step she began to breathe more deeply, dragging her cleaver and skewer through the earth behind her, now only a few dozen yards away. Inhaling and exhaling more and more of the molten air from the fires surrounding her with each breath, she was eventually drawing enough into her lungs that when she breathed out the flames nearby guttered and died.
Finally, she let the fire inside.
Only a short distance from the humans and concealed still by the smoke, Praggy bent over double and slowly straightened back up to her full height, gulping down first the air, then the smoke, then the very flames that surrounded her, all of which disappeared down her throat. Her lungs were filled with oily smog, and her stomach with pulsing heat. She then snaps her mouth shut like a trap, and stalks towards the unsuspecting sweetmeats. They did not turn or acknowledge her until it was too late. It was at that critical moment, as one turns to look in her direction by coincidence, that she regurgitates the fire she has swallowed, projecting it across the vulnerable clothes and flesh of the woodsmen. Even as they shouted in alarm at the all encompassing pain, the smoke roiled out of her lungs like a dark wave, obscuring vision and causing them to choke as they screamed.
It was just as she had envisioned earlier, they did not ever get to see their death.
And so it was that as the deep blue of the sky was leached away by the rising sun, Praggy returned to the clearing deeper in the forest, where the flames had not yet touched. Her chest now adorned with a pair of freshly plucked human skulls, flanking the one belonging to the she-bear from earlier. It was a grisly trinket made by passing string through the eye-sockets, the other remains of the skull donors giving a hollow jangle from the sack at her hip with each step. Once back in the clearing she had poured the bones into the bonfire, now many feet in height, to crack and splinter under the heat alongside the bones removed from the Bear's carcass. All that was left being a crude spit holding the meat off the ground and near the flames.
Whilst cleaning up after herself in this fashion, Praggy observed that the bear cubs had fled in her absence. Poor little dears, she had hoped to let them sup on the meat she had so diligently prepared, allow their mother to feed them one last time. Her hands now caked in ash, sticking to her skin thanks to the coagulating blood, Praggy pulls apart the bushes and sidles back into her hiding place, once more sitting perfectly still, except for her ears, twitching every so often with the delightful sound of some errant insect going pop in the fire.
Then, footfalls, Praggy's ears pricking up at the sound and swivelling in the direction of what could only be footfalls. They came from the heart of the burning patch of forest, which made them doubly impossible, she would have surely smelt them, should have caught any person's scent and recognised them for what they were, but no, she was caught off guard. She fought to crouch still as something came closer, drawing near almost undetected, on two legs no less.
She waits, patiently, as the foliage opposite her disguised presence parts, and permits the scentless ghost to enter the clearing, just out of Praggy's sight. She leans forwards, shifting the leaves obscuring her sight ever so slightly and slowly, to spy out at the newcomer for the first time. Who was...human...shaped.
The figure before her was just over half her height, two arms, legs and a head, like a human. But so strange it was to see one with such an ashen pallor in Adela of all places. Even more morbidly enticing was that the stark bundle of hair contrasted with the black accents of the eyes and fingertips in such a way that the lithe body looked like a freshly cleaned skeleton, unappetising in the extreme. They also wore raven feathers around their shoulders, and across their back, a long-handled hammer, similar to one Praggy would use to tenderise meat.
This was a warrior, and a creature a shade different than normal humanity. A new daughter come to join the slaughter? Though the being looked the part to join the Family, that was yet to be seen...
Should they choose to run, Praggy assured herself she could pin them in place by skewering their cloak to the earth. Should they fight, she'd add their bones to the fire, it was as simple as that. It was worth chancing, giving the child an invitation of sorts, a test, to see if they could be welcomed into the Night Mother's bosom.
The birds scattered from the clearing as Praggy rose from her squatting position, branches and flora bending and snapping as her bulk forces through them. As the mountain of muscle slowly rises, she steps out into the fire light, on the opposite side of the flames from the stranger but her being tall and obvious enough to tower over even that obstacle. She steps close to the spitted meat, ignoring her companion's reaction for now, in favour of raising her cleaver in the growing morning light, and bringing it down with a sickening "Thock", separating a joint of meat from the seared cadaver. Gripping the greasy bone in one fist, she steps around the fire finally, her grin nearly splitting her face in two, as she raises the flesh and her fist in greeting.
"Hello, my Sweet."
She has a voice like that of an old woman but distorted as if filtered through a pool of water and reverberating through the ground thanks to its deep bass tones. Her common is slurred and rounded, even more so as her mouth curls into a wide smile with that last syllable, her words echoing slightly in the cavern of her throat. The same was true for her rasping laughter which followed. Shoulders shaking and so making the skull necklace knock on her collarbone, the human skulls looking like they were chuckling themselves. Praggy then pulls her shoulder back and swings her arm out, lugging the hunk of burnt carcass at her guest's feet.
"You smelt the delicious char, didn't you child?...Come, have some, you look positively sickly." she said, stressing those words that felt good in her mouth. This was not the true test, merely courtesy. The test would come after introductions, Praggy assures herself, hanging back and away from the shifting person, her meaty fingers wrapping a beat absentmindedly on one of the human skulls. She grins wider suddenly, all her teeth being either tusks or fangs, and seeks to goad the skinny waif by saying "It's made with a mother's love, I promise it." Praggy said and cackled once more, taking steps closer towards them.
Now that she was so close, she could see the full extent of the creature's strangeness, like one of the fey-folk from the Southeast but drab and grey. But in truth it was the smell that betrayed the most information, a smell so subtle and dark it had escaped her notice until now. Praggy now flared her nostrils and brought in the stench of a curse, appreciating the nature of the rotten blight on this shade's life.
The smile, impossibly, widens again. "I am Prag'Mal'Dora, child. What. Are. You?" she accuses, her cleaver pointing at the person's heart, and a curious dark glint in the ogre's eye.
