It had started out as a rare, fine day: little ruffles of wind had brushed tender fingers over the long shanks of the foothills, breathing over the sea of grasses like a lover's whisper in the ear. The whole sky seemed brilliantly blue, cupped in the palms of the horizon, with the jagged edges of stony crags outlining the western edge of the world, but falling away to near infinity to the south and east. The air held that queer mixture of coolness and warmth, poised on the edge of spring, but unwilling to release the faint briskness of winter quite yet. Overall, everything had seemed quite right with the world: utterly peaceful, and better yet, utterly empty.
Eira had always preferred solitude to crowds, though she certainly appreciated the opportunity for observation that throngs provided. But she'd felt so claustrophobic lately, the confines of human society wrapping vicious fingers around her other-ness, choking her in a way that she wasn't familiar with at all - at least, not outside of her old family home. And oddly enough, she'd been feeling so much less human recently - the pressing masses of people in cities were the worst, of course, but she'd found that even small villages had been too much. She'd needed something far emptier than a country lane: she'd needed wide-open skies, and absolute solitude. She really just needed to get away, and the mountains had been the best place for that.
Now, as though buoyed by the breeze at her back, she had chosen today to begin her descent back to humanity. Even though she was eager to return to the cities and the libraries that they held, she took her time, savoring the sweetness of mornings filled only with sunshine and the pleasantly-mild exercise of walking. She'd found the cabin in the early afternoon, and though she didn't particularly need to rest, she'd stopped there anyway, feeling an odd kinship with the abandoned little building: partly rundown, lonely, but still standing, despite everything. And it had faithfully done just that: stood stalwartly around her as she ducked inside, scouting out the simple two-room layout, unslinging her bag from her shoulder as she ducked into the back room. It wasn't particularly large, and there was nothing more than the half-rotted frame of a bed, a stone bench, and a candlestick, but it felt... homey.
The rain had come on quite suddenly, but Eira was used to the sudden ferocity of mountain storms. She didn't expect the rain to lighten up until dawn, at least, but it made no difference, anyways; it wasn't even midnight yet, and she could take her time traveling. She'd sat amid the tatters of the old bed, cushioned with pine boughs that she'd fetched from the surrounding woods and reading by the guttering light of one of her last candles, when she heard the noise. Nearly indistinct amid the downpour, but unmistakably a creaking of rusted hinges to her acute hearing, it could be nothing but the front door.
Eira closed the book silently, tucking it under a bristly branch of hemlock and pine, and stood, moving through the room like a ghost. The image was enhanced by the linen shift that fluttered, deathly pale against milk-white limbs, and the near silence of her passage. Pausing only briefly at the door, her hand hovering over the small knob for just a moment, she twisted, stepping through the opening in a flutter of gauzy garments to see....
... some half-clothed wretch, kneeling on the fireplace. The image was so incongruous with what she had been expecting that a sharp bark of laughter was forced from her throat, one hand flying up to hover over the hollow in her collarbone. Her eyes were wide with imagined fears, but the truth before her was really laughable. From what she could see, he was a skinny little thing, young enough and hardly worth the effort of catching and killing, had she been her dragon self-
'Stop that!' Her voice was stern in her own thoughts, pushing aside the beast that always lurked in the back of her mind. No time for that now. One hand resting lightly on the jut of her hip, she raised a pale eyebrow, looking both amused and unsettled at the same time. "Bit of a wet night for exploring. Who are you?"