The sun was warm and high in the afternoon sky when Roa rode into the opening of trees, decorated by the dancing spots of light filtered through the tree tops.
She made her horse, Happle, stand still - taking only three gracious attempts - and swung herself off into the soft, mossy ground.
Ignoring the thirst scratching faintly in her throat from all the riding she grabbed her bow and ducked underneath a tree in which three birds sat. She did not know their name, she should have checked the family library first, so she committed the feather dress of blue and white to her memory so that she could look them up later and perhaps find out what they sold at.
Her bow was drawn and aimed at the branch the feathered creatures found their resting place in. They jumped across it, and chirped carefree noises. She could feel her heart beating in her chest, like a hammer on an anvil, and wiped her sweaty hand on her outfit.
Calm down, she commanded herself, It´s just a bird! Doesn´t matter if you miss...
Taking a deep breath she let her arrow zoom into the tree, scaring the birds away and catching exactly none of them.
Shit.
She turned around to her horse, watching her with unimpressed eyes.
"Don´t laugh at me, you try and shoot an arrow! Asshole." Happle gave no response.
More bothered by her failure than she perhaps should be, she sat down against a tree. After looking through her rations, she had to find that her water was almost empty, a single apple was all that her pockets had to offer. Well great, now she had to find water as well.
For a second she closed her eyes. She could fall asleep like this. But she knew she´d never hear the end of it if she took a nap right in the forest.
Instead she took her belongings and decided to walk along the trees, perhaps she could locate a river. Or some more prey. Potential prey, she reminded herself.
The forests got deeper at this point, the soft bright green from before was replace by deeper, darker shades, the air got heavier, lonelier, perhaps even secretive.
She soon found herself at the border to what she liked to call the ´forbidden woods´. Not because they were, but because they might as well be. They just looked as if they should be. At least that´s what she told herself instead of the more accurate description of ´I´m too scared to spend longer than five breaths in these woods, woods´. But that really didn´t have a nice ring to it.
She always felt like someone was watching her in here. Bears, or wolves, or even worse, monsters, who could tell, her bedtime stories and warning certainly had been full of those.
Happle had gotten agitated as well, dancing on his legs and pulling on his reign.
"Yeah", she said to him, "not today."
Just as she was about to turn around she heard something rustling in the nearby bushes. Her body froze, then heated up really quickly.
With her stiff hands she grabbed her bow again and aimed it at the branches.
Please be prey, please be prey...