Caillte was not as alone as he might have thought.
In the trees above him, a young jaguar picked her way across the thick branches, her soft paws silent on the bark, her movements graceful and practiced. She was a hunter who had brought down prey larger than him; she knew how to move like a ghost. But this one was lucky, because she wasn't hunting him, because he was Human.
Instead, Raxta followed him, her ears perked and eyes wide and curious. He wasn't the first human she'd encountered, and her few experiences had been odd and varied, some good, some bad. It was the bad that made her err on the side of caution now, and it was the bad that made her wary and a little nervous of his presence, because he was carrying a big blade, and it was the bad ones with the blades that hunted and trapped her kind--a fact she had only learned recently, when she had barely escaped a hunter's net.
She paused as he started through some thicker bush, and she waited until he was several steps within it and distracted with it before she bunched her muscles up and sprang from one branch to the next, landing securely on the next branch, though it rocked and rustled and made more noise than she would have liked. She climbed further up the trunk, vanishing where the leaves were thickest, and froze to watch him some more. He was an odd one, to be sure. He had a sharp knife, he could cut the foliage to make it easier for him! But he didn't, which was odd, and--
Oh.
Oh no.
Raxta's breath caught in her throat, because from her vantage point she could see what the human couldn't.
Just up ahead, just through the bushes he was pushing through, a small group a peccaries foraged for food.
A small group of peccaries that not even Raxta would mess with, ever, and that would tear the human to pieces before he even knew what happened.
For a second, she debated getting involved. He could be a Bad Human in which case, no loss! But what if he wasn't? And did it matter either way? It wouldn't be her fault he got eaten alive by the pigs, it would just be the natural way of things.
But that was certainly a horrible way to go...
With a low sigh, Raxta shifted from leopard to human-ish, and shifted her weight and adjusted to her new center of gravity--and, you know, having to balance on a branch without claws, though she still had her tail to help. She reached up to snap off some smaller twigs, then took quick aim and tossed them at the man in quick succession to get his attention.
"Pssst. Hey," she hissed, leaning down over the branch. "Don't go that way."