The note of smoked meat did not escape Zilmiel's sensitive nostrils nor the flicker of his draconic tongue. His brilliant blue gaze caught sight of the distant smoke column when he spiraled around his position for the second time, though he could not see the isolated building nor its occupants, let alone the woman whose aim had him in her sights. But with the enthralling savory notes overwhelming his senses, it was now or never: Zilmiel flexed his wings and dove downwards, sending a plume of leaves shooting well above the canopy as he landed on the boreal mulch, hidden from the clearing by five hundred meters of trees, bush, and other foliage.
Leaves crunched under his feet as Zilmiel tried to stoop close to the ground, his wings helplessly flaunting their awesome breadth and protruding horns. A glacial stream trickled somewhere nearby, no doubt concealed by foliage and decaying leaves. Sunlight cut through the tree gaps, forming path-like spots of light meandering throughout the forest while leaving plenty of shade for creatures and other wanderers for concealment. Zilmiel roughly followed one such "path" northeast in an inward spiral around the clearing, leaving clawed footsteps in his wake against the trampled mud, dirt, and other detritus.
Zilmiel stepped into a small shady clearing several minutes later. His spiral path brought him within one hundred meters of the shack's property line to the north-northeast. The cabin remained obscured behind the final line of trees, but Zilmiel's prize might as well have sat on top of a temple's display pedestal: The fattest, smokiest deer he'd ever seen hung supported by a spit over the fire's flames, and, most importantly, it hung unattended! Without sparing another second, Zilmiel dropped his rucksack, lurched from his shady grove, and sprinted towards his lunch, his wings tucked and his tail straight like an arrow. The half-dragon leaped at the spit- jaws agape with sharp fang-like teeth exposed- and knocked it over, ripping his first chunk of flesh out of the cooked deer as his jaws snapped shut around its torso.
