OOC: Tags to
@Lion !
"Come on, Yellow. Let's go."
The yellow dog gave a bark and jumped off the porch stoop, panting as he remained even paced at Nolshay's side. His ears, which were uneven (one standing mostly erect, the other mostly draped over) bounced about as the dog looked around, but it's eyes were so beady, it seemed more like his large black nose was leading than anything else.
The pair were going to copper hill, which was named just for that- that it's hillside bred some copper, which at first she had thought might be gold. It was still something of valuable, and streams yielded enough from her panning each visit for her to at least get some money for trade.
She also needed to check her traps. She had gotten a large array of furs this season, which were in high demand back in the city. She rarely liked to travel to the city, but reserved her travels there to once or twice a year. Winters were, after all, quite unforgiving, and it helped to get the much needed supplies when she could.
Beaver and mink coats were the biggest demand, and luckily she lived where plenty roamed. She even had an exorbitant amount of rabbit furs, too, which sold for quite a penny themselves. Fox tails were good too, but it seemed msot of the wild dogs in her neck of the wood were too smart and evaded most of her traps. Though last week she had gotten three foxes in one day, where as over the course of half a year she might have only doubled that number.
The path to Copper Hill was a rugged one, if one could even call it a path at all. It was a natural path, not created by the trampling path of men and horses coming through, but the canopy of trees so thick these areas lacked the sunlight- and also the soil type, to really grow muhc of any sort of grass. The path here was rocky, and curdled around the thicker woods like a snake. And due to the nature of this lack of direct sunlight, Shay knew she had to be careful- lest a copperhead snake take her by surprise, or any other unfriendly animal.
Wolves, bear and cougars roamed these areas frequently and she saw them more often than not. For the most part, it seemed those beasts kept their distance from Shay and her little cabin nestled in the wood- but lately, it seemed even the bears were growing bold, and a few of her traps yielded only the remains of what the lazy bears couldn't pull out fromt he traps as they ate. She supposed it was just as well. Better the bears eat her kills than a trespasser- for it was men that were the worst beasts of all.
Men who were soldiers and men that were not, fought and tore heavily through the country side, and those that happened upon her land took and took without reserve, uncaring that the woman who owned the crops and animals they had stolen nearly died through the harsh winter that lasted too many moons.
Now that it had long past and the New season awakened fresh springs from the ground, Nolshay felt like she had to rebuild just about every aspect of her life. And she had worked so hard to keep herself away from all the chaos, to keep a life up all on her own- just she and her dog and just a few animals out in the woods.
But it seemed not a single month would go by without some sort of trespasser. And not a single time went by without blood.
Savages, the lot of them- and that's exactly what she was cursing when she came upon her first empty trap. She kicked the cage with a snarl. The cage bait was gone and there was too much evidence pointing to the culprit had been
man. It figures a month was almost up. It was about time she hunted another asshole off her property.
She touched the gun strapped across her back and looked around into the woods as the winds picked up and rustled the thick leaves of the trees. Coal eyes spotted nothing at first, but then she saw another one of her traps up ahead and moved onward to inspect it. Yellow was inspecting it too, his nose buried against it before he pushed it into the dirt, snorting about and beginning to make circles before moving away and going further up the path.
Shay adjusted the weight of her gun over her shoulder and fingered her side pouch to count over the number of lead balls she kept. The powder was already ready, would she need it, but the thing wasn't loaded. But as Yellow began to move quicker down the path, she dropped her bags and moved to remedy that, stuffing a musket ball in deep and resting an itchy finger over the wheel lock.
She had tossed her pack back over her shoulder, gun in hand as she moved more stealthly down the path. Had it been a better day, she was passing the streams she panned for copper. They'd have to wait. She had a man to gut and she wasn't about to waste time on anything else.
