Flutterby

Thankfully this wasn't his first trip to the Oerwoud, and Tal was getting faster at making the trek through portals, airship, and his own two feet. The lanky young man was putting in more muscle but his dark hair was still messily tied back and his pale eyes still squinted out from his tanned face above a resting scowl. In the heat of the jungle he wore a light, loose shirt with his goggles hanging around his neck, and he walked with a glaive that was almost as tall as he was for a walking stick. On the end of the weapon a large butterfly net had been carefully attached, though he was constantly having to free it from low-hanging vines.

A little ways ahead of him a large dragon companion, her pale hide chased with the hidden colors of glaciers, cast ahead, sniffing the air through a blunt muzzle. The size of a wolfhound but built like a mastiff, there were few things in the Oerwoud that would bother her.

But the ones that would were more dangerous than Tal wanted to deal with just yet. He'd decided to start his job on an easier note, and today he carried a box with one side made of open slats on his back. There was nothing in it at the moment, but he alternated keeping his eyes on the trees overhead to look for his prey, and on the ground at his feet as he had to pause to jump over the winding streams that gave the area its name.

All around there was a riot of color and life, the calls of birds and insects, the splash of fish and birds in the ubiquitous streams, and the screeches of other animals farther away and higher above, but so far he hadn't seen what he was looking for. "Whaddya think, girl?" he asked the dragon with a glower into the empty branches of another vast, moss-covered tree. "Should we try somewhere else?"