Chasing Scars

Ashe knew she wasn’t going to catch up to him right away, so there was no glimmer of frustration when he headed for the next tree. She braced herself against a trunk as she landed, and she paused. She narrowed her eyes, watching him dash from branch to branch. She surveyed the trees ahead of him, around him - it was easy to see that far where the branches held no leaves.. And then she shoved off from her branch. She didn’t follow his path directly. She listened carefully to where he went - she could hear every movement of every branch, the man was too large not to move them. She moved with nimble ease, running long larger branches, bouncing with feather light leaps from the smaller ones. She kept Reckoning in her grasp - unsheathing it would take too much time, and she trusted her impeccable balance enough to rely on one hand. She was focused, as she knew he surely was. She hadn’t been caught off guard this time, and Ashe’s blood was singing with the chase now. She needed to know who he was, who it was that knew her. She kept glancing at him as she started gaining ground on him, running parallel and matching his direction. Where was he leading them? These woods were unfamiliar, not like the lush Untamed Lands of Northaven that she had known like map of scars over her hands. She would get to know these woods, too. Were there waypines she could find herself a safe place to sleep in? Good campsites? She found herself glancing at the ground below even as she smoothly kept up with her companion. She’d make use of this session with him, and then she’d rip off that gods damned hood and finally look at that smug face of his. She kept her eyes on him for a moment, his lithe form that moved through the branches with an ease of movement that near matched her own. She knew exactly what to watch for, the types of movements he would make, and perhaps that unsettled her most of all. The deep familiarity whispered in her ear a name she worked hard to forget, and she bared her teeth in defiance of it. There was no doubt it was a guild member, or someone trained by the same people she was, but it wasn’t that one. Whoever this was had been in Northaven. Whoever this was… they knew she was the wolf, and very, very few people knew to associate her with the massive canine. That ate at her, drove her mad - no one in her family would betray that secret, not one of them, she knew. Who the fuck are you? Ashe swung around the side of a thick trunk, her feet dancing over it’s branches, and then she made a leap… away. Her breath was coming with an easy rhythm, and she stayed on the balls of her feet as she risked letting the man out of her sight. She leaped and reached up, and then she was climbing into the higher and thinner branches of the trees. Better view, or something like that. She was so small, so light, that the branches held her weight without hardly bowing. She grinned savagely and ran on the tips over toes along the boughs of a nearly bare pine - an unsettling sight - and then... There. She half snarled and dropped down just a few branches ahead of him. ”Miss me?” she crooned, and then she dashed forward, her feet carrying her across the branches like the rungs of a ladder - one, two, three, four - and then she flicked Reckoning in the direction of his throat with the unmatched grace of an elitely trained and lethal killer. Kalt ashetta it's live or die my way.