The path leading from the Hallowed Grounds to the fields was one deceptively uneven, with ruts from cart wheels and stones unearthed by erosion beneath her feet making travel difficult at best and outright uncomfortable at worst. Still, she persisted - she had taken to brief excursions to the woodlands throughout the opening weeks of Leafchange to forage and collect, finding a living to be wrung from the sparse bounty of the outskirts as she recovered. As her strength returned and her agility improved, Mel figured perhaps she would one day be ready to venture even further and take on new challenges, and so she devoted herself to these small tasks of finding and gathering that she'd set before herself each day with the same studious passion that she did her reading in the earlier seasons of her arrival.
She walked now through the fields, hunting. A bundle of flax plants grasped in her right hand, the dagger in her left as she bee-lined across the empty fields chasing the pretty blue flowers. Her path jagged back toward the road with its cart-wheel ruts and broken earth as she stored the dagger in its native-made scabbard beside its empty original, peering up the road at an approaching figure kicking up pebbles and clouds of dust along his way, raising a hand to the brim of her hat which she tipped down to better shield her eyes and make out the details.
She had abandoned the eye patch for the day - no longer holding out hope that her sight might recover, her right eye appeared dull and visibly sightless compared to the left. With no reason to protect it from potential damage from the light she found it somewhat liberating to no longer be bound to the patch. Being without had not been the absolute worst, but so it hadn't been fun, either. Depth perception and detailed sight were both things that she struggled with, cursing that she did not arrive with a pair of lenses. Had she lost them? Had she been too cool for glasses? It wasn't her fault that she had practically walked up to her stick-shattering nemesis without recognizing him in broad daylight, that was to say. When he wasn't skulking about in the dark, he still looked broody but no longer as potentially threatening as he had been. Still, her fingers twitched as she considered passing the bundle of flax to her left hand - that she might need dexterity more than strength if he had not changed his shitty attitude.
This was what started the standoff, as the witch appeared like a deer in the headlights, considering her options. He had very well scared her before despite her bluff and bluster, but seeing him now he somehow looked different. In fact, Mel wasn't certain she had ever realized what he looked like in the first place as the image in her head was that of a burly, ill-tempered man with dark eyes, burn scars that melted half of his face. Ragged and rough as he was, however, she had remembered him incorrectly, a disconcerting realization that made her heart sing with some unknown fear, reaching to the empty places where her passengers had once lain, seeking the security of force upon realizing that her perception of reality was not perfect on Caido.
Discomforted by the sensation of being wildly out of touch, she stiffened, her posture becoming strict and tall as she squeezed every last illusion of size she could from the magic of angles. Alarmed and confused, the normally sharp-tongued woman found herself at a loss for words, merely staring him down in mute silence, stock still
She walked now through the fields, hunting. A bundle of flax plants grasped in her right hand, the dagger in her left as she bee-lined across the empty fields chasing the pretty blue flowers. Her path jagged back toward the road with its cart-wheel ruts and broken earth as she stored the dagger in its native-made scabbard beside its empty original, peering up the road at an approaching figure kicking up pebbles and clouds of dust along his way, raising a hand to the brim of her hat which she tipped down to better shield her eyes and make out the details.
She had abandoned the eye patch for the day - no longer holding out hope that her sight might recover, her right eye appeared dull and visibly sightless compared to the left. With no reason to protect it from potential damage from the light she found it somewhat liberating to no longer be bound to the patch. Being without had not been the absolute worst, but so it hadn't been fun, either. Depth perception and detailed sight were both things that she struggled with, cursing that she did not arrive with a pair of lenses. Had she lost them? Had she been too cool for glasses? It wasn't her fault that she had practically walked up to her stick-shattering nemesis without recognizing him in broad daylight, that was to say. When he wasn't skulking about in the dark, he still looked broody but no longer as potentially threatening as he had been. Still, her fingers twitched as she considered passing the bundle of flax to her left hand - that she might need dexterity more than strength if he had not changed his shitty attitude.
This was what started the standoff, as the witch appeared like a deer in the headlights, considering her options. He had very well scared her before despite her bluff and bluster, but seeing him now he somehow looked different. In fact, Mel wasn't certain she had ever realized what he looked like in the first place as the image in her head was that of a burly, ill-tempered man with dark eyes, burn scars that melted half of his face. Ragged and rough as he was, however, she had remembered him incorrectly, a disconcerting realization that made her heart sing with some unknown fear, reaching to the empty places where her passengers had once lain, seeking the security of force upon realizing that her perception of reality was not perfect on Caido.
Discomforted by the sensation of being wildly out of touch, she stiffened, her posture becoming strict and tall as she squeezed every last illusion of size she could from the magic of angles. Alarmed and confused, the normally sharp-tongued woman found herself at a loss for words, merely staring him down in mute silence, stock still
