A man sat leaning back against the trunk of a pine tree, a weathered black fedora pulled down in front of his face. His clothes were all leather and fur, and covered most of his skin; it was, after all, late autumn. His hands were bare and gloveless, but currently stuffed in his pockets to keep warm. A longbow and quiver leaned against the trunk next to him on one side, and on the other there sat a big timber wolf, head up, looking around. The wolf growled, and most would leave at that, but the man next to it understood the growl as speech. "{It has been a good hour, Hearne.}"
The man reached a hand up out of his pocket and pulled the hat up off of his face to look at the wolf. "Has it already? Ah was just gettin' comf'table."
"{If you do not check the traps soon, one of them will break.}"
"Ah know, ah know. Good ol' huntin' wisdom. Be patient, not lazy." He got up and swung the quiver against his back all in one motion, then took the bow by the wood and carefully put it through a slot in the quiver's strap sized to hold it. "Yer the best, Finn."
"{Must you state the obvious?}" He rubbed the wolf's head with a free hand, and the wolf stood up, shaking once before following after him.
Once you're famous, it gets really hard to retire--a lesson Hearne Grosvenor had learned the hard way. He wasn't old by any measure, but by now he'd caught enough strange and magical creatures to last him a lifetime. He'd been a bit of a prodigy, catching some magically speedy rabbit at the age of 14--and alive at that, something the mages' college had been very happy about. Then he had to catch it a second time, and that time he broke its legs so they wouldn't lose track of it again. Finnigan, his Familiar, was a bit younger than he was, and a rare find indeed. Most Familiars are domestic or small, easily caught creatures. But when Hearne went out to find one for himself, so he could do a little magic here and there to counter what the creatures did, he went for something a bit more challenging.
That's what it was for a while. One challenge after another. It was fun finding things that were hard to catch, and then working out how to catch them. At least, it was when they didn't fight back. The truth is, the life of a hunter, especially one rightly famous for dealing with magical animals, was a very dangerous one. An old scar on his cheek reminded Hearne to not get careless, even when the prey looked harmless. He'd had to break his own left wrist to get away from a firebear once, and even now, a few years after it healed, his grip just wasn't as strong as it used to be.
He tried to quit after the tenth time he nearly died. But people kept on asking him for help with this or that problem, offering him money and valuable items and other things. He could turn down everyone only for a few months before it just got to be too much. He reasoned he could just take the jobs that didn't sound dangerous, and leave the dangerous ones to real fighters. After all, it was a reasonable income he made, and it gave him an opportunity to travel, see more of the world. So when a fishing village on the north end of the kingdom sent for help about something stealing their produce, he took them up on it. It seemed that whatever creature they were dealing with had managed to steal a large volume of fish overnight without a single witness. Nobody got hurt, so it was something sneaky or fast, or both. Hearne wasn't so sure about it, but Finn was eager, so they went ahead.
Ah, well. At least they knew what kind of bait to put out, he figured. And here they were, making the rounds of the traps around the forest. There were some undisturbed ones with rotting fish in them by now, some that had closed on nothing at all..one that someone's dog had gotten into. Hearne opened the cage and Finn scared the dog off in the general direction of the village. "Git! Hmph. Oughta keep an eye on their critters 'round here..."
And then came the most interesting of the traps for the day. A simple carrot-box sort of trap, but with a metal cage instead of a box, a fish instead of a carrot, and some simple little magic glyphs to shut it instead of a rope with someone on the other end. The trap itself really wasn't that interesting to Hearne, he'd made so many of them in his days, but this one was special because it apparently had a girl in it. Well, not exactly a girl; a girl with some not-quite-human features to her. The hunter's eyes caught on to this fact a good ways away from the cage itself, and he couldn't help but comment.
"Finn. That ain't no critter."
"{It could be. Remember the fox?}"
"Ugh, don't get me started on the fox. If this is like that shapechangin' nasty I'm quittin', here an' now. Get someone with more patience and fight in 'em to deal with it."
Hearne went forward cautiously, the wolf behind him, and once he thought he was in sight and earshot of the girl, he said, "Hey! What're ya doin' in thar?"
