[Firefoot]

Adranel searched about wildly for something to say. Just not the truth, it could be anything else. A feeling of panic arose in her as she fought to keep control. She did not want or need to break down in front of Beluf. As much as she tried to keep her grief bottled up, it was still there, an ever-present pain that she was not ready to speak of.

“It’s just...” Her voice cracked. “It’s nothing. Really, I’m all right.” It was a lie, without a single element of truth to it, and Beluf knew it. Adranel hoped he would drop it, as he had yesterday, and she pleaded with him nonverbally not to dig deeper, but it was not to be.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Nothing you want to talk about?” Something snapped in Adranel then, and she unleashed her sorrows in frustration and anger.

“You really want to know, don’t you? You couldn’t listen, you just have to know, don’t you?” fumed Adranel, ignoring to his shocked protests of “Only if you want to tell - forget I asked!” She knew she was being unfair, but at the moment she didn’t care. “Fine. I’ll tell you, because you just had to know. Two days ago in the morning my village was attacked by Orcs. It was in the late morning, and I was inside cooking the lunch meal. My older brothers and father were working in the store, and my younger siblings were away. I was alerted by screams, cruel laughter, and the clang of metal. I hurried outside to find out what was happening, and to find my family. I found my father, eventually, but I had no time to cry out to him for at that moment his head was cut off with the scimitar of an Orc. I ran, then, and nearly missed the body of my fiancé, Hergon. I held him in my arms as he died, and he said he wanted me to be safe. The entire village was burning around me, and I ran, wishing I could die myself. I reached the woods, and when the Orcs left, I found that no one had survived. I never saw my brothers or sister again. I have nothing left.” Her voice had grown more intense as she continued, though she had quieted the volume for she did not want the whole camp to know her story. Now, it began to rise again. “Now you know. Are you happy now? Maybe now you can mind your own business!”

Adranel did not wait for him to reply. She had been stripped bare of all privacy, and she felt exposed and vulnerable. She sprang up from her seat on the log beside him and fled, grabbing her bow and quiver as she went. Tears began to flow freely from her eyes, and she made no attempt to stop them. She did not have any strength left; what strength she had drawn from previously had come from the locked away memories. Now, they raged free after she had been forced to relive them, the sights, smells, and sounds of death and devastation surrounding her. She wanted to die. She had not gone far when she came upon a stand of trees. While it could hardly be called a forest, the setting was comforting, reminiscent of the woods surrounding her home. She needed to stop for breath anyway, and she slumped against a tree. She exhausted herself with the stress, but she was driven to channel the energy she had let loose with her tirade.

She picked up her bow and notched an arrow to the string. She drew back, feeling the strain in her muscles that had long since become unused to this activity. She took careful aim at a tree fifty yards away and fired. The arrow went at least a foot wide of the trunk, and frustrated, she removed another arrow from her quiver and shot to the same effect. What was wrong with her? She had always been a sure shot. This time she didn’t think about it, and simply felt the way she held the bow in her arms and the position of her target. She hit it square on. She loosed every single arrow she had, each time hitting her target within a few inches, and finally, feeling completely drained both physically and emotionally, collapsed by a tree. It was then that she finally allowed herself to grieve for her family and everything else she had lost, heart-wrenching sobs wracking her body.