Open Far From Any Hollow

He had been awake a while but had not let on.
The last night brought a familiar nightmare that had long since lost its fear to him.
The Forest of Hands.
He had seen it often in his dreams and now instead of feeling haunted by it he simply wondered if today would be the day he walks into it again.
The smell of hearth and food was good, he did not wish to disturb the peace with his presence more than he had to but they were all waking now and he did not like to miss breakfast, even a meagre one.

"Nor I."
He said opening his eyes and stretching the stiffness from his neck. The crack it made was sharp and clear. As he rolled his shoulders they too clicked into readiness.

"They smell good. Do you like to cook Miss Mirani?"
He tried to smile again and not look threatening.
It did not work.

"Hmm, something you do..."
Hawkflesh hooked his chin over his crossed arms thinking on the words. Thinking on how folk often do without really understanding if they want to. Need replacing desire in the demands of the ongoing, eternal now.

"I think I understand."
His face hung, slightly disembodied from himself as his eyes flickered to the Toadkin , whom Hawkflesh had come to understand was the leader of this merry band.

"Mr Tumbleton, I neglected to ask last night but I'll need some details about your attackers. Numbers, equipment that sort of thing. Also what manner of kin. It will help me know what I can expect."
As he spoke he sat up again and began inspecting his sword, wiping it, checking for rust and wear. Today was going to be bloody work, he did not wish to be unprepared.

Mirani eyed Hawkflesh. Suspicion softened some as the man sat in his ponderence.

A croak.

"You are going to burn the one on the left," Toadwick corrected.

A hissed breath through clenched teeth, a scrape of tool against stone. The flatcake skate across the stone and flung off the edge. Mirani's eyes wide, her mouth agape.

After all that. And she'd lose a cake.

Whip-snap

A sticky pink tongue shot out. Snatched the cake and pulled it back into a wide maw with a singular smack of of wet flesh and bony plate.

A croak.

"It's a little hot," Toadwick said with a shift of his mouth. "But the taste is fine," he nod.

Mirani gave him a pointed look. Pushed a breath through her lips, and went on to remove those cakes that survived.

A raspy voice that was becoming the more familiar sounded out. Toadwick adjusted himself onto the soft earth. "Two humans, and a Stoatlin," he said simply.

"The Stoatlin's a famed brigand," Mirani asserted. "Rodrick the One Eye," she shook her head. "Used to be a Greencloak, if I remember correct," she offered Hawkflesh his helping of acorn cake. "He's a fiend with his basket hilted broadsword," Kirikin snatched up his cake. "The other two carried old spears,"

"I would like to avoid bloodshed, if possible, Master Hawkflesh," Toadwick stated. Let his words sink in to the warm air by the cook fire.

"Hangman's noose will do the world a favor, I think," Mirani muttered as she moved toward Kirkin.

A croak.

"They did not bleed us, nor left us in such dire straights that we would die," Toadwick reminded. "If it comes between our lives and their's, then we've no choice,"

Kirikin nibbled fast on his cake. Paused as his head shot up straight and tall. A quick wipe of his whiskers. "We went home, that would guarntee we come to no blows,"

Mirani grumbled. "Like the moons! We can't go back with our tails between our legs!"

Kirikin's head ticked toward Mirani. "I'm the only one with a tail," it fanned behind him. "And I see no shame in living whole and free for days more to come," he smiled with his big teeth.

The fire popped and hissed.

Gratefully he took the little cake and blew on it but did not eat it yet.
"You are making it complicated Mister Tumbleton."
Again he blew cold breath from his lips and sent the steam of the cake wafting away only to return.
"It would be far simpler to kill them than leave them alive."
He took a small bite, it was good. Cosy tasting. Unlike anything he had had in a while. A soft sound of enjoyment left his closed mouth as he chewed.

"This, Miss Mirani, is very good."
Getting back to the topic of food was easy. In fact he found himself wanting another one despite himself. Perhaps he could get the recipe.

Hawkflesh, now finished with his cake sat and pondered a moment before lifting an unburnt stick from the small pile of kindling still next to the fire and began to scrawl in the dirt for all to see. His long arms making surprisingly delicate shapes.

"First we must find them. I'll leave that method to you. When we do I'll take over. I'll approach under guile of being lost. Once I have them all out in the open you three strike. We use surprise to grab what we need and get out. Done right, they should be left stunned and sore but nothing they cannot recover from. We don't want them coming after us."
He stopped scrawling. On the earth was an arrangement of spirals and triangles that did not look much like anything.

"What do you all think?"
His thin face looked to them all expectantly as the fire lot the deeping earth wall behind him. Perhaps there was weavecraft that could help but knowing next to nothing of it his plan was formed from the known quantities at his disposal.

He moved like a scarecrow towering above the others and emerged from the nook of the tree and stood under the grey sky. With a long crack he rolled his shoulder and set it right.
The blade of grass he slipped into his sleeve and looked back towards where he had found them all the day before.

"I'll trace back to where we met. From there I'll hope to pick up their trail."

An idle foot kicked at the dirt and he watched a dislodged stick move a pathetic distance.

"Hmm."

Before he left he turned to them all, these assorted oddities below him looking up.

"Don't follow behind me if you can help it."

Poor warning but he did not wish to explain it. What would he say anyway? "Sorry but I am followed by a spooky patch of forest"?

@Mirani

The morning was glum and miserable.
Hawkflesh moved with a sluggish determination against the wet of his cloak.
When he found the cut rope and trees which held the kin the day before and began to look for clues.

Sharp eyes caught bigger footprints soon enough. Big as a full grown human. A tidy bit of luck meant he did not lose much time with getting a heading.
The sky looked a kind of sad angry. The sort that has not made up its mind if lightning was going to happen or not.
He had been walking another hour or so before the soft patter began. Raindrops were thick and heavy, landing in loud thuds all about, each one distinct.

The trees were mighty and grey, they felt older than the sky here. Under the dim sky and rain he let the thin strands of his hair fall over his eyes and empare his vision. It was time to get good and lost.

His stomach grumbled as he marched. The longsword sat on his slouched shoulders like a gravediggers shovel. Wet saturated his skin to the marrow. It felt as if his flesh might slough off at the slightest tug.

Drudgery. That was the name for it, hard and unhappy travel.

Surely they would find him soon, before he missed dinner. How hard was it to get mugged in a forest?

@Mirani

Hawkflesh' smile was like a promise of I'll intent as it spread across his face. His face turned towards the source of the voices and he listened more.

Following the talking over the crest of a hill was easy. The humans he saw first and then he saw the loot and he realized two things instantly.

First that these two humans were not alone despite the appearance of them on the dirt path they walked.
Second it was that these robbers had more than what was taken from Mirani and the others.

"Well met friends!"

He announced himself with a wave of his hand as he made his way towards them.

"Any chance you fine fellows know a way out of these damned woods? I've been wandering for days."

No word was actually a lie. He had been and he did not know the way out.

His boots slipped a bit, he leaned into it and lost his step, skidding down the small slope but managing to maintain balance.

"Oh, heh, clumsy me."

"What in the bloody," Paul said slack jawed. As a piece of apple fell from his mouth.

Lenri let his half eaten apple fall to the ground, and he grabbed for a dirk at his waist. The dull steel came free, and it gleamed in the afternoon light. "Fat chance that," he said, muscles coiled and tense.

Paul's eyes went wide as he double took. Eyes dart between the red cloak and his companion. "Aye now, aye now, the man done said he was lost, Len, ain't nothing to it," he laughed nervously, and eyed the stranger. "Lost right?"

About them, an obvious encampment from where they all stood. Crates and barrels of goods, stashed half in the earth and dressed with leaf litter and branches.

Lenri grunt through his teeth. Long knife still in hand. But his feet never moved.

"Yes. Lost."
This it, the lair.
Time to pick a fight he thought as he casually swung his longsword into a half-sword grip. Treating the long blade like it was a staff and he dropped the leaf given him onto the mud.
"That's when you don't know where you are or what you're doing."
A smile dragged open across his face that did not belong to anything good as he made his way over to the two humans.
"But you two know all about the lost don't you? It's how you find your victims isn't it? The weak and the lost."
When he stopped, a bit over arms length away the rain seemed to pick up and his last few words were muffled.
"Wh... ss... eye... ing... un!"

@Mirani