His stomach continued to grumble for food, but until he was a bit more stable in that, one meal a day would have to do.He was lucky he wasn't forced to go without entirely.
Standing, he stripped off his clothes and set them aside.He'd love to be able to at least rinse them out, but it was too late in the day for that, so he'd have to make do with cleaning himself and save laundry for another day—though he did take the berry-stained shirt with him, as that one he could leave to dry overnight.
The water was cold but bearable.He'd certainly bathed in waters far colder.Plenty of clean water to take his time washing in was another luxury he'd lost while stuck in prison for six months.Fresh air, fresh water, not having to fight for every scrap of food or moment of limited privacy…
Wasn't the life he wanted, that he'd worked so hard for, but it was leagues better than the six months of living nightmare he'd endured.Even actual fucking war hadn't been as miserable as prison.
When he was clean, and feeling better than he had in months, he stretched out on a smooth plane of rock by the shore to dry out in the fading sunlight.When he started to get chilly, he finally pulled his clothes back on and checked on his dinner.
It was cooked perfectly, which put a smile on his face.Combined with some of the berries he'd set aside, the meal was delicious.Simple, maybe, not as flavorful as it would be with herbs and such, but good all the same.
He cleaned up, stoked the fire and checked on his berries, then finally sat down to relax a bit.
Tomorrow he would definitely need to focus on finding or building better shelter.Finding it would be ideal, something like a sturdy hollow or a small cave not filled with something dangerous, but he would take whatever he found first.
When he'd suitably rested, he went for a short walk to ease up any stiffness before he settled in for the night, mind spinning with all that he needed to do, the looming hunt for a dragon that most people didn't even think actually existed, they were that rare.
Worry picked at the back of his mind over the gifted hare, but there was nothing he could do there.Anything that could so easily bypass his wards could do the same to any other spell he could think up.Who or what, though?Any person would have to break the wards, and he'd have felt them doing it long before they succeeded.Same with any creature of wild magic.He went through the whole list of every known inhabitant of the Forbidden Forest and even some that lived further afield but could conceivably wander into the forest, and all he came up with was nothing.
Something cracked under his boot, and he looked down to see he'd crushed a nut.Dipak looked up and smiled to see he'd chanced upon a dragon nut tree.Like tartberries, they were a late season harvest, named for their greenish color and how fucking difficult it could be to get them out of their shells.The only reason he'd cracked open the one beneath his boot was that it was half-rotted.
Removing his cloak, he laid it out on the ground and started foraging, finding all he could eat and more just on the ground.Then he climbed the tree and tossed down many more.When he had enough to feed a small army, he tied up the cloak to form a crude sack and returned to camp.
Dusk had fallen, and it would soon be full dark, but that hardly mattered to him.He double checked his wards, increased their strength, and then fetched a suitable rock from the riverbank.With a cup of tea at his side, he spent the next couple of hours cracking open nuts, leaving them in a pile on the poor shirt he'd just cleaned of berry juice.
By the time he was done, it was late, and he was even more sore than when he'd started, but it was plenty worth it to have this kind of sustenance.He could have nuts and berries forbreakfast, and he hadn't anticipated more than one meal a day for weeks yet.
All in all, his first two days in the Forbidden Forest hadn't been terrible, even with the mysterious, sneaky little bastard that could ignore wards.Though it would prove futile, he set up an alert just inside the wards, so anyone crossing the first ring would have no choice but to trip the second one, waking him to the intrusion.
Satisfied with his efforts, if not confident they would work, Dipak built up the fire and finally went to sleep.
When he woke just a few hours later, hazy morning sunlight slipping through the canopy, he sat up and looked around—and swore loudly enough to startle some nearby birds.Climbing out of bed, he crouched down by his stockpiled nuts.
Half gone.Half of the fucking things were justgone.In their place, lying neatly next to the remaining nuts, was a spined pheasant.They were notoriously difficult to catch due to the rather glaringly obvious venomous spines, a peculiar creature that had never been able to decide if it was a bird or a lizard.
They made damned good eating, though, and the quills—once cleaned and treated—had roughly a million uses.It was a generous trade for what amounted to a few sacks of nuts.
Dipak didn't have a thief.He had someone willing to trade meat for nuts and berries.
For, he realized,delicatethings.Small nuts hard to pick off the ground and break open without crushing the nut inside, and berries easily smashed if you didn't have fingers suited to the work of picking them through the dense, thorny foliage.
How intriguing.Not a person, then, but some hungry beast too big or with the wrong appendages for nuts and berries, but a beast that clearly liked those things.
A beast that had waltzed right past his wards and alert spell.Crafty little fucker.
Sadly, the mystery would have to wait.He needed to focus on shelter today, no distractions.So he field dressed the pheasant and strung it to his pack, put out the fire and made certain it was good and doused, then scrubbed the campsite as free of signs of human use as he possibly could.Then he gathered his belongings, filled his skins with water, and headed off munching on berries and nuts.
He hadn't been walking more than a couple of hours, to judge by the increased daylight, when he heard a sound that didn't belong in the forest: footsteps not his own.
Following the sound, he turned toward it just in time to see someone come tumbling out of the underbrush.
A man—a young man, with pale brown skin and long, black hair that almost looked more dark blue in the bands of sunlight that fell across it, worn in a braid that fell over one shoulder until he flicked it back with an absent motion.He was tall, a little taller than Dipak in fact, with a lithe, muscular frame suited to running, swimming, climbing.His clothes were…strange, a mishmash of styles, like he'd rifled through a pile of used clothes and picked out what fit him with no other parameter.
He was beautiful in a sharp, angular way, like a rocky beach or a jagged cliff.His eyes were blue, and Dipak wished, for no good reason at all, he could truly see how vivid they were.
The man smiled with the force of a summer sun as he approached Dipak."Hello!We don't see hu—strangers in the woods very often!Who are you?"
He didn't have a bag, or a sword, or even a knife.No cloak or hat.Nothing that would be expected of someone hiking through the woods.His boots were good quality, but that was the only part of his attire that made any sense.