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In the midst of his grumbling, Micheal mentioned in a lighter tone. "Your control is different than before."

"Why... do you say... that?" the ranger said in the middle of her swings.

He thought about it for moment. "It seems it feels different from when I first watched you."

When she finished the swing, she stopped, placing a hand on her hip as she sucked in air for a moment. In some ways she envied the fact that Micheal wasn't even tired out nor would ever become so this way.

"Now what did I do?" He stopped and folded his arms.

"My control on what, my emotions?" she asked before looking at him. "Huh? You didn't do anything," she said, pushing aside some stray hairs from her face.

"Oh.. well your foot patterns changed." He looked at her for a moment and then trailed his eyes to a near tree. "It's like you get distracted ... but then it wasn't like your actually in a fight either so it might be nothing."

The ranger looked at him for a moment certain he had asked about something else at first, and then for some reason had changed his mind. "It does tend to happen during practice from time to time with me, I will admit. Half the time I don't notice it though as usually I'm swinging by instinct more than thought. In a sense, this is a little slow for me as well just because I have to stop and think about what I'm showing you."

The vampire student nodded, and then walked to a tree and leaned against it. "You don't have to... teach me that is."

"It was my idea, but if you'd like to stop, I'd understand," the ranger said casually. "Probably will have to soon as it is. While you could go on forever, I'll probably pass out if I tried to keep up with you. I mean I can understand how this could be all boring to you and whatnot. Who knows though, maybe it'll come in handy for faking out some human or something."

"I actually feel better, but don't insult me, please," Micheal said in a slight laugh and then closed his eyes.

A brief laugh that sounded like half of a cough slipped from the ranger. "You never know." She tossed her stick off to the side as it looked like they were finished messing with them.

Micheal opened his eyes to catch that smile if there was one, then he tossed his stick lightly to the side as she did. By the time he looked though, any thing that might have appeared was gone. Jay was already half turned away from his view as it looked as if she was going for her backpack at the edge of the clearing. As she walked, she was fidgeting with the bracer on her left arm, working it off.

He raised a brow then tilted his head. "You're hurting?"

The ranger didn't say anything for a moment until she got the bracer off and started to roll up her sleeve.

"I don't heal as fast as you do, Micheal," she answered, rolling the sleeve up all the way revealed a familiar wrap around her left elbow. She dropped the bracer next to her bag as she knelt beside it and began to work the backpack open.

"I forgot ..." Micheal then walked closer. "Need help?"

"Not really," she answered. "Like the swordplay, been doing this for years. Actually, I've been doing this for longer really," she said with a bit of sarcastic humor as she thought about it. "If you want to learn something else, you can come and watch." She dug around in the backpack till she pulled out a small pouch and set it out on the ground beside her.

He sat near her and watched. "Alright."

She herself sat down and unwrapped the cloth from her elbow before holding the arm out in front of her while resting it across her legs.

"Okay, first thing when treating anything is knowing the injury," she said looking over at Micheal. "The problem here is something was torn inside the elbow when it was twisted..."

Jay trailed for a moment as she was about to mention back to the fight with the farmer who had been following the vampire hunter but left it off.

Micheal thought about it and then nodded that he was listening.

"Normally it's a little trickier to figure out when you're looking at someone ~else's~ elbow or any other part of them for that matter, but as it's mine, it's a bit easier to figure out."

The pain from that one told all right away, she thought to herself.

"Unfortunately, this sort of thing can take anywhere from another 3 sevendays, possibly up to 6 to fully fix itself."

Micheal nodded. "He wasn't a vampire when I first met him."

The ranger lifted an eyebrow. "Really now?" she said, apparently surprised. "But didn't you mentioned he's the one that... well... did that whole turn into vampire thing to you?"

Micheal nodded again. "It was in later years where he ran off to fight, the reason is a bliss now. Thought he was dead since he didn't come back with the others that survived." There was a light chuckle. "I was right to say he was dead, but I just loved him more."

"A little creepy, but do go on," the ranger off-handedly comments, still interested. She grabs the small bag she had set aside from earlier and begins to open it up.

"Well, he still treated me the same but with more care. He couldn't let me go even when he turned, so he tried to hide what he truly was from me at first," he said as he turned to watch the ranger. "That's when I started having dreams too good to be real. Us being lovers was already risking our lives, but then I was now in love with a creature -the only person I knew would understand me- who was already dead. Eventually I became missing and not missed."

In the bag she pulled out two small jars and a tiny dish. She opened each jar, one holding a woodsy smelling dark brown powder. The other a grey powder with a fairly strong ash smell. "So, you ended up leaving home with the person you liked, and I got thrown out for not leaving with anyone. The irony," she half scoffed. She tapped about a pebble's worth of the brown powder into the bowl and turned the jar shut before reaching for the other jar.

Micheal closed his eyes for a moment before asking, "You're wondering about the scars aren't you?"

"I can't say that I didn't wonder, but I figured after so many years scars just happen when you're out on the road," she answered. "Those tales are up to you to share or not." There was suddenly an itching feeling coming from the ranger's shoulder, though she ignored it, knowing full well what it was from.

"True." He ruffled his hair before he trailed his hand down the arm with the scars.

"Kiru ended up getting into real trouble. One of the fellow villagers punched another giving him a bloody lip. Kiru wasn't feeding well and he went mad with blood lust, and I tried to stop him. He tore my arm up, and for the first time, I ran from him as far as I could as he forced himself to focus on feeding off the others." Micheal the bit his lip. "I was bleeding too much from his slashes and started to get light headed." His again closed his eyes, like he was replaying events, but then was deciding how to tell them.

The ranger continued to listen in silence as she poured about three times as much of the grey powder into the little bowl. Her silence already hinting at what she was expecting might be next in the tale.

Jay wasn't quite sure what that last part quite meant in terms of vampires, but the ranger didn't push the topic any further. Instead she pulled out a smaller bag of crushed dried leaves and tossed two pinches into the mixture before stirring it with her smallest finger. "And then here we are, it seems," she said, unsure of what else to say without making things more uneasy.

From the vampire slipped a small laugh. "Yes indeed and what a mess," he said, taking the mixture lightly from her hands and looking it over. "How much more are you going to add this? It already smells like it would kill anything that would ill you."

"The common joke is the worse it smells, the better it works," Jay said grabbing the scraps from her wrap and setting them in her lap. She then took two fingers and scooped out some of the mix while Micheal held it and spread it on her elbow. She kept at it until she got what she could out of the bowl and onto her joint before she took the old cloth and began to wrap it around, compacting the chilly mix against her skin. "I suppose I can save the explanations as to what is what for another day," she said, forcing a small grin as she looked up at the sky through the leaves. She had only started to notice how dark it was getting.

...Which meant it was too late to hunt, she thought as she tied off the wrap and pulled her sleeve down. She put the bracer back on and started to put her belongings away, holding out a hand for the bowl Micheal still held.

He lightly handed it back to her after watching her. "Does it feel better now?"

"In a few hours I won't notice it as much. The crunched up leaf parts I threw in last, that's to numb it down. If I don't keep moving the elbow from time to time, it will get stiff as it heals and in the end I wouldn't be able to flex it if it did that." She put away the bowl and everything else in the backpack before getting up. "Going to grab a sleep bag... and a tent. Not sure if it will rain tonight or not."

He looked at her. "Sleeping out here tonight?"

"Tired of sleeping inside," she said, only telling half the truth. The other half was that she felt she had been spending her money way to quickly. "I suppose I've got a fire to get started as well," she says as if it was almost an afterthought.

Micheal looked around and then leaned against a tree. "Um... fire?"

The ranger looked at him quizzically. "Don't like fire or something?"

There was a slight uneasy laugh. "That's one way of putting it."

In the meantime, Micheal was trying hard to remember them as best as he could before he gave up on the fact and accepted that it was impossible to remember them now. He just watched after Jay as she continued setting up and started messing with his hair, trying to detangle it with his fingers.

When everything was put in it's place, including her bow and quiver which she had slipped off her back, the ranger sat outside her tent, picked up a stick and started poking at the ground with it. "I suppose it would be only fair if I described my kinfolk now, though it's not very interesting really."

Micheal looked up at her as he just got a knot out. "You don't have to. It was only fair. I guess you should know something more about me since you shared your nightmares with me."

She made no comment in regards to nightmare and made an effort to keep that and all the other related thoughts from her head. "Nah, it's really not necessarily," she said, though there wasn't any feeling behind the words.

"Sorry. Guess I talk too much then." Micheal lightly pushed off the tree and looked around the forest surrounding them.

The ranger frowned to herself and stabbed the tiny stick into the ground so that it stuck straight up where she left it, like a tiny memorial to something as she stood up. She shook her head as if trying to clear fog away and looked out and around her into the forest as well, judging the speed darkness was setting in.

Micheal eyed the little stick oddly, trying to figure out what was going through her mind right now. Then he spoke up. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She looked at him oddly. She had been about to say nearly the same thing.

"Sure," she replied.

He just lightly nodded and then walked off into the darkness till he wasn't in view any more, his eyes glowing in the darkness that had fallen. "What is she thinking..."

When Micheal was out of sight, she waited some time until she felt more confident that she was alone... or as alone as she was going to be. What was out of sight for her wasn't necessarily out of sight for him, but she would have to make do with that.

She took a pace toward the edge of the clearing and paused on her next half step to look back at her tent considering whether to take her bow and quiver with her. After concluding that her bow would be near useless in the darkness, she looked back toward the edge of the clearing and continued through it. She wouldn't have the visibility for using her bow if she needed to anyways, she thought to herself as she walked in the opposite direction Micheal had left by.

The ranger continued walking straight from her makeshift camp for some ways, not completely out of view, but enough so that she felt like she had the solitude she needed.

She pulled out both blades and slowed her breathing down. Even though her muscles reminded her she had been doing this practically all afternoon, her mind was full again. She had not been able to think things through as she would have liked earlier, nor did she feel like she had been able to separate herself from events enough to look at anything clearly. Maybe this way, she would be able to think and slip back more to what her instincts were telling her. Maybe being in the darkness under a waining full moon would draw her away from her eyes enough so that she could really see what was around her now.

She stood there just feeling what little wind whisked through the trees, smelling the damp air, and listening to the night noises around her before she began to move her blades. Her pace was not nearly as fast as what it had been when she had first gone off alone to do this... before she had been interrupted. Now it was as if she was trying to blend in with the slower nature of the trees around her, her blades only carving the air breath by breath.

She had been on edge for too long and though this was not new knowledge for her, there was a difference in what she knew versus what she felt when she actually took time out for herself to remind herself physically.

Just as she was slowly moving, slowly her thoughts began to arrange themselves out before her: Micheal, Kiru, the invitation, and her own physical needs.

As her arms began to burn, she slipped the blades back into their sheaths and simply sat on the ground with her head bowed in the direction of the camp, eyes closed.

She had kept her focus and frustration on Kiru's threats, but now she realized she had been fooling herself. In some ways, Kiru was the last of her frustration as she ideally knew where he stood. Reluctance filled her chest as she began to admit that it had been the vampire she had been traveling with that had largely brought her to this point.

The 'sword training' that had happened earlier may have pushed it aside for a time, allowing her to pretend the previous events had never happened. But everything had happened, and if she left it all buried permanently, she'd only remain a fool and it would happen all over again.

Had she been trying to court death when she threw that dagger? Was she insane?

She wondered to herself, shaking her head as she pondered. Maybe it was all just getting to be too much at once.

"Take one thing at a time," she mumbled, chuckling sadly at the irony of who had told her that.

And that was how it would be, she decided. She did not know how soon this vampire get together was suppose to happen, but she would think little more of it until she needed to. She needed to take care of herself and if she couldn't do that, then it wouldn't matter if it was a den of vampires or tavern regulars. For starters, she had not been eating or sleeping very well for some days and it was notably catching up to her. She would work on that tomorrow first thing.

Then she thought back to Micheal again.

She wanted to trust him, she wanted to feel like there was some sort of reliance in stone...

Micheal stood up, stretched, and walked over, prancing slightly around the area to stretch his legs more. 'Not much to catch today is there?'

"It's a quiet day," the ranger answered as she tossed the padding and saddle onto Dulcimer's back.

The wolf stopped to watched her momentarily and then sprinted back and forth.

Taking little notice of Micheal's movement, Jay started to fix up the straps. "I'm going to head back into town for a short bit. Maybe find something warm to eat, see what the word is for the outbound roads."

Micheal slowed down back to a prance and then sat. 'Okay. What should I do?'

"Tag along? Wait here? What do you normally do in an eve?" the ranger stated, looking back at him for the first time as she pulled tight the last buckle.

The wolf seemed to think about that, what he did before he met her. 'Paint, read, drink...' He patted his tail. 'It would probably be better if I stay any how.'

"I'll leave the tent up then and the saddlebags behind and inside," she said with a nod upon his decision, making one last tug on a part of the saddle to check the snugness.

The wolf nodded as he had a slight smile to his face, somehow even for being in wolf form, as he was in a far better mood.

With a swift step up she had herself upon Dulcimer's back, the horse pawing the ground in irritation of having a wolf nearby though not really making much more fuss than that with his rider abroad.

"As I said, it shouldn't be long," the ranger said, sensing Micheal was in higher spirits than the previous day. She couldn't say the same for herself, but hopefully what she was going to go to town for would relieve some of the bitterness she had so far faced the day with.

The ranger nudged the horse's sides with a 'hup' and Dulcimer snorted as he trotted off into the brush in the direction of the city.

'Don't forget to look at the dresses at least!' Micheal said mentally to her before getting up and walking over to the front of the tent where he plopped back down, watching the grounds.

"I'll take you up on it. If I come across anything, I'll bring you back the proof you request," she answered with a nod, finally chancing an open look at the other mercenaries that had been standing there.

"And remember, I'm not paying a stone coin without proof," the merchant said trying to instill some sort of authority, looking between both the ranger and the other group of mercenaries. "You are still free to look yourselves but mind you, only the first to bring back any solid or worthwhile new info gets paid. There's only more in it if any of you manage to bring back any of those who were with the caravan."

Jay nodded with a slight bow and got the gentleman's name and how to contact him before bidding him and the other mercenaries a good day.

It wasn't long after that she returned to camp and dismounted.

Micheal, still in wolf form, raised his head. 'Find anything good?'

"Enough to line my stomach where it's needed," the ranger answered initially as landed on the ground. "That and a possible job. Sounds as if someone's wagon went missing anywhere from a day to three days out from the city," she explained as she removed the saddle.

Micheal chuckled. 'Well I guess that's better than no news. So, what do you have to do?'

"See if I can't find out what happened to it before some other mercs do," she replied, hefting the saddle up in her arms. "Honestly, bandits probably got to it as it doesn't sound like the man paid enough to have a decent amount of guards, but that's just guess work. It should be easy enough to find some sort of proof of that without having to even confront anyone." She said as she walked over toward her tent.

The wolf got up and moved out of the way. 'How far do you suppose this wagon is?'

"That's probably the trickiest part. I'm leaning toward three days. This guy was eager enough about his wagon to probably wish it was closer to the city when it probably wasn't." She stopped walking toward the tent and paused. "Is this something you want to join in on? We could start out tonight."

He looked at her and then nodded. 'Sure, I don't see why not.'

Turning around she went to put the saddle back on Dulcimer, before returning to the tent for the saddle bags. As she was doing this, a mist starts to creep into the air.

"Splintered weather..." she cursed to herself as she was still getting everything together, including packing the tent and her sleepbag. "Fortunately, it shouldn't hinder much unless it keeps up two, three day from here... well, me anyways." Probably wouldn't affect Micheal at all really. Actually, for him, it was probably better with the rather gloomy weather. She couldn't look around at night and this would allow Micheal to be out earlier in the day when she could use her eyes.

She put her hood up to keep the water off her head and to stay warmer. While trying to take down the tent, she spotted the pile of wood again and felt a twinge of regret.

He laughed. "Yes, what is normal? It's only an illusion created by minds."

"Ever changing and different from person to person if it were to even exist," she added in after she was finished with tent. Stepping away from Dulcimer, she looked about the area to see if she had been forgetting anything. As it didn't look like it, she threw a foot into the stirrup and hauled herself up into the saddle.

"Time to head out I suppose. We'll skirt outside the city and hit the road from there. After that..." she paused to think, "we'll just have to keep an eye out for any signs of the wagon, though I doubt we'll see anything for a day."

The vampire watched with his hands in his pockets, waiting for her to start off as water slid off every feature of his face and the tips of his flattened wet hair.



Micheal focused his eyes on something ahead of them.

"Hmm... New form of road making?" he lightly said though in a bit of a serious tone, scanning the area for possible threat. The road far ahead of them seemed to be marked... no gouged out to some degree. Three or four grooves in the dirt seemed to make a trail that went straight off the road and into the trees, what was dug out already filling with rainwater.

"Hmm?" the ranger sounded, interrupting her searching which had almost become automatic after two days in the saddle with breaks to camp and rest. "What are you talking about?" Her own eyes not seeing what Micheal was talking about settled on him instead.

He closed his eyes and then opened them again. "Nothing. Just seems these lands are flooding quickly," he mentioned, not adding anything more.

As the two closed in on what Micheal had seen in the road ahead, the ranger stood up in the stirrups. "What the..." she muttered as she tried to get a better look in the rain.

"That's what I meant," Micheal said lightly and started scanning the area again.

Oh... sorry," the ranger apologized over her own inadequacy as they closed in. "That's definitely not any flooding..." she muttered. "Do you spot any tracks around here?" she hopped off Dulcimer as they got a little closer and led him to the other side of the road where she tied him off.