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THE world around her hummed with life, a cacophony of rushing water, flowing breeze, and animal calls filling the denseness of the Pandoran jungle. It was a lullaby Ruth Carson had grown to appreciate in the years since she'd started calling the moon known as Polyphemus home, protecting it with everything she lived and breathed.
The woman's presence within the moon's endless expanse remained masked as she hunted, foliage hiding her body and her scent downwind. It had taken a few years to learn the necessary finesse of a lethal hunter, but she was now as skilled as any within the Omaticaya with her bow.
Movements inaudible, she was silent death for anything unlucky enough to be targeted by her arrows.
Balanced on the balls of her feet with her tail maintaining her balance behind her, Ruth held a drawn arrow on the string of her bow. The muscles of her arms slowly began to burn the longer she held the tension, and she controlled her breathing to remain steady. Honing her focus on the mature hexapede grazing roughly thirty yards ahead, she anticipated a successful hunt.
Her stubbornness never allowed her to return to the clan empty-handed.
It was a quick sequence of events once her arrow loosened from its notch, jettisoning through the air in less than a blink of an eye and landing in the airway of the animal. After emitting a dying squall upon impact, the animal thudded to the forest floor as a clean and merciful kill with little to no resistance before becoming still.
Victorious, Ruth descended from her hiding place and processed the animal quickly, gathering the usable ingredients she'd take back to the clan. She'd leave what remained for scavengers of the forest, giving the kill more purpose beyond nourishing the people. Giving back to nature. Her hunts were quick and clean, she always ensured that.
Finding her sunset-colored ikran, Denver in the canopy above, Ruth secured the gathered meat and other sinewy materials on the saddle's stowage and took off through the canopy towards the sky.
The flight back to the Omaticayan dwellings often brought her close enough to see what remained of Hometree, the former ancestral home of the Omaticaya. After the battle and all of the fallout that had come with it, the clan turned towards rebuilding. Ruth had tried her best to do the same, yet the echo of Tsu'tey's death lingered with her wherever she went.
Ruth frowned as her squinted eyes focused on the tree's dilapidated form, memories flashing across her mind like ghostly pain. It had been roughly fifteen years, but the wounds that were unseen never seemed to heal like the ones on the skin. They endured, lingering with the soul.
What remained of the tree was a stark scar against the green expanse of the jungle, the trunk long turned a grey-brown color with the years passed. Luckily, the ashes that had fallen that fateful day had sprung up an abundance of life, the remaining trunk and colossal branches seemingly to remain for eons. A nest for forest ikran and other winged creatures.
