Brenda
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It was one of those miserable days where it was too warm to snow but not dry enough to avoid a drizzle. Damp permeated all things, misting up into a moody fog that hid the road and made eerie silhouettes of the roadside trees. 

The road was a mucky, boot churned slurry of boot prints and runnels of a wagon's wheels veering sharply off course. Despite the smells of drip wet pine and damp loam, it was hard to overlook the stink of shit. 

Some of the boot-print puddles ran a bit pink, growing redder the nearer they got to the wagon. Or rather, the evidence of what *Had* Been a wagon. Splinters and wood strips. A cracked wheel and half a spoke. 

A horse was sprawled sideways with its bowels out in the middle of the road in a slop that had quit steaming only minutes ago. As for the people, *Well...* 

There were animal prints in the mud. Big ones. Badly preserved on account of the yielding ground, but whatever had run the little caravan down had been galloping at them hard enough to rip divots in the mud. 

It stank of dog, but there was no barking. Just people and their pieces. Red puddles. Pink streams. A dunmer in crude leathers picking through the vest of an orc missing the lower half of his body, grumbling some guttural vernacular as he came up empty of anything valuable. 

He was soaked to the bone but didn't seem to mind, hunkered there amid the mess of bodies. He'd gotten everyone's boots in a neat pile by the wheel, with pouches and belts dropped around it all. It seemed he was working through the clothes, muttering to himself, oblivious to the sloshing steps of a newcomer.
Kenneth
It would be nice if there'd been some privacy, but there never is in the woods, is there? The feeling of eyes watching is a feeling one never gets accustomed to, so it stands out when you feel it. Something is watching, has been for a bit, you'd thought it was the people who are now lying dead in the road, but it wasn't, someone else is present, watching, waiting.
Brenda
Red eyes shot up, glinting shiftily. It wasn't road muck that made his skin so dark. His color was pale grey of sudden dusk, shadows of night in his sunken cheeks. 

Long hair full of tangled braids was plastered around the harsh angles of his bony face. Scarred lips peeled over filed teeth as he bared them at nothing, searching for what had made his neck prickle so. 

His voice, when raised, was harsh and hoarse:

"If you're waiting, you can come out now. Haven't found what I'm looking for. And it's all a bit much to carry on my own."
Kenneth
There's no response, you hear movement in the tops of the trees, rustling of leaves, cracking of branches. As you peer at the treetops blue glints can be seen, something glowing. Something passes overhead, landing in another treetop
Brenda
A growled curse. Spit in the mud, a wad of phlegm bobbing up in a red puddle growing pinker from rainfall. 

With a frustrated slap on the orc's still chest the dunmer lifted himself from his squat and (after an ungainly crawl on all fours over a few other examples of manglement) tautered to an awkward stand. 

He muttered something. Strung some shapes with his hands that drew a deep purple smoke from the air between his hands. It shimmered into the wavering ripples of a translucent bow. 

His other fist held a quiver of similarly sizzly arrows. Eyeballing the tree branches, in a blink he lashed and loosed a shot into the brambles, his warning a whistling arc of violet light. 

"Come out of the damn tree. I'd hit you if I wanted!" 

No way to tell if that was a boast or a promise, or that for the last week he'd been losing coin to his aim being a tad off center (on account of the drinks preceding such contests.) 

All told it had been a fine enough shot, then and there.
Kenneth
There's still no response, for a bit, until finally a voice speaks out
Amy
"I'll do no such thing, beast." The voice is male, a strange accent, definitely a Mer, but the accent is... Different, not identifiable. It's not moving so the figure is still, for now. The blue glint is seen in the tree, at a high point
Brenda
Well, the *Tone* Didn't sound anything like the road's usual ruffians full of bad ideas and blades leaving sheathes. The dunmer's eyes narrowed a tad. "Not a nice thing to call a grey skin. Pretty thing like you practically *Glows* Within all that pine. May as well come down now. I'm not interested in your pockets. Think I can't climb trees?"