There was a pregnant pause as Kallo offered his hand to take the pack from her, earning himself an almost scornful look from Levani who scrutinized him for a moment. Lips parted, even, for a second, growl built in her throat as though to scold the young human from presuming that she could not bear the pack as well as he. She had been trekking the forest for most of his years as this form, burdening herself with the weight of trinkets that she would not have used in past lives. After another moment’s consideration, however, her mouth slowly closed and she silently deliberated on the opportunity that it presented. Whatever his intentions in the offer, it did give her the chance to move through her forest, through her home, unimpeded. Without the pack’s weight, she could dart about its roots and branches and rocks with almost as much grace and elegance as she held in her own fur. She could traverse Asdenni, free from a physical onus as she toted the emotional ones, for what may be the last time. That thought saddened her, briefly, but she would take the gift of the moment, as she was often determined to do.<br/><br/>With that melancholy to touch her, Levani freed the pack from her body, watching him with inquisition in her gaze, and she handed it to his waiting palm. “I suppose that that would be alright… for the time being,” she enunciated the last part, as though she would deign to take it back from him at some point. She knew contrarily, however, that she would drink from the freedom to move and step as necessary, without regret, and take what reprieve he had given her.<br/><br/>“If we are set now,” Levani mused, golden eyes flashing to the whispering edge of the clearing, her voice unencumbered and light. She glanced back at the kamuna, whose lavender leaves rustled against the cerulean sky, feathered with white plumes of clouds. It did not feel wrong to leave it in most senses, as she had many homes throughout the forest - this was not her only one. But she dreaded the thought that this would be the last that she saw it, a growing fear blossoming in her heart. She abated it for a moment and placed a somber hand on one of the tree’s roots, before she lead Kallo to the lip of the shifting woods.<br/><br/>- { --------------------------------- } -<br/><br/>For several days, the two had wandered the stretches of Asdenni, Levani leading them along deer paths and parallel to creeks that she had memorized over the decades. Along an intricate mental map that she had designed in her mind, prime for hunting its expanse for the prey as it migrated from spot to spot. If there were any questions as to her recollection, she diverted it just as easily as she did anything else that would otherwise reveal crucial pieces of her. She would tell so far that she had been around for a long time and had seen all of the forest many times over, and Kallo was often wary enough not to dig any farther than she was comfortable revealing. Still, she often sensed his curiosity, lying beneath the skein of probing questions, which silently pleased her. She allowed the foundation of the wall to remain between them, a conceived anxiety blooming inside of her, though she also secretly wished to bare everything. To learn everything. But to what end?<br/><br/>In turn, Levani pressed about his life, her curiosity abounding when Kallo would feed her pieces of it, her quiet musing present when he would divert her own inquisitions. An understanding and a mutuality remained ever there, growing, even, with what much or what little he would reveal. Her admiration, as well, which sparked into a muted flame, seen only so much as the sharp burning in her golden eyes. Admiration for his speech, his movement, his consideration. For the respect with which he offered the strange forest, the way that he hunted in it. She felt herself kin and she felt herself something else, though she couldn’t manage to name it. It frustrated her, so she tempered it with keeping her hands and legs busy. By remaining awake at night, gaze piercing the dark, worshiping the moon. By scouting several times over, flitting through the trees, if only to be the breeze on its branches, to remind herself of youth.<br/><br/>Though not many, there were some black that had stood in their way. They carried the sick through the forest, bumbling along, making mangled paths behind them that even the youngest of hunters could track. Small creatures that they dispensed mercy to, quickly, carefully, and Levani allowed the earth to swallow them whole, back to where they had meaning once more. It disturbed her, bothered her, for she had seen many more plagued before. It was as though the forest, and the cancer that was infecting it, was holding its breath.<br/><br/>The strange dreams returned each night, in different fevered forms, though she had not startled from her sleep the way that she had since she’d woken within the kamuna. That was, until the final night of their journey, and her nightmare was only the all-consuming black, and horror, and her heart pounding in her chest, and the whispers of a voice long forgotten.<br/><br/>Levani woke with a start to chill morning air, palms braced beneath her, body braced on her knees, the weight of a warm pelt hanging from her back. Golden eyes were wide, a thin veil of sweat on her flesh, giving her an unwarranted pallor. She glanced up, noting the setting as it was before. They were tucked beneath an overlay of rock, finding themselves walking at the feet of some of the jagged cliff faces. It was silent as a grave, unnoticed in the night when the songbirds were slumbering.<br/><br/>Immediately, she scrambled from her place, still dressed in her armor, which she would refuse to shed. Staff was clutched tightly in her hand, other fingers resting at her thigh where a deadly dagger awaited. “Kallo,” she spoke, voice low, seemingly loud in the surrounding quiet. “I think that we are close to something,” she whispered, seeking him out. “It is… it’s something familiar to me,” she said, a pain rising in her chest, to her throat - but whywas it there? Why was it familiar? Why did it hurt?