They were letters, squiggles heavily contoured and serpentine, bent about each other in constrictive loops of eroded ink. The bristles that had once been used to shape them were coarse and wiry, deserting streaks in their composition, fissures that they fell into. What remained were weak outlines, hardly visible even when flattened against the sky. He had to squint, thinning wide and almond eyes, feline and saffron in hue, a contrasted brilliancy to fur like blushing mink. From pupils tighter than diamondesque slivers, he trailed the lines for what they were worth, grumbling in an ancient, gurgling tongue of eras long lost. Within those staccato words was the layout of a forgotten location, a barrow said to be hewn of brass and marble, where the tribe’s ancestors had been casketed centuries previous to his existence. And for in what motive did he seek them? Abiding traditional regulation – and that was all. Gaal had not asked to be crowned shaman of his beastfolk, in fact, he had about acted in avoidance. Yet as it were, his dodge tactics were not of use, and there he was, lands and moons from home, chasing the antediluvian print of the faintly memorable.<br/><br/>There was sound, tickles to panther ears that barely bothered to twitch their recognition. It was too light to interrupt his mantra,<span style="font-style: italic">thwacks</span>and<span style="font-style: italic">thwumps</span>conjoined, partnering distant shakes the cat-anthro did not sense from his placement upon a low slouched bough. Whatever it was, he was occupied, too enthralled in the work of decipher, and his mind had not the mettle to go wondering around. He passed a rough pink tongue upon milky canines, the likes of which decorated his speech with every instance of vocalization. Gaal was an elder, aged some seventy years, matured and rankly scarred from a harrowed, treacherous lifetime. It was illustrated in mars, punctures and skin ridged into mended seams, cluttering hulky biceps and ornamenting a broad chest with courting wounds on elephantine shoulders. Through a pitch coat that fraudulently gleamed eggplant by the touch of sun, they were akin to medals, worn as bejeweled sequins, matte to the shine of his fur. Armored greatly in gradient steel specially forged for himself with a large gauntlet cloaking the pincer claws of one hand, Gaal was a cause for bulging eyes. Warrioresque musculature was the geography of his height, and as more reason for gape, golden hoops ringed his lobes and bloody sanguine was his color of preference.<br/><br/>Being there in the tree caused most of the dwellers to retreat, masking themselves in shadow and using as shield against endangerment. He had been there for no greater than an hour, toggling the mummified leaf the precursors had inscribed, battling his conscience and making consternation fixture to his features. Gaal did not expect the chromatic feathers of a fowl to cross him, wing tips so near they nearly touched the leather belts buckling his upper arm. He blinked, abstractly at first, and then his iron gaze travelled backward. A deer path spiraled through the brambles beneath his dangling paw, cresting a knoll and the decaying trunk of a deceasing tree. As he listened, the noise was pegged to that area, where the greenery morphed into a shapeless blur, one even his keen eyesight could not articulate. With burly hands, he choked the leaf in its ceremonial flask, anchoring the precious item along his hip before he jumped down. Big as he was and disregarding substantial sinews, Gaal walked with a silent grace, a fluidity spread to the very end of his crooked tail. It was the gait of a hunter, the practiced and agile step of a male that had survived many a clash with opposing tribes – both of the feline sort and their counterparts.<br/><br/>Threading through the brush as a knitter’s needle through fairysilk, he destructed the ground between himself and what he assumed a violent bustle. Backsiding the bark from whence he paused, was what he categorized a female after some seconds of study. Hulking in her own right and adorned in the garb of a fighter, she was not of the other humans Gaal encountered. Those women had been plainly dressed in burlaps and cottons, tending rows of herb and produce for their families, unbothered by the happenings beyond their protective bounds. To see one as this, struggling against gnarly, deep-skinned creatures with smushed faces and puddle sockets, was a bit of a shock. With his threesome of blades still tucked in their leathern beds, Gaal observed. She freed herself, swishing and jiving as someone who was measured, who had engaged beforehand – perhaps even with victorious results. Her liberation was vaguely lived however, for the bunch with their eely daintiness were at her again, gripping and snibbling their amusement.<br/><br/>Gaal did not have much experience with brownies, they were virtually nonexistent in the rainy canopies and sopping wet turf of his origins. Those he had met prior were the secret helpers of households, the unseen workers that aided in upkeep of grain bins and wheat dryers. These, he declared wordlessly, had to be the feral type. From the shade he stepped, his presence hard to be missed, since his aura was compliment to statuesque physicality. A lone creature spied him, and with ambition, made a tall leap for his thigh. Gaal was hasty though, he caught the motion and nabbed, cinching a metal prison overtop the mini beast and squeezing. There was a shout from his palm and between his fingers, a morbid cry of crushed bones, and some others assembled in retaliation. They were quick buggers, flighty and zipping, blurs that Gaal had to pay great attention to. Teeth sank into his lower leg, directly above the ankle, and a terrible duo saddled his tail, hugging for dear life as he swished round speedily.<span style="font-weight: bold">“Irksome bastards,”</span>his human tongue was gravelly, rustic with a thunderous depth as it dropped from his throat like raining ore. He stepped on a second, flattening their person before a shrill utterance could form and started a mad twist for those scaling his spine. He picked up pace and then abruptly braked, tossing cursing bodies into bushes and against the fleshy flank of a tree. Above a shoulder, he snaked a glance at the woman.<span style="font-weight: bold">“What in the name of the gods did you do to them?”</span>He snatched an airborne third, snapping the brownie in death clamp.<span style="font-weight: bold">“Shit in their burrow?”</span>