An accusation like half-orc was shot from the hip up north, irrespective of the mixture of blood. As for Spooky, she wore it like a badge of honor. There was an olive tint to her skin that back home was called<em>mud </em>but out here, scrubbed down and lacquered with shea butter, was just the exotic thing to make the pink farmer's daughters sick with envy. "Maybe." She shrugged. The shoulders of an orc were powerful. They tended to start just above the ribs and just beneath the skull in one solid yoke-breaking peak. Her mother's side had softened that delta. They were good cloak-bearing shoulders. "Don't know about any witch hunters, but I knew a boy named Endel."<br/><br/>That Geran alone responded to the story encouraged Spooky. She ignored the scoffs, the rolled eyes, the sarcasm. None of that fazed her. "Was finding my feet here in the south. Fell in with a caravan, they welcome me, say there's safety in numbers. But soon enough they put a sword in my hand, tell me to earn my keep." From the solid curve of a hip built to counter those powerful shoulders, she flashed the hint of her bronze blade. It had a name, runed between its blood grooves; not a poetic Elvish name but one as brutally predictive as her own. Spooky arrived to take part in this game, whatever it was.<br/><br/>"Endel is a brave lad. Used to go hunting with his old man, knows the outdoors. Wants to become a ranger one day. Bivouac sets down for the night, Endel goes to forage. Fresh rabbit never sounded so good. He doesn't come back before dark, storm comes in. Wind is howling. Sounds like voices. Sounds like Endel." Hazel eyes rimmed with bold black, reflective as silver in the long shadows of firelight, dipped down low under the weight of windblown walnut black hair cut short as though in anger, as though a rite of passage into the savagery of womanhood. "Fourteen torches go out into the woods calling Endel's name. Fourteen wet sticks come back. Isn't any sign of him til morning. We find him by the stream, soggy, dazed, round-eyed. Cold fish."