Aura giggled and blushed when poked; she hadn't thought about it before, but when it was put across, even as a passing jest....she blushed again.<br/><br/>Her fingers splayed and traced along the dead wood of a warehouse wall, and she looked up at the stars. "In that case, your next pint is on me. When I spoke earlier if Waterdeep being 'too' close...you see, a bit of conflict broke out between the frontiersman of that growing city-state,  and the elves of the Ardeep. I confess the circle of rangers to which I belonged was some of the kindling."<br/><br/>"Separated from them, I chanced across a ranger of the humans. We nearly shot each other on sight. My first memory of his face is down the shaft of a drawn arrow - two, in fact, his and mine. Neither was ever fired. In fact I still carry that arrow, and it will be my last to go. I know not about his."<br/><br/>"Larger human and elven forces were marching closer about us - they had not marked us yet, but their arrows fell through the canopy. He carried two shields of fallen comrades, and gave one to me, that we might block the arrows from each side as she slipped out from between the lines together."<br/><br/>"He knew of a druidic enclave of both our kinds, and gnomes too. He took me there, and... But when he returned to Waterdeep, I was tricked into believing it was to return to his affianced. And so I left in bitterness. When I returned, I found the enclave moved away because of the fighting, but I learned from a straggler that he<em>had</em>returned - Waterdeep was only to break off the engagement, for my sake, and to return those shields to the friends' families. Yet he too was tricked, lied to about my leaving as was I about his. The gnome told me he fell into the arms of a druidess before they decamped."<br/><br/>"I ought to've seen the lie in her eyes when she tricked me, and known her heart which gave her the motive; when I think back now, she had probably had something with him before ever he met me."<br/><br/>"I ought to've been able to track them after. I suppose a druidess might know how to cover her tracks, or leave none at all."<br/><br/>"For this consorting, and for...outside-the-fold tactics another ranger blamed me for to exculpate himself in the eyes of the elves, I am in little favor with my kin. Perhaps it is as well...I would be expected to continue in the fighting otherwise, and I lost the heart for that particular cause. And so I traveled now to a branch of kin in Cormanthor."<br/><br/>She glanced east, over rooftops, knowing beyond the bordering river the forest lay.