Prick

It was just a dream.
 
Right?
 
Mine, indeed. I am nobody’s but my own and Ussi’s. Complete rubbish. I’m sure it was just because I was in a mad place, with a mad hunter telling me I’d have a mad dream about finding some super-magical mad quiver. So, that mad dream I had.
 
Like having cheese before bed.
 
If that’s the worst I have to expect from these Arch Fey that Little Lord Rafi is so concerned about then I’m quaking in my fucking boots, darling. A little dreamy-woo.
 
Although to be honest, what really shitted me up tonight was Sabali. “Think about the blood to be spilled.” His words didn’t affect me. The fact that they didn’t affect me, at all, affected me. We are a band of skilled killers, Abbil, there is no doubt about that. Yet Sabali is right. I thought not of the blood to be spilled that night, only of its requirement to be spilled.
 
The Druid and the giant were simply a hunt.
 
I didn’t think twice. Should I have? I’m not sure that’s even clear. Ussi did not think twice. I could feel his excitement in the chase, almost more than the kill. I feel it too, that pull of tracking, following and preying upon something lesser than yourself.
 
It’s intoxicating – Abbil, nothing can describe the adrenaline that courses through you when you are on a hunt. It’s pointless even trying. You hear the beat of your heart in your ears, feel the blood rushing faster through your veins and every one of your senses is heightened. See – that’s something, but not all of the thing, so I shouldn’t have tried.
 
It’s a chase. There’s a time limit – it’s the work often of a moment if your prey escapes, dies or kills you in turn. It’s FUN.
When the giant turned me into a deformed THING, I wondered for a moment if that meant the end of my hunting days, but then…something…I felt something. Abbil, my arms were no more than six inches long and yet I did not miss when firing a bow almost twice as long as those arms. If anything, I hit harder with my shrunken limbs than I had before. I felt…guided. I do not know if this was the Feywild exerting its influence upon me or whether something else was tilling the rudder.
 
But I liked it. I liked hunting them, regardless of their guilt or innocence. Regardless of my ability. It was fun.
 
Unlike Rafi. That one is about as much fun as a thorn prick during a romp in the bushes. It’s not the prick you want. I nearly shot the fucker. I was THAT close. War? What war? Who gives a fuck about a war between the Fey anyway? All I’m going to do is turn down the Lord of the Hunt for the rest of my life. And when I’m no longer interested in my life, do you know what? Joining his hunt doesn’t sound like the worst of ideas. If it’s that or living out my days slowly fading away in a cottage, tending to my gooseberries, I know which I’d prefer.
 
I told Rafi I could say no and he didn’t even listen. If he knew what I could…
 
It doesn’t matter. I had similar arguments with my brothers.
 
Gods rest their souls.