Buurn had for once gotten her way with Regis. They had left the farmstead and followed Dekor's trail until they reached a river where they camped for the night.
"You get some rest," Regis said, adding more logs to the fire.
"I have no need." Buurn knelt beside the river and put her hand in the water allowing the cold current to wash over her skin. "This flows directly from the mountains." Her white eyes stared off into the distance. "He has gone upstream. Do you eat fish?" Buurn lifted two large green fish from the river and carried them over to the fire.
Regis took the fish, gutted them, then skewering them on his sword he waited for Buurn to prepare some supports for the sword so they could bake the fish over the fire.
"I guessed he would head for the mountains."
Steel gray clouds scudded across a languid moon as stars peered nervously through the breaks in the sky. Buurn's eyes flickered white to black as the night held her in its chilly embrace. Buurn took the fish from the fire and gave them both to Regis.
"I'll get something later," Buurn assured him. Regis sat by the fire pulling pieces off the fish and pushing them quickly into his mouth. It was not long before he had finished his meal.
"I'm going to turn in." Regis lay down beside the fire watching Buurn as she sat staring at the mountains they were hoping to reach on the morrow.
Buurn waited, her eyes closed, her senses searching the night. Rising gently to her feet, she leapt into the air, a blur of silent motion. Hanging in silhouette against the moon with her arms spread wide, she silently scanned the world around her. By day, she was half-blinded by the sun, her eyes protected by the white shields that kept the sunlight from turning her to dust. By night, she could see for miles; rabbits peeking from their burrows, foxes sniffing along the riverbanks and silvery-scaled fish nestling in the mud. Wolves howled in the distance calling the pack to hunt, but they would not be coming to this side of the river. Buurn turned her eyes toward the fading trail. Slipping her hand gently inside the leather wraps of her clothing, she removed a small glass lens edged with a thin band of silver upon which were engraved a sequence of runes. Whispering the words of runes to the night she raised the lens to her eye.
A trail of blue light shone brilliantly in the lens marking the path Dekor had taken in his bid for freedom. The path crisscrossed the river as it wound its way up toward the mountains until it left the river and went west. Buurn lowered the lens and returned it to the folds of her clothing. She looked down at a fox, smiling to herself, as it snuck into the camp lured by the scent of the baked fish. She watched the fox trot around the fire keeping its head low and its eyes fixed on Regis.
Buurn descended slowly. Halfway down, her eyes narrowed to slits as she focused on the fox sniffing around the food bag where Regis had stowed the remains of his meal. She fell upon the fox as swift as a hawk, landing silently on the grassy meadow. Buurn snatched up the fox, broke its neck and sank her teeth into its throat, draining the life from the animal until its body was nothing more than a dust sculpture. Buurn then walked slowly over to the river and knelt down beside iron gray waters. She held the body of the fox beneath the surface, shaking it gently until it had dissolved.
Buurn returned to where she had been, maintaining her vigil as the purple curtain of the night was drawn back upon a new day.