After a few days of little to no excitement, Marcie was bored.

She constantly felt the pull of the forest and longed to see Dara, and yet she was stuck till everyone stopped looking at her as if she would disappear and never come back.

She felt and acted fine, but nobody was convinced. She went into the village often to show her face and it kept them from checking up on her at her home.

Something she was extremely grateful for.

A little after she fully regained her health she was practising with her bow. Her second bow, as her favourite had been left in the cave. This one was the first she had ever made and was not wholly perfect. But it was better than nothing.

She started slowly, pulling the string back gently and taking her time to aim before releasing. All the arrows flew true so she started putting more effort in. Drawing faster and faster, pulling the sting back further and further, waiting for that ache in her arms that signalled she should stop.

However it did not come. She continued, pulled back the string for one final draw and the Hardwood bow, made carefully over the course of two days with Hunter Breen when she was just fourteen summers old, from the hardest wood in the forest, snapped like old dry kindling in her hands.

Her arm jerked back with the force of the sudden lack of any resistance and she cried out.

She stared at the remains of the bow in her hands as her whole left shoulder and arm right to the tips of her fingers spasmed. Her prize possession before her father gave her mother's ring, which she now wore on a thong around her neck, lay in two pieces before her.

She sent a feeling of shock and bewilderment to Dara who simple replied with a feeling of confusion. Marcie tried to remember that he was a Dragon, and, while as intelligent as a human, he was not human and had a very different way of looking at the world. He probably saw nothing wrong or strange about the fact that she had just broken solid Hardwood with her bare hands.

After a moment she picked up the pieces and stared at them, running her finger tips over the worn notches and marks that adorned the wood. She dropped it and stared at her hand, clenching her fists.

She looked at the old willow tree with its target painted upon the pitted bark. She walked up to it, pulled her arm back and slammed her fist into the middle of the target with all her strength. The bark splintered under her knuckles, the shock travelling up her arm but with none of the pain that usually accompanied such a hit. Her skin split and immediately began to bleed, now she felt pain.

Dara sent a wave of laughter her way. He found it amusing.

Marcie stared at the her fist and without meaning too her eyes filled with tears. She rarely cried but as was usual with women, she sometimes did, without knowing the reason why.

She didn't feel particularly sad, what she mostly felt was disbelief. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, testing to see if she was in a strange dream, a dream where she now possessed impossible strength.

She had always been strong, simple because she did physically demanding work that built up her muscles, but this was something different.

Dara registered her confusion but did not understand the reason behind it.

Marcie sat down on the ground, her back against the tree, tears silently trickled down her cheeks and dripped from her chin.

She reasoned that maybe the reason she was crying was that, while she had always been a freak (Not marrying, living away from the village and of course having green 'outsider' eyes), but now she really was a freak.

She hadn't really thought about it properly before. She had gotten used to feeling Dara's feelings and emotions and she had gotten used to the fact hat she had survived an encounter with a mystical creature of legend. But only now did she realise what it meant.

Having followed her instincts, she hadn't told anyone about Dara or her strange new connection to a, she still had trouble believing it.  A Dragon afterall! Although she did trust those close to her, the temperament of the village was unpredictable, gossip spread like wildfire and being surrounded by mysteriously threatening forest kept them superstitious and intolerant of anything outside of the barrier or ordinary they had constructed around them, as evidenced by their hatred for Marcie's mother and their barely concealed contempt for herself.

Not telling anyone had been the correct course of action. If any of them knew, she would be cast out  or killed before she could raise an argument in her defence.

Anything different was strange and the Forgotten villagers were unprepared for it and so it must be wrong and evil and had to be destroyed.

Not for the first time Marcie sent a prayer of thanks to The Goddess that she lived separate from the village and was in little danger of someone stumbling accidentally on her secret.

She looked again at the pieces of her bow that lay innocently in the grass and then at the shape of her fist in the trunk of the tree. She needed answers, she needed to know what was happening to her.

There was no helping it, even if nobody would let her, she had to go back to the cave, and she had to find out what was happening to her.

She absentmindedly rubbed the strange mark on her chest, and sent Dara a feeling, in which she tried to let him know that she was coming to see him.

Dara seemed to understand and Marcie was filled with a sense of relief. 

But first she needed a new bow.

She came across a problem while she got ready.

She had left her pack and a majority of her supplies in the cave with the Dragon. She cursed and sat for a while with her head in her hands. 

One good pack. Most of her supply of herbs. Her bed roll. A whole quiver of arrows. And more.

And she, with no money to replace them.

Well, she did have the money Miss Maiden had gifted her. And while it pained her, it might well make a difference.

She did have a spare pack too use. She also still had a small number of arrow heads left, and if she was frugal with them she should have enough. She looked around her small house. She might have enough furs to stitch together another bed roll. She had been in her hunting leathers when she was found and Dafne had kindly washed them for her. She had a few herbs collected form her herb garden the past few days, not as good as Dafne's selection but enough. And as for her bow...

She spent the next two days preparing things. Sewing and testing her new bed roll, fletching some arrows, using all the remaining heads and drying some herbs for the journey.

When she was ready she grabbed all her money, every penny and made her way to Breens house.

He was not in but Old Damnion, saw her hovering outside his door and called her over. When she told him she required a bow he looked her at her over the smoke of his pipe.

To the villagers he would always be Far sighted Damnion. Not only could be see the smallest movement through the thick forest over a hundred paces away but he was also remarkably observant in other areas.

Marcie shifted uncomfortably under his direct gaze.

"What happened to the old one?" he asked,

"It broke" Marcie replied truthfully, breaking out in a sweat despite the cold.

He pointed to her left hand with the end of his pipe, "What happened to your hand?"

Marcie had applied a salve and bandaged her bleeding knuckles carefully, just as Dafne had taught her, she moved it behind her,

"Nothing"

He made a 'humph' sound. Marcie always got the impression he did not like her very much. But then again, he was like that with everyone.

"You gonna be able to craft with it?"

She shrugged, "Just pain innit"

He  made a 'humph' sound again, took a long draught from his pipe and rose from the little stool he was perched upon, waving his hand in a 'follow' gesture.

She did.

Near the hunters homes was a smoking house to cure meats. It was incredibly large, with racks and racks hung with all kinds of meats. Marcie's own tiny box behind her house would have fit inside it a hundred fold. The smell coming from it was incredible, so many meaty scents mixed together with wood smoke. Next to it was the hunters shop. Where the bows were made

"You ever made a bow before?" Daminion asked, his back to her as he unlocked the large doors.

"Twice" she replied,

"Nothin to it" he said with a shrug

He pulled open the two doors to the shop and propped them open. Inside were workbenches, old worn tools in racks along the walls and piles of Hardwood, the hardest wood in the forest.

It was so hard it was very difficult to break a branch from the tree and so instead they were collected from where they fell, either from weight, storm or unknown creatures. It was precious and hard to wrought, but flexible and worth the effort spent.

"There it is" he said, hefting a long slim piece of wood and testing the balance. He brought it to the work bench and a broke an inch off the end to weight it better. He did this the only way you could, he used another piece of Hardwood as a chisel and banged it with a heavy mallet, chipping away at the wood as though it were stone until it was a little shorter. He brought it over and offered it to her.

She took it and he tutted, "A lefty eh? Course you would be"

Marcie ignored the comment, "How much?" she asked instead, dreading the answer,

Damnion puffed out his chest, and glanced around, "One piece of Hardwood plus use of the shop for a whole day?" He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin, then shrugged, "How much you got?"

Marcie's shoulders sagged. 

She unhooked her money bag from her belt and held it out, thinking how pathetically small it looked.

Damnion took the bag from her and felt it. 

He looked at her. She begged him with her eyes alone.

After a moment, he tucked the bag away in a fold of his furs and said nonchalantly, "Grab me a nice good buck sometime why don't cha"

Marcie breathed a sigh of relief and nodded her thanks, he made a 'humph' sound again.

She set about crafting her bow.

Damnion grabbed a stool and whittled away at a small Hardwood carving, painstakingly etching the incredibly hard substance into figures of the animals of the forest. He offered up advice and admonishments as she worked.

Marcie sweated away as she shaved slivers of wood off at a time. Hardwood would not be rushed, it required patience and perseverance. You had to chisel tiny notches in the wood with a Hardwood pick then shave back layers at a time until the wood was flexible enough to bend. She worked away, all the while wondering if it had always been this easy. She felt Damnions eyes on her the whole time, but whenever she glanced his way he was focused on his carving.

The sun had fully set and the world was chilly by the time she finished.

Her breath plumed in the air before her, the sweat cooling on her skin. She strung the bow and tested its flexibility for the last time.

Satisfied, she nonetheless handed it to Damnion to inspect.

He ran his fingers over the wood carefully with a keen eye, then looked at her closely for a long time. She met his eyes as best she could, looking as innocent as possible.

He grunted and handed the bow back, 

"Not bad fer your third time" he said gruffly, he rubbed his chin, "Come help me out at the shop sometime eh?"

"...If I get the time" she replied, surprised.

She left, cradling her the bow like a newborn. It was undoubtedly better than the other two and she felt immensely pleased with herself. Dara felt her pleasure and failed to understand it, no matter how much she tried to explain why it meant so much to her.

She refrained from testing it out due to her short supply of arrows but resolved to hunt as much as she could on the way to see Dara.

She made her way to her home and collapsed into bed, her bow clutched in her hand and soon felt into an exhausted sleep.