In her old testament, murder was not seen as a crime, it was a cleansing. Here, in Novus, under a suffocating stoic title of emissary, Emersyn spends weeks trying to find the eyes that spied her just days ago killing a pair of rare falcon’s for their talons and their wings. Even their eyes had been harvested by the gray who enucleated them in a matter of seconds before dropping all the catchings in a jar of green fluid.
There had been no struggle here, the falcons flew into a sensitive aerial snare and were hung up quickly by the feet for their catcher to check the traps. It all seemed to be a quick smash and grab until a bystander got in the way. It was a unicorn, someone from the court and a real do-gooder at that. It was city-folk like him that drove her to live in the woods, but she would never tell Po that.
The altercation between them was immediate, quick - which then - came to an abrupt end as he turned to leave the forest. He wanted to report her operation to the Warden immediately - but she couldn’t have that - and so went after him, but quietly. His path was easy, and he underestimated the Emissary whose sword had been readied as she crept like a jaguar in the shadows behind him. Poised to hunt, to catch, to kill, and, like a jaguar, utterly dismantle and render him unrecognizable.
And then, Sarkan got in the way.
Emersyn would have lived a life never needing to know who the gray percheron was. But now, her eye witness was bleeding to death because of him. All she could do - for now - was hang back in the shadows and watch .. and wait .. and make sure that the horned crusader never rose from where he fell. The stranger who killed him had already been busy with the same agenda as Emersyn; poaching.
Fuck.
She left quite disappointed, angry, and without the satisfaction of killing the unicorn herself. She did return much later that night to take his eyes after kicking his forehead in out of rage.
It was a late night when Emersyn found herself at her table, incense and herbs burned on a hot stone over the fire where smoke crawled out in curling white tendrils, a quill moved over perfectly straightened parchment. The cursive untangled these words;
I know what you have done.
I have seen it with my own two eyes.
I know you killed the unicorn.
The forest is watching.
And so am I.
Meet me in the woods where it happened.
There was nothing poetic in the six neatly curled scrolls which contained this message exactly. Around each scroll was a dark blue ribbon, and with those ribbons the scrolls were attached to six small black bunnies|rabbits. Even though the poetry was missing, the message was meant to provoke a certain feeling: Of dread, maybe terror, or possibly guilt. Any of these insecurities would do. In the event that Sarkan wanted to show his face in Viride again - Emersyn would meet him there, the message was clear about that.
What the message hid between its letters and all the spaces that went in between, was how Emersyn would meet him if he were to ever have such misfortune. And, of course, nothing in the readings gave any clues away. Sarkan had to be reasonable, if he was still out there, if the rabbits knew how to find him, then clearly his weight was worth something. She had other plans that involved using him to escape a murder she really wanted to commit herself.
@Sarkan I'm so sorry for taking so long. Work is my life.
