She leaned back against the tree, communing with it, enjoying the long conversation she'd been having with it. Her appearance was dismissive. Ragged, hair tangled in knots and snarls one would have thought she'd been living feral for years rather than simply hours. She'd torn the shift she was wearing, which hardly covered anything anyhow. If it wasn't for the cold, she'd foregone clothing for they got in the way of a shifter like her anyhow. She was kneeling, not quite with her rump on the ground, back pressed into a alpine fir, arms flung back as if hugging it from behind. Her chin was pointed skyward and her eyes up until that point had been closed. They were debating, the fir and her, whether or not Zulrav's song had changed and if it were going to bring snow. Haeli wanted to see snow, but the tree had assured her that for her kind, snow was less than pleasant. The witch had laughed and claimed she'd grow taproots and enjoy it like the fir then. The tree had just shook its proverbial head and had delighted in the fact that the witch was even there, as unskilled as she was in the way of forests like the one the tree resided in.
It was already feeling better with her around, though not by any conscious effort on her part. She'd simply found the giant, alone because it had been somehow spared in the past from a lightening struck forest fire, and had payed it some attention distracting it from its vigil over the younger forest sprouting up around it. The younger trees were good conversationalists, but their stories were things the older tree had heard. Haeli held new stories of distant swamps and of cypress trees the alpine had never heard of but longed to entwine roots with. It had no awareness of trees that longed for water to flood their trunks and feed them nutrients washed away from other places. Haeli had told the tree of snakes and then shifted to one to crawl about the trees bark so it could wholly understand what she meant and live the story just as she told it. For a time, the homesick swamp witch had made the alpine aware of what it was like to be a mighty Cyprus and in return when she traveled home to gather supplies, she'd tell a cyprus or two about the alpine fir and its life - witnessing fire and the death of its kin - all while watching a new generation rise about it.
She loved the tree and would visit it often now, slowly doing the job of her kind by nurturing the surroundings and bringing hope and joy and peace within the high mountain forest. She was just saying her goodbyes, just promising a return soon, when the younger trees whose roots touched the older one sang of a stranger, lost and wandering even as the sun went down.
Haeli lifted her head, started listening with her human ears instead of with her Gnosis Mark and felt the heavy footfalls incredibly near where she was, almost on top of her. As they rounded the tree, she rose in one smooth motion and instinctively hissed at the stranger - a reaction Fang would have not Haeli - as he was suddenly not in her space then in her space.
He'd see a young human woman, barefoot and dressed in a dirty white shift that concealed none of her form as if she didn't know better that it needed concealing. She suddenly rose to her feet from where she was leaning her back against the trunk of a tree. Her eyes were a soft gold, as if brown had tried to form across her orbs, but the eye color in her blood hadn't quite made the commitment, being lazy as it was, and instead left her gaze more akin to honey than syna's light or the dark chocolate the gods had intended. She had a snarl of earthy blond hair, not brassy enough to be considered stunning, but lighter than the color 'dirty'. Summer wheat flowed down her shoulders, and it would have been pretty had she taken the time to brush it or in any way shape or form tame it. But she did not. Instead she simply let it run loose, tangling on anything and everything .
She blinked at the stranger, almost as if she hadn't just hissed at him, and then snapped back to herself abruptly. "To come so deep into these parts you must be lost." She said, knowing if he meant her harm there was only one escape and that was straight up. The man looked to stocky to be a good climber while the alpine would welcome her into its highest branches. Yes, she'd flee up if he looked threatening. But Haeli, being Haeli, knew there were a lot more monsters out in the world besides men. And once she'd spotted his arm.. which she had right away.. she was curious.
"You aren't human." She said, surprising herself and then blinking because she'd spoken the thought as she'd had it, which wasn't characteristically her way of doing things.
by Rorugir on October 16th, 2011, 8:16 pm 
