“Back again, little wolf?” Inari asked, setting aside his axe. “I am glad to see you do not have a bow this time.”
“No, no bow this time. I do come bearing gifts, however.” She held out the small parcel of food. “There wasn’t much in your cupboards.”
“How considerate.” He took a brief glimpse inside the parcel before setting it upon the windowsill beside him. “Who is your friend?” Inari looked Kaja up and down.
“I’m Kaja.” She held out her hand to shake his. “I’m a huntress, like Lis.”
“A huntress.” He raised a brow at Aloisia. “Explains your skill with a bow.”
“So it does,” Aloisia said.
“Did you really come all this way to give me food?” He grabbed a few berries from the parcel and popped them in his mouth.
“Of course,” Kaja said. “That’s just how kind we are. Our job, after all, is to help the less fortunate.”
“You think I am less fortunate?”
Kaja gaped for a moment, scrabbling for words.
Inari chuckled. “I am joking. It is a reasonable assumption, though. Monsters ransacked my home and I have nothing. So, I am grateful for the food.”
“How’s the wrist?” Aloisia asked. Though, from the looks of it, it seemed to cause him no problems.
Inari lifted his right hand, turning it back and forth. “Completely healed.”
“How?” She stepped forward, grabbing his arm to examine it. Sure enough, there wasn’t even a scar to show where the arrow had been. “It went all the way through.”
“I am a shaman.” He shrugged. “It is of minor issue for me.”
“Magic?” Kaja asked, staring over Aloisia’s shoulder.
Realising how long she’d been holding his hand, Aloisia released him.
Inari nodded. “As a shaman, I practice small magic.”
“I thought magic had been gone from Teneria for centuries,” Kaja said. “Except for quintessence, of course.”
“True enough. Your people chose to forget about magic and the supernatural, casting it aside until it was a long-forgotten myth, something which had once existed and now did not. But just because your people chose to bury it, does not mean it no longer lives. It still exists alongside us. The difference is my people learned how to co-exist with it.”
“Your people?” Aloisia asked. “Where are your people?”
“Not here.” Inari smirked.
He still would not answer then. Aloisia narrowed her eyes. “From the accent, I would say somewhere in the Northern Territories, perhaps?”
“Would you, little wolf?”
She sighed.
“What do those markings mean?” Kaja pointed to the tattoos covering his body.
Inari peered down at the swirling patterns. “My people…” He hesitated for a moment before deciding to continue. “It is a tradition. At sixteen, a seer looks into a person’s future, and what she sees is tattooed on their body. This is what the seer saw for me.”
“How fascinating!”
Aloisia, now knowing the insight these markings could give to Inari’s story, studied the tattoos more closely. Beneath the beaded chain dangling from his neck, above his heart, was a hawk in flight. Across a collar bone, a dagger. On his right upper arm, a giant tree forming a circle – the tree of life. Runes of varying sizes scattered between each of the images. If only she knew the language, knew what the images represented, she could discern more of what it all meant.
“I hope I did not scare your friend too much last night,” Inari said, drawing her attention from his tattoos. “I am sorry about that whole business, by the way.”
