The hunt, it was as natural to her as breathing.
She crept along the rocks and stone that rose like the ruined wall of some forgotten fortress. Her prey walked below, unaware of the hunter that stalked above. Quiet as a whispering breeze, she slid an arrow into place and knocked it. The pull of her bow, the tensing of her arm as she pulled back, all of this was familiar to her. In, then out, hold, and loose it quickly, but gently. The arrow streaked in and ran the goat through. The kill was hers. The goat just didn't know it yet. blood splattered the ground as it bounded off to get away from what ever it was that nipped it, or what it thought had nipped it.
A short time later, the girl found her kill. Her long hunting knife was out and she began to quickly clean her kill with practiced hands. Skin it and keep the hide. Gut it, no time to gather anything useful this day, there was a bear about. Keep the liver, though. Done? Yes, now bundle the meat and get away from here.
It was what she had done for as long as she can remember. She hadn't always used a bow, and at first it was hares, and squirrels, but she had been on her own for nearly, what was it now? Ten winters? She remembered a little of the time before, but everything did remember before she awoke covered in blood was a blur. She had been alone since that day, fending for herself.
She had managed to become fairly skilled in the time since and even began trading with the people in the villages and towns in the foothills of the mountains surrounding the Wild-lands. Over the years she traded for arrows, a longbow, a sword, her knife, and a really nice backpack. The hunters in the villages took to calling her "Ice Eyes" after her steely gaze. It stuck and she took it as her name, since she could not remember the one her parents had given her. They even gave her a set of tattoos that marked her as a hunter, sharp of eye and steady of hand.
Her camp was in site, now. A fire blazed to life and she began to smoke the meat. A nearby stream and an bar of soap allowed her to clean her clothes. The other set was still drying, so she wrapped up in a blanket to keep out the night chill. She watched the flames and the smoke rise up into the clear night sky.
She almost had enough for another potion. Perhaps the next kill would be enough.
Perhaps. In the wilds, nothing was ever certain.
