Tessandriel's hair moved gently in the breeze as she looked down at the encampment below. Surprise showed on her face as she realized whose forces they were. Forgotten was the herd she had been tracking.
"This is the staging point we never could find for those forward patrols. Father will be pleased when he learns of this."
She eventually makes her way back to camp to report to father on her findings. "We need to report this to Xavius at once. With this we will be able to cut off further incursions into the mountains. We leave in four hours. Rest if you will."
Ivellios was like that to her frequently, closed, distant, aloof even. Others said he used to be much different. Since the city Mylosis fell and his family lost or killed he had not been the same. Sometimes she caught him looking at her with a distant, pained look in eyes. Once, one of the other elves told her why father acted like he did. She reminded him of his Faunra. Tess had her tenacity, her strength of character. It was hard for him to be around her at times due to this, which is why he was away so much. Once in a blue moon she heard father quietly sobbing and praying to Desna.
On one occastion (and only one), Ivellios told Tessandriel about Faunra. She had been a cleric of Desna. Desna is the goddess of freedom and luck. As he told her about Desna the ideal that Faunra had once championed for lingered in her mind. It seemed to stay with her until she slept that night.
That night as she dreamed she thought she saw Faunra standing next to Desna. Faunra came and stood next to her. She began to speak. "Tessandriel, you have a rare gift. A connection to nature, the wild. Not many have this. Use it to free our people."
"Why? Why must I do this?" Tess asks the woman.
"Because it is the right thing to do. Because not helping would bring about the evil purposes of Ultruu. And we both know that this cannot happen. You are not evil, and must to all you can to stop this."
And with that she awoke. The dream stayed with her. "Freedom. Something we will see if it is the last thing I do." "I will do it! I will!"
They stayed in the wild almost all of the time, preferring to be able to move around rather than be stuck in one place that invited being attacked.
When she was old enough, he began teaching her the ways of the ranger. He noticed that she seemed to have a strong connection to the widlerness, to the point of being quite uncomfortable in villages, towns, and cities. Nature spoke to her in ways that people could not. She was more at home in the wild than anyone else he had ever known or trained. So effective she was in identifying, tracking, and living off the land, that even he had a hard time finding where she went.
Upon reaching her 20th year, he introduced her to the Consortium of Light as he was an unofficial member and de facto lieutenant of Great Northern mountains band. At the age of 24, four years after she reached the age of maturity, he came to her with news of a meeting. They were to meet in Archdale, and she would proceed with haste. He would not go as there was greater need for him here. She would go in his place. She carries the a specially commissioned dagger around her neck as a symbol of this.
