An Unforseen Meeting

She loved this time of night, it was finally quiet. She'd gotten used to the amount of noise most people seemed to make with abandon. If only they could hear themselves. If only. Sometimes there were times where extra sensory abilities came as a nuisance in everyday life.

Then there was having sensitive hearing that meant she could hear everything constantly. It was almost bliss to not hear anything except and occasional tussle of leaves or an animal skittering through the trees. She wasn't sure if it was just her, or that she could hear the waves too. It was perfect- almost. After a short run up she lept from her branch on the tree to the next. After that- the next. sometimes she landed on them and sometimes she caught and swung to the one after.

It was so natural to her to just do this, her body knew what to reach for. Knew what branches would support her weight, knew what wouldn't without even thinking twice.

All this made noise, but the shapeshifter's heart beat in her ears made it easy to ignore. Honey knew this was dangerous but she hadn't done any climbing in what felt like forever. Next she would scale the school. Grinning like an idiot she dropped the the forest floor and stretched her arms off.

Anything could sneak up on her and she wouldn't notice, deep in the forest, away from the moonlight Honey swore she heard something. Just an animal, she thought, who'd be up at this time in the night?

Chayne was setting up a challenge for himself. He'd tried coming out into the forest during the day to test his navigation abilities when he couldn't see. The results were.. less than desirable. In fact, that particular experience seemed to rank itself among his worst experiences.

It was nighttime now though, so navigating was much easier for him. He'd made special note of obvious his witchlight was in the daytime. He, personally though one of witchlights in the daytime was more noticeable than an actual light in the night. With this in mind, he'd brought a whole collection of witchlights with him and was now proceeding to leave them around the forest, some hanging from branches, some stuck into knotholes and some just lying on the forest floor.

It was Chayne's hope that he'd be able to continue this way and leave a path for himself with circled back to where he'd entered from. This shouldn't be a problem for him though.

His own hearing wasn't too bad either, if he was being modest about it. He did hear the noise of something making its way through the forest. He didn't want to change his course at all for fear he'd confuse himself when he came by in the morning, but the sounds stopped once they seemed to be coming from the exact direction in which he was going.

When he finally reached what seemed to be the source of the noises, he stopped. He hadn't been particularly quiet in how he traveled through the forest either, and he wouldn't have been surprised if the person -he couldn't identify who or what it was from behind - heard him. Still, he ceased to move. He even thought about closing his eyes, so if the person turned he or she wouldn't see their glow in the darkness, but perhaps it would be better for them to know that there was someone there, rather than accidentally be taken by surprise.

Honey was confused, now at ground level there was strange...things around the place. Didn't know quite what to make of them. Was there some sort of thing going going on that she maybe didn't want to disturb. A gathering perhaps? Now that she was looking around, noticing nothing but only about a quarter of all the lamps and a glowing set of eyes.

Stepping back a bit she narrowed her eyes. She knew the school had certain things that were strange and magical. Why was this one out at night? Was it benevolent or... malevolent? Honey didn't know what she'd do if it was the latter. Due to her terrible vision she only saw two glowing eyes.

Not even seeing those right she was a bit scared.

She was surprised and the fact she couldn't see much wasn't helping her calm down about it. Why did she get so deep into the woods? She must have got carried away. No moonlight touched this area of the forest through the dense trees.

Honey's nose wrinkled a bit and her top lip rose to bear her teeth. Stepping back a bit more and knocking over a witchlight on the ground and taking a dominant pose, making herself as big as possible. She could feel her heart getting faster as a fight or flight response was ready to kick into action. Honey growled lowly at it, glaring, hoping to scare it away or get it to back off.

In the darkness of this section of the forest, Chayne could see near perfectly, and as the figure several feet away from him turned to face him, he saw it was a girl. The sound she made conflicted with this thought however, and his eyes widened slightly in surprise. Initially the animalian sound didn't seem to suit the person it was coming from, however on closer inspection, Chayne noticed the girl's hands and feet. He couldn't identify which, but they definitely seemed to be those of an animal.

He hadn't meant to scare her. Of course, he never meant to scare anyone, but it did happen occasionally regardless of his intentions. Chayne took a slow step back, his wings and tail lowering so as to appear less menacing. It was sometimes easy to forget that not everybody could see as well as he could in the darkness.