From early on in spring Tauriel had learned that night was no longer a safe time to traverse in the lands of the free folk of Moladion. Though she'd not yet encountered one of the beasts of the night herself, they did not go silently about their business. She'd witnessed the great shadows they cast by moonlight, keeping herself distant enough to remain safe. When summer came and still the creatures' presence had not relented upon these lands, Tauriel began to feel it more. She preferred to hunt by moonlight in the hottest months of the year, but to do so now would mean putting herself at risk of become prey herself rather than maintaining her stead at the top of the food chain. As always, though, she had adapted, and become much more routinely crepuscular - most active at dawn and dusk, just as the sun began to rise and just before it set.

Now, as autumn turned towards winter, the temperature was becoming easily bearable even when the sun was at its zenith in the middle of the day. The beasts seemed uninterested in moving on from Moladion, or going back to wherever they'd come from, but Tauriel had learned to live her life around them. It had taught her a lesson in pacifistic ways - that if she did not bother them, they would not trouble her. The day was her time, and the night theirs. So today found the ebony and ivory girl jogging through the northern forest on her way to check a cache. She had many across Moladion, places where she kept things of importance to her, or just snacks left for times when she was unlucky in the hunt.

As she drew closer to the tree that housed her cache - skillfully placed inside a hollow knot on the tree's trunk - the sound of another's voice caught her attention. She slowed, moving through the woods more carefully so as to discern if this wolf was too close to her hiding place to safely visit without revealing its location. They know! They know! she heard the unknown wolf call. Her fur began to bristle, feeling uneasy, and yet she came closer still. She spotted him then, through the scattering of tree trunks, sprawled out on the ground and laughing. Duo-toned eyes flicked up and around, wondering who he had been talking to, and in that moment of distraction, as she took another step forward she unwittingly stepped on recently fallen leaves still crisp in death. She cringed, knowing she had revealed herself, and looked to the grey-brown wolf once more. The striking lines on his face made his gaze all the more intense as he locked upon her white and black frame.

Tauriel's brows furrowed, and she nearly turned and disappeared back in the direction she'd come from. But his words struck a chord with her. Her lips peeled back and she stepped forward through the trees - closer, but still outside the clearing he lay within. "If you think I will be an easy meal, cannibal, you are mistaken!" Her mother, Everlyse, had perhaps given the girl a fire not oft seen, but also a deep seated hate for cannibals and the atrocities they committed. The rise of the cannibal Queen Jaidah had been what caused her parents to leave Asteraia and move to Spirane - where she and her littermates had been born. But as she stepped closer and prepared to defend herself with tooth and claw against this abomination, she realized he had lain himself flat out and his sides were heaving as though he'd just sprinted across the breadth of Moladion. Lips faltered in their grimace, sensing something was not quite right here, but far from ready to let her guard down.