16. A cache of items

A thought crosses her mind: if this is one of the marks her kin make, surely a cache of supplies will be nearby too. Sure enough, with very little searching, she finds a pack.

It’s not much, but it’s certainly something. Inside she finds a simple tunic (enough to cover her body but only just), a bedroll, a mess kit, a tinderbox, two torches, two days worth of rations, a full waterskin, 50 ft of rope, and a dagger. She shoulders the pack and makes note of where it was. When she returns, she thinks to herself, she’ll let the hunters know she found one of their caches and that it’ll need to be replaced.

Annake’s stomach grumbles and she realizes she’s hungry after exerting herself to run from the bandits. She quickly eats one of the rations and takes a few swigs of water before striking off eastward toward home.

The afternoon passes otherwise uneventfully. She sticks to the shadows and travels quietly, her bare feet barely making any sound in the moss. As the shadows begin to grow longer, she looks around for a place to bed down for her nightly trance. As an elf, she doesn’t need a full night’s sleep and will be able to resume her journey in just a few hours, but she still needs to recoup her energy.