“Korua! Feitha ten'amin!” The elven girl called. The path before her was shaded in soft pink light, the leaves above her like the stained glass of a cathedral. Here and there patches shone in crimson, gold, and emerald. Red was slowly seeping away, leaving the forest less and less like its common name. Still, corruption took time to release hold and here and there traces of dark flowers and thorny vines remained.

Arvanna Dirthmitore, a young elf of no more than twelve summers, darted between the gnarled twists of old branches, her booted feet stomping through ferns as she ran after her friend. She hadn’t quite come into the grace her people were known for, though her steps were not nearly as heavy as those of her companion ahead of her. Her sharp blue eyes could see clearly where Korua had gone, the broken stems of plants and thin branches leaving a wake of destruction any fool could follow.

The girl grinned, her wide smile splitting her thin face. “Amin caela lle sii'!” she shrieked through laugher. I’ve got you now. Her small fists clenched and she burst forward, pushing until her lungs were burning with the effort. One leap over a rotting log and suddenly she came out of the brush with Korua just ahead of her.

The other girl was bigger, despite being younger, a full foot taller than Arvanna was and built like a horse. Still, the elven girl grabbed her friend behind her knees and in a tumble of flailing juvenile limbs and raucious laughter, they tumbled through the grass. Arvanna rolleda way, coming to a rest at the bottom of a tree, her grin even wider.

She watched with heaving breath as her prey jumped to her feet. Korua was dressed much the same as she was - in the simple daily elvish style of a light airy blouse and hide pants tucked into boots. Somehow the same cut didn’t quite look the same on Kor’s wide, muscular frame but the light tan and pale blue embroidery on the blouse looked even more intricate in a wider pattern and contrasted against the girls well-tanned skin.

“Lle naa i'lakil,” Korua conceded the victory. “I’ll not be faster than you even if my legs grow a mile long,” she joked. The elvish tongue was as thick as the lips that spoke it, the orc of her ancestry standing in the way of any true grace she might have had.

“You’re still pretty fast,” Arvanna said helpfully. She started to say something else with she stopped, turning her head towards the breeze that blew gently between the trees. “Do you feel that?” she asked.

The half-orc furrowed her brow and thrust an arm out, trying to decipher the riddle. “Getting a little cold,” she said.

“It’s more chilly than it should be,” the elf said.

“Maybe an early snow?” They were on the northern edge of the forest, and Korua remembered last year watching her breath make clouds as she gathered acorns. It would be time for autumn foraging soon enough.

“N’uma….” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not all the wind.”

“Mani?” the younger asked. She stood, and walked around the other side of a tall oak, ignoring the decaying vines that still clung to the trunk like stiff lengths of dirty wool. Arvanna was right, the wind here was still the temperate breeze that had graced their game of chase.

Wordlessly, the girls stood together and began to follow the icy draft further into the reach of the woods.