Carrying the broken pieces of circumstances within the grasp of her mind, Saki put together what she felt was a decent semblance of a plan. As Lirae and Tok seemed to finish their rations and seem more content than they had been before, Saki's fingers closed around the grip of her bow, and she rose to her feet.

'Missus Saki?' The little girl spoke up curiously as she watched Saki restring her bow taut. 'Are you going now?'

Saki didn't miss the faint glimpse of panic that had ghosted over the girl's face, but her brow had instead furrowed at the title the girl was still giving her.

'Not yet. I have to deal with the wolves, first.' She responded seriously as she redirected her gaze to the ceiling.

'Oh! Are you going to ask them to go away?' Lirae questioned.

'Not quite.' Saki muttered. 'I have to get rid of them, though.'

'Th-they are going to be okay? They are just going away?'

'If they understand warning shots right now, then yes.'

The only response Saki received was a startled gasp, right before she heard the clumsy clunking of feet on old wood floors before a tiny body had latched onto her side and pulled her wandering steps to a halt.

'Please! Don't hurt them!' Lirae whimpered as she turned her tearful gaze upon Saki, who wasn't the least bit moved by such a face. 'You can't! They have feelings!'

'If I don't they will hunt us down.' Saki reasoned. 'It's as simple as that.'

It wasn't like she actually wanted to harm them, either.

'It's not their fault they are hungry!' Lirae rebuked.

Saki stared down at the girl silently, watching the sincerity and conviction in her gaze before she let out a heavy breath.

Well yes, she knew that, she really did. But if she didn't do this the quick and efficient way, this was going to be a very difficult task. It wasn't like she could just sit down and politely ask the wolves to leave and hunt some deer in a different part of the world. Life didn't work that way.

'I can't "not" hurt them.' Saki eventually spoke.

'Yes you can!'

'Do you want to stay here, then?' The woman offered, much to the girl's obvious alarm and denying response. 'I can avoid them on my own, but if you want both that fox and you to come with me, those wolves have to go.'

'No! Just tell them to go away!'

A weary sigh eventually escaped Saki as she looked down at her hip-pack as she thought, ignoring Lirae's attempts at shaking a preferred answer out of Saki's hip instead of what was already offered.

Well fine... she wasn't so heartless as to abandon a little girl in the dying forest, but she sorely did not want to deal with two days worth of waterworks until she could hand the girl over to the castle and return to her peaceful life.

Saki's brow furrowed quite considerably as she stared the door down, carefully going through her options.

She didn't have enough rations to throw at the wolves to get their escape guaranteed, and even so, given how starved those wolves are, Saki was sure they would go for the humans over anything else right now. Humans were a bigger meal, in the long run.

In any case, Saki was sure there were at least eight wolves out there, likely closer to twelve, and even if she was crafty, she was sure she wouldn't be able to deal with the wolves unharmed. If she could get away with little more than a few bites, Saki was fairly sure she didn't have enough luck to knock them all out long enough to get away.

What she had in skills was more akin to ranged combat and slight of hand, not the skills to wrangle and beat down wolves in hoards, even half starved and atrophied.

So... she had her bow, poisons, and her own limbs to deal with this... Drawing blood was out of the equation, so her poisons would have do the job. The ways she could think of getting the poisons into the wolves was rather unorthodox, but she would have to do it.

But not in her current clothes. Wolves were very clever if they wanted to be. She couldn't put it past the creatures to grab any loose clothing to drag her down and get the jump on her. And she couldn't get her only clothes stained in her poisons, either. It'd probably wind up getting her killed if she was exposed for too long, regardless of the antidotes she did have. Protection didn't matter, once they got their jaws around a limb, the hide coat and layers would do nothing to protect her.

So she began to strip down, paying little heed to the grime that filled the tiny floorspace, or the chill that hung in the air. Her gloves and scarf were discarded carelessly to the floor, next her hide overcoat, which brought the faintest sound of a startled gasp to echo through the area. Saki ignored the alarmed gaze upon the scars up her neck, pretended it didn't exist as she discarded her tunic shirt to leave her in just her under singlet and linen pants.

She didn't need to look to know the alarm was written there right across Lirae's face as she stared, even as she then tugged the three leather-cords over her head and set them down on the carelessly dropped pile.

'Can I use that?' Saki asked as she pointed towards the large sheet of murky brown cotton hanging over the door leading towards Lirae's grandfather's remains. 'It will get ruined, so I can't return it.'

And without a word, Lirae nodded quickly and scampered over to tear the sheet of material from the wall.

Goosebumps began to form over the small sliver of undamaged skin over the back of Saki's right shoulder and up the back of her neck, and had the scars not been there at all, she was certain the air would have reduced her whole body to the unpleasant bumps over her skin.

Carelessly, Saki rubbed a hand over the unpleasant sensations over her shoulder and inwardly scowled. She remembered as a child she hated the look of goosebumps running up her arms whenever it got unbearably cold.

How ironic that now she wished in a twisted sense that she was still susceptible to such a thing.

'H-here!' Lirae's high-toned voice spoke up as the girl scampered back with the sheet in hand, and a rather shy look across her face as she averted her gaze from Saki's appearances.

Saki's brow lifted in question, though she didn't remark upon the girl's peculiar reaction as she instead lifted the offered material from her grip.

She didn't hesitate to tear the large sheet of cotton into broad strips, nor did she cast Lirae a second glance as she began to firmly wrap the material strips around her right arm. She absorbed herself in her planning, uncorking phials and carefully applying its contents to the material strips one by one, pausing to down one of the antidotes before continuing on with her preparations.

Lirae by this point, had sat herself gently down in among the pile of material Tok had burrowed itself within, with her gaze affixed on the saffron-hued liquid the woman was drenching the material with.

'Don't touch it.' Saki spoke up as she caught the smallest glimpse of Lirae's hand reaching for one of the discarded phials on the floor. 'It will make you sick.'

Well, not quite.

But Saki didn't want to waste any time in explaining what a paralyser was to the girl.

Needless to say, Lirae withdrew her hand quickly, as if the phial had just tried to bite her.

'The wolfs wont get hurt, right?' Lirae spoke up for what felt like the tenth time since Saki had even mentioned that the hounds outside needed to be dealt with. 'It won't make the wolfs sick?'

'It won't hurt them. And it won't make them sick.' Saki reiterated slowly as she continued to wrap her arm with the strips of bedding and tied them off. 'Other than that, I can only promise that they won't die.'

Not from this, in any case. If they die down the track from starvation, then there's no helping that.

Lirae stared owlishly up at Saki's form towering over her own for several long moments, before she nodded with a small sniffle.

'Okay...'

Good. Because there really was no helping that. As it was, Saki was drawing the short straw with this makeshift plan.

Saki cast a brief glance at the girl upon the returning presence of the gaze tracing the revealed patches of her skin. She could see the almost hesitant edge to Lirae's movements, the way she tried to steal glances without being caught. And it brought her to let out a breath and turn her gaze back to the door.

'They are just scars.' Saki remarked, earning just the smallest flinch from Lirae in response. 'They don't hurt.'

It had been a long time since the scars had caused her any physical harm, after all.

The smallest hint of a nod was cast by Lirae as Saki lifted her bow and quiver from the floor, the only sign that her words had been accepted.

'Lock the door behind me.' Saki instructed as she dislodged the plank of wood and dropped it to the floor with a careless thud. 'Don't open it until I tell you to. Not even if it's quiet.'

'O-okay...' Lirae mumbled, watching silently as Saki unlocked the door and stepped out into the afternoon air.

There was no immediate sight of wolves as the door was quickly shut behind Saki's form, and a second later the telltale sounds of a lock engaging from the inside echoed, along with the plank of wood being dragged back in place. There was no glimpse of fur anywhere, however that wolf-like snarling was still sounding from the line of trees.

She dropped her bow and quiver to the floor carelessly, scanning her eyes across the area as her left hand slipped into her hip pack and lifted two of the remaining phials from within. She popped the cork of one as she caught sight of a painfully thin wolf stalking out from the trees with it's hackles raised, a second and third emerging as she took the contents of the phial into her mouth and discarded the empty container, and a fourth emerged from off to her right.

As the wolves began to close in on her, Saki knew there was no backing out of this now.

This was going to be painful.

And as Saki popped the cork of the other phial and pressed her thumb over the lip as a stopper, the wolves made their move.

The wolf the furtherest to her right sounded a vicious snarl as it leaped forth with the intent to drag her to the ground, scarcely gracing Saki's side as she leaped out of the way with well-calculated motions. Another lunging wolf was knocked off-course with a swift kick to the side of its head, sending it tumbling with a pained yelp a few meters away.

But then, as Saki stepped back to avoid a lunging grab for her throat, a fourth wolf had taken advantage of her movement.

The crunch of teeth latching around her arm was painful, a jagged jolt of agony that was barely dulled by the padding she had applied. The wince had barely made its presence across Saki's face before she dragged the wolf forcibly towards her and spat the entire amount of poison straight in its face.

The painful grip had loosened ever so slightly as the wolf recoiled, just as a snarl from right over Saki's right shoulder brought the woman to react. She leaned forward, continuing to drag the wolf attached to her arm off its paws and, with all the momentum and strength she had, she hurled it around to crash into the side of another, lunging wolf, sending both tumbling to the hard ground with pained yelps.

Gnashing teeth and flying strings of saliva flew through the air as Saki struggled to avoid wolf after wolf, to avoid having her throat torn out at the very instance she dropped her guard. She continued to block near-grabs with her padded arm in spite of the pain flaring to life, and the burning tingling enveloping both her mouth and her arm.

She splashed the contents of the phial in her hand in the face of a closing wolf on her left, ducking beneath an attempted bite and parried another lunge to throw the attacking wolf right into another.

But then, as she managed to spot three wolves unable to so much as get back onto their paws, blinding pain flared to life in her forearm, alerting Saki to the wolf currently trying to rip her arm right out of its socket.

She didn't hesitate or even think, within an instance Saki slammed her right hand over the wolf's snout with all the force she could muster. Its jaws loosened just enough for Saki to rip her arm free from its grasp, and quickly, she ripped another phial from her hip pack and flung its contents straight onto the recoiling wolf's face.

The remaining three wolves still standing recoiled as a fifth wolf collapsed to the ground, edging just the slightest backwards as Saki turned her immediate attention upon them. Their starvation was falling prey to apprehension, and the one furtherest appeared to be feeling the effects of biting the padding of Saki's arm as it stumbled slightly on its paws.

A tentative edge forward was countered with a desperate action of Saki's own, so sudden that it had shocked the mobile wolves out of their wits.

She shouted with all her ability in spite of the tearing pain it caused, a blood-curdling scream that, with the distortion of her particular voice, sounded anything but human. Like metal screeching over metal, of glass grinding against marble, the pitch and ferocity was so forceful that it frightened the already demoralized wolves and sent them fleeing for safety.

She held in the need to cough as she watched the wolves disappear well beyond the line of trees, raising a shaky hand to her mouth as she felt fluids begin to seep down the back of her throat. Pain flickered as she finally coughed into her hand, where flecks of red had splattered against the fleshy scars that marred her palm.

Her breathing was laboured as she tugged out a phial of antidote from her hip pack, and a grimace flashed across her face as she downed the contents. It burned against her throat, but beyond that, Saki discarded the container and moved to scoop up her bow and quiver from the porch of the cabin. She didn't bother with the blood seeping from the many punctures running up her arms, nor did she bother with more than unravelling the sopping mess of bloodied and slobbered material from her arm as she walked.

She cast the remaining, paralysed wolves a fleeting glance before she shouldered her belongings, and took off.

It was perhaps an hour later when the three wolves had returned to their paralysed pack, and a further two before footsteps began to echo through the still air.

The more coherent wolves recoiled at the sight of Saki's silent form trudging into the clearing before the cabin, ears folded back as they staggered slightly upright and bared their teeth defensively. The huge mass of fur supported over the woman's shoulders would have gained the awareness of any other creature, and if not that, the smell of fresh, pooling blood definitely would. Any sane person would have been apprehensive of so much as setting foot before a pack of starved wolves once more.

And yet Saki was silent, stopping briefly in the center-most point of the clearing before she dropped what was an adolescent stag onto the hard ground. Wolves flinched and recoiled, and yet their eyes merely shifted to the kill placed before them before looking right back at Saki. Their ears remained folded back, their hackles raised, and yet they didn't bare their teeth any further, as if nervous but acknowledging the fact that she hadn't lashed out at them just yet.

She spared them barely a parting glance as she stepped back, giving them a wide berth as she neared the door of the cabin in just a few long strides.

With that, Saki promptly collected her remaining belongings, Lirae and the fox kit within, and was gone, leaving the wolves in a precarious state of disbelief.

--=[Submitted 19th August 2018]=--