She tried to push down her panic, but couldn't get the fact that she was unable to summon the raven again from her mind. She ended up heading out to check her traps alone. Because she was so focused and distracted, she left later than she wanted. Her mind was preoccupied with the silver raven as she walked. She didn't give her usual greetings to those that passed her by. It didn't seem the other trappers and hunters really cared either way. Finally, Faye reached the forest once again. She pushed the little raven to the back of her mind as she set about checking her preset traps.
It was clear after Faye found her first one that something wasn't right. The trap was sprung, but it was completely mangled. The wood used to create it was busted and splintered. The rope was cut in multiple places. Her brows furrowed as she began to gather the remaining pieces of the trap. Looking around, she tried to find any sort of clues as to what may have happened. It wasn't hard for her to spot a few tracks left behind by the perpetrators.
Boot tracks. Irritation flashed in Faye's mind as she hurried to check her next trap. This one as well was mangled. There was a small tuft of fur left along one rope which made her question if there was a creature trapped and taken before the trap was torn apart. The third trap was further in the forest. Faye set out to find it.
Fortunately, the last trap was intact, though it had not caught anything. It seemed that whoever had sabotaged her traps wasn't able to find her last one. Perhaps they didn't like going so far into the forest to set traps….
Either way, Faye now had another problem. She only had one trap to set. Her other traps were mangled to the point of being useless and unfixable.
Faye set her only good trap and tried to find a way to entice more creatures toward it. She was already setting it with bait, but the bait didn't seem to be very effective. She tried to hide the trap better, hoping that would help bring a catch.
After finishing her trap, Faye set off. She needed to take a more active role in making her money. She had already been selling low cost herbs and berries in the city, but that wasn't enough. She figured she'd take the opportunity to try to hunt for bigger game. She didn't have anything else she needed to do at the moment anyways….
Faye wandered a fair ways away from her trap. She found a large tree that had enough foliage to cover her while she sat up high, waiting for her quarry.
Faye did her best to wait silently. The only thing she had to attack with was a throwing dagger she'd taken off the goblins. She was proficient with throwing weapons, but not as proficient as she was with a sword. She wanted to be as close and as accurate as possible.
As she waited for something to come into range, Faye's mind continued to go over her broken traps. She wondered if the person that did it passed her going into the city. If she'd been paying attention, would she have noticed someone acting strange when she passed them by? Why would they mangle HER traps? There were a number of them set by multiple trappers and hunters. Why skip those others and only target hers?
She was sure they were more than a single person's traps, there were multiple people that chose to trap on this side of the forest….She shouldn't have been encroaching on the territory of someone else, there was no official territories for hunters within the forest. She'd been sure to ask about it after that first day.
Did they target hers because hers weren't metal and instead were wooden? Why would they do that? Faye tried over and over again to find the answer, but kept coming up empty. She hadn't offended anyone that she could remember after arriving at the city, and she'd tried her best to be considerate when laying down her traps. She was careful to make sure her traps were far enough away that she didn't take another's quarry....
She couldn't think of a single reason someone would have taken time to search for and destroy her traps.
She wondered if she was wasting her time waiting around for something bigger to hunt and instead should be filling her time with making more traps. She had needed to make more traps anyways, so this just added a couple extra for her to make.
Faye tried not to dwell on the broken traps any longer and instead wholeheartedly started searching around for any movement.
There were a number of small game that she saw. Little mice, small wild rabbits and squirrels were aplenty within the forest around her. But, they weren't what she was looking for. Faye wanted something bigger; meatier.
She almost decided on her prey after a large hawk flew into the tree she was in. But, the hawk wasn't something that was worth much dead. Really, they were worth more alive and trained. Faye didn't have to capability to catch and train a wild hawk, so she silently watched it as it preened it's feathers, then flew off once again.
Another thing Faye needed to be careful of was how she killed her prey. The only reason she was able to get as much as she did for the Panther was because she hadn't damaged the meat or hide much. If she'd damaged it less she might have gotten more. She intended to kill her next prey with as little struggle as possible, hoping an ambush attack would be enough to kill the creature straight away.
Faye slowly found herself growing more still than ever before. Her focus grew as she watched the forest around her. The little creatures passed by without her notice as she waited. Finally, after waiting for a few hours, Faye's patience seemed to pay off.