"He's waking." A cold, hard, feminine voice stated.
The world was an orange blur, at first. "Wh-where am I?" Den asked as he rubbed his eyes and groggily sat up on the bed of furs he'd been laying on. A sharp pain on his side quickly laid him back down.
"Calm yourself, boy. You're safe. Do you remember what happened?" A different voice asked.
Den thought about it, but only flashes of white and red, snow and blood filled his mind. He concentrated harder, the flashes of bloody snow and ice solidified into a single moving picture. Screams, shouts, and the sounds of bones breaking accompanied the red blizzard . A statuesque figure moved through the blur, towards then, before reaching through it to grab him and pull him forward.
"Others." Den said as his eyes shot open.
"One specifically, the one that tried to put you through a tree, and would have succeeded if I hadn't shot it when I did." The feminine voice boasted.
Den turned his head, wanting to meet the eyes of this woman. His saviour was busy sharpening arrows. She was hooded and covered from head-to-toe in furs black as the midnight sky, save for the length of cloak covering her shoulders which was a faded grey. The black furs were painted red, a red too crimson to be anything but blood.
"You're a cannibal." Den abruptly blurted.
The other man in the room and the woman met each others gaze for a moment before the man got up and left the tent.
"I am of the Cannibal Clans, yes." The woman replied as she returned to her arrows. "And you?"
"A tribe not half as infamous as yours." Den groaned as he forced himself upright.
"Do you have a problem with me and mine?" The woman looked up from her wet stone and arrowhead, face still obscured by her hood.
"Not necessarily, as long as you don't have a problem with us." Den replied, feeling uneasy staring in the the shadow concealing her face, only guessing at where her eyes were.
"Have I given you reason to assume I'm hostile?" The mysterious woman lowered her hood, revealing a full head of short, thin and glossy, matted coils of black hair. Her eyes were dark drown.
"You personally, no. But I've heard...a lot of things about your kin." Den scanned the tent, searching for his weapons and wears.
"What kind of things?" Her eyes followed his as she guessed what he was looking for, she found herself correct as his eyes stopped on the black cloak that softened the ground beneath her, as well as the sword hilt sticking out from one end of it. "That we hunt people? This is true, partly." She pulled the sheathed blade out from under her. "That we eat our own? Also true, partly. " The scabbard dropped to the cloak with a muted thud as she examined the obviously well used bastard sword. "I have one more question for you, it'd be in your best interest to answer me this time."
"What?"
"Have your people ever had to starve?"
"Of course, who's hasn't? We didn't resort to...what you and yours pride yourselves on tough."
"Actually, me and mine have never experienced any significant famine." She noticed Den's eyes grow wide in disbelief.
"We never starve because we let nothing go to waste. What do you do with your dead? Burn them like all the others. We call that waste where I'm from. And yet, we are looked down upon by most every other group of Freefolk all because we butcher and devour our murders and rapists, instead of throwing them to the wolves and white walkers. All men must die they say that lot, somewhere far far away; my people say the same, but for what have to assume are very different reasons. All men must die, and all all others must live. So why let the dead go to waste, when they could be doing their part to keep the living...living.