On her slow way back to her camp, the eldar's mind ran through the verbal altercation that the pair had exchanged at the lake over and over, each time involuntarily focusing on the guardsman's uncomfortable comment about her wanting to see him 'without his armour'. At the time, she only felt insulted at his words, but steadily she began to realise that that entire situation only came to be because of her distrust for Tymon which brought her to question the attitude she has decided to take towards him. She also questioned how she would have watched him if he was bathing; grimacing at the very thought of seeing a naked human, especially one as unkempt and potentially disgusting as Tymon. With that uncomely image, she began to realise how poorly thought through her so-called plan back at the lake was; if she had waited there with her back turned, he would have been in an optimal position to simply attack yet now that there is some distance between the two, she would easily be able to tell if he was trying to sneak up on her. In fact, even if she did not hear him, there was only one way to the lake and back, she would know where he's coming from if he tried anything like that. Once she had established this, the eldar rapidly grew annoyed at herself; her distrust of the mon'keigh had almost proverbially shot her in the back because it came very close to denying her a possibly vital line of defence against Tymon if he chose to attack. Quickly however, as she emerged back at the start of the lakes' path, she pushed this thought aside as she still had that line of defence, but this did not stop the almost petulant feeling of stupidity the whole ordeal left her with.

After some moments of standing at the mouth of the path, hearing the occasional quiet splash coming from the lake alongside the various noises of the planet's wildlife, she made her way over to the crates she had initially put down in front of Tymon as her stomach began to demand sustenance. It was actually quite uncommon for an eldar to grow hungry, not just because of the lack of poverty within current eldar society, but because an eldar can survive on a single full meal for 5 days if necessary. That did not stop the fact that she was now craving a warm, substantial meal, something with a gentle spice to it that pricked only the edges of her tongue, something that would leave her belly full and her tastebuds satisfied. However all she had to answer that craving were small, hard, tasteless ration pellets which may possibly be tepid at best. Sure they did their job well in providing her with all the necessary nutrients she required to stay alive, but they did nothing to quench her hunger for an actual meal. Doing her best to ignore this craving, she opened the crate she was now standing in front of and picked out the topmost pellet dispenser that, contrary the dozens of others, was seemingly tossed in atop the more organised pile of dispensers. Holding it to her free hand, she released two of the pellets from the small handheld device and quickly put them to her mouth, arching her head back and swallowing them like pills. Following this, with a lack of anything significant to do but wait for the guardsman, she allowed herself to sit down and simply stare at nothing for the time being, though like previously, this brought forth further contemplations of the situation she now found herself in.

As her mind brought the previous argument forth once again, some of the low-gothic words and phrases the guardsman would use came to mind; 'gak-hole', 'for frak's sake', but thanks to the guardsman, she understood well enough what gak-hole meant. Nevertheless, this train of thought took her mind down the route of the previous situations where Tymon had to awkwardly translate or figure out what she was trying to say. While she saw no serious issues with that particular status quo so far, she did see how this could theoretically make problematic situations worse than they needed to be if they were unable to communicate effectively, the earlier argument being a trivial yet profound exhibit of the result of their language barrier induced miscommunication. Eventually, her thoughts on their communication issues and the words he would use once again brought forth his unkind nickname for her.

Knife ear

Hearing those words even in her mind, called back that same wave of self consciousness she would feel if it was Tymon calling her by that name. The eldar was moments away from simply sideswiping this thought as she had done previously, but she realised that for the time being she was alone and she would be remiss if she did not take advantage of this moment to confront the feeling properly. While the eldar was rather nonchalantly sitting cross legged with her arm upon her leg and her head slouched upon her hand as she stared into the ground, the self consciousness made her feel small and immature, almost to the point where such trivial concerns as the shape or size of ones ears seemed to actually matter in an almost angsty way. It was not long before the protective feeling she initially felt against the term 'knife-ear' came back and with a vengeance, quickly bringing the hand she was resting her head against to gently cup her left ear for many moments until her neck started to ache. However it was not long before she acknowledged this uncomfortable feeling as little more than a resurgence of an adolescent self consciousness she felt during her formative decades, yet she remained confused at the fact that a mon'keigh was able to cause such a resurgence. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and laid that feeling to rest for what would hopefully be the last time while she mounted the pellet dispenser that was still in her hand against her armour's hip belt.

After dozens of minutes enveloped wholly in the foreign waters that made up the lake Tymon was bathing in, the guardsman started to wade his way out of the natural pool of water. To his surprise, the bottom of the lake was warmer than the top, giving it an almost homely and comforting feeling he was slowly growing reluctant to leave behind, but his fortitude held out as the completely bare Tymon waded and eventually stepped his way towards the mouth of the lake. Immediately the parts of him that were no longer submerged were greeted with the planet's gentle breeze, a breeze that brought forth shivers as the wet Tymon was quick to try and redress himself, going straight for his bundled up uniform to find his undergarments, but he stopped dead.

"Oh frak…" he muttered to himself, realising the fact that he had no immediate method of drying himself off. Tymon then felt another wave of shivers as the breeze once again struck his wet skin and, with absolutely no idea on how to solve this predicament, ended up shaking his hands in an effort to discard some of the water from his body. This was of course to no avail as Tymon then quickly resorted to brushing the water off with his bare hands, but again the seemingly freezing breeze made it clear that this was having practically no effect.

"Frak!" he exclaimed again, though it was not like he would have been able to remember to bring a towel with him anyway. Though he did see one solution to this predicament, it involved his undershirt and without it, the uniforms were far less than comfortable. For many moments, he evaluated his options; get dressed without drying, or dry off with a 'not strictly necessary' item of clothing he had. While the second solution was far from desirable, the first was even less so because it would simply recreate the problem he was forced to solve by bathing, in fact it could even be considered dangerous if the planet's weather decided to worsen. With reluctance and choicelessness both in conflict with one another, the guardsman reached down to the pile his uniform was forming near the mouth of the lake and fished out his undershirt, the words '57th Farsighters' emblazoned upon the khaki item of clothing. With the reluctance to carry out what he had established as the only viable solution growing, he stretched the shirt outwards slightly and began to haphazardly dry himself off, the soon to be drier parts of his skin relishing the sudden lack of a freezing cold breeze. After several minutes of drying himself off, redressing himself and bundling the now wet undershirt into his survival kit, the guardsman was on his way back through the swath cut through the aversive grass. He felt cleaner, but also embarrassed and demeaned at the very fact that he had just obeyed a xeno who had told him to bathe. That was not the only thing that brought him discomfort however; without his undershirt, the seams of his overalls had free reign to scrape against his bare chest and back beneath, causing the guardsman to frequently have to adjust the uniform and scratch around his collarbones to relieve the various resulting itches. However, he braved these irritations with a stalwart determination as he continued on his way.

Not long later, Tymon reached the start of the path again where he was greeted by 'Knife-ear' almost intently staring him and the path down for a moment, though she seemed to calm down once her eyes locked with Tymons';

"What's up?" he asked, concern accompanying the slight recoil of his head as his eyes met with hers, but the eldar met his question with one of her own.

"Did you bathe?" This 'answer' of hers removed any concern the guardsman may have had for her as he rolled his eyes.

"Oh for fracks sake…" he muttered, before allowing his aggravation at the question to form on his face. "What else would I have been doing there?"

The eldar was about to proverbially clap back with a response of her own, but lacking anything substantial to say in return, she simply scoffed at his answer before turning around and muttering something else in her native tongue. Hearing her speak whatever language it was that she spoke was about to elicit another response from Tymon about how he didn't understand what she was saying, but instead he released an exasperated sigh;

"Why'd this have to happen to me…" he muttered under his own breath, his voice reeking of desperation. Thankfully to Tymon the eldar did not hear his desperate response, however something else suddenly seemed to join their little conversation; namely a low pitched animalistic howl that quickly ascended before abruptly cutting off and allowing an echo to scream it back quieter each time.

Both Tymon and his eldar co-survivor heard the sound simultaneously, quickly bringing both of their attentions away from each other as the eldar turned to face the direction the sound had come from.

"That sounded pretty close..." the now alert guardsman quietly announced as he instinctively checked his surroundings, then whatever it was howled again but this time from a different direction. The eldar quickly turned about, now bringing her reflexes to bear as she suddenly held her shuriken pistol in her hand while Tymon was slower to react as he turned to face the same general direction as the sound.

"It is from this location" the eldar said once the echo had subsided. With that, Tymon put the stock of his lasgun against his shoulder while pointing the barrel down.

"Right…" Tymon mubled. The next few dozen seconds were spent in silence with both of the survivors bearing a paranoid and itchy trigger-finger, expecting to have to shoot at the first thing to emerge from the forest, but Tymon broke their defensive silence.

"We should probably take your stuff to um~ you know" he awkwardly trailed off, but the eldar seemed to know what he was trying to say as she answered with a simple:

"Yes…"

Following this, she almost cautiously made her way over to the two cylindrical crates which were still there while Tymon followed suit, keeping a similarly watchful eye on his surroundings. With her own eyes fixed to the tree covered horizon, she grabbed one of the cylinders, checking it was secure and fitted it to the back of her armour, weighing her down ever so slightly while Tymon went to grab the still open cylinder with the ration pellet dispensers using his other hand, trying and seemingly successfully resealing it as he did but he immediately found trouble with finding a way to secure it.

"How do I~ How do I carry it?" he asked, this time the eldar seemed almost telepathic with her response as she, without looking, pointed out a retracted strap on its side for him to use and with that, he extended said strap and quickly slung the somewhat heavy crate over his shoulder before he brought that hand back to his weapon, then once Tymon was ready, the two started their way back to prospector 3.

Not even ten minutes into their journey did they hear that same howl again, but this time it was closer, much closer and it brought the pair to stop in their tracks through the thick, shin high mud with the eldar rapidly ascertaining which direction it came from before that same howl now came from the opposite direction. Then they noticed some of the more distant trees' hanging leaves moving as something disturbed their branches.

"Okay… it's definitely moved…" Once again, Tymon began to inspect his surroundings when he pointed this out.

"It is nearer…" In that moment, the eldars seemingly stalwart and calculative defense seemed to have been dented slightly as she, with apprehension stared down a direction that seemed to lead nowhere, Tymon noticed this and looked down that same direction, but he saw nothing. Then the sound of an almost distant squelch came from the right of their route. Tymon and the eldar both quickly turned to face that direction, something had moved the mud, he had caught a glimpse of the viscous ground shifting slightly, then nothing.

"It's over there…" the guardsman said, keeping his weapon trained on the spot where the mud had now resettled. Then slightly to the left of that direction emanated that same sound. They turned to look again, weapons ready, a houndlike creature; short in height but almost lanky in length, its legs almost fully submerged with a pureblack head just above the viscous ground, beneath its snout were two jaws looking almost like one, but opening and bearing an array of gray teeth each. It was effortlessly wading towards them before stopping mere meters away. Moments later, they were greeted by an almost whispered growling sound, this time behind them, bringing the eldar to turn about and stare down their second opponent as fast as the mud allowed.

"Another one?" Tymon hissed

"Yes!" The eldar almost aggressively hissed back, then another wet squelching sound, slightly to the first creatures right, accompanied by the jostling of one the much closer trees as the creature seemed to jump out of one of the branches above it. The guardsman then trained his weapon on the other split jawed hound as one by one, more wet thudding sounds came from around them, either dropping from the tree's above, or seemingly emerging from beneath the mud. Eventually, the pair was surrounded by at least a dozen of these creatures, all of which were low against the ground, some of which had started to growl as the first one was.

"Pack behaviour" Tymon eventually whispered, slowly aiming his weapon from creature to creature, trying to see which one would make the first move or if he would have to.

"What?" the eldar once again hissed with a scared impatience to her voice.

"Pack behaviour" He repeated, slightly louder this time as one of the creatures growled louder in response.

"I don't know what that is..." she answered with the same demeanour as moments prior. For seconds, they simply stood there, weapons ready, staring down their aggressors while they in turn stared back, but they had now formed a staggered perimeter around them leaving less than no avenue of escape, then out of the blue, one of them howled the same howl they heard earlier, piercing both Tymon's and the scorpion's ears. It left them both stunned for a moment as the eldar instinctively covered her more sensitive ears with a scream, weapon still in hand. Then one attacked, lunging itself at Tymon. He fired, holding the trigger down and haphazardly aiming at the split jawed hound but managing to riddle it with las-bolts, causing it to squirm mid air and splash into the ground before somehow inverting its joints to land upright with its head now upside down. The other hounds started growling and made their attacks as well, one of them lunging at the eldar, but despite being preoccupied with her ears, she readied her chainsword with lightning speed and in the same motion, struck the toothed blade into the face of the hound without even looking in its direction. It released a pained screech as it spun in the air, and unceremoniously splashed into the ground beside them, then more of them lunged at the pair as Tymon screamed for the eldar to "RUN!" only to suddenly catch the jaws of one of the hounds around his lasgun. With one quick motion he shook the creature off and accidentally into another while the eldar, still with pain in her face performed numerous precise strikes with her chainsword, seemingly killing another two. Despite what Tymon had screamed, the pair were virtually unable to run, stuck in place due to both the mud and their new aggressors while the hounds seemed completely unhindered by the viscous fluid around them, simply jumping at either Tymon or 'Knife-ear', or onto the trunks of the tree's many had dropped from where they'd climb like squirrels for a split second before jumping at them once more, using the apparent double jointedness of their legs massively to their advantage. Amidst the resulting chaos, Tymon managed to get a multitude of rapid-fired shots off against another one of the hounds, this time killing it in mid air as he stepped out of the corpses way, but the mud around his boots caused him to lose balance as he did, then another jumped and bit at his shoulder, managing to sink some of its teeth in while causing the guardsman to scream out in pain, but it lost its grip as Tymon fell, taking the shoulder of his uniform with it. The cylinder on his back arched his chest outwards, but a hound jumped upon him and inadvertently pushed his head into the ground where he was almost drowned by the mud around him. Choking as he lost grip on his lasgun, the creature upon him tried to claw and bite at his face, but the enveloping mud obscured him causing the creature to barely clip his left cheek with its maw before suddenly squealing out loud as it was no longer upon him. Quickly he pulled his muddied head out of the viscous fluid and saw the eldar, still striking with impressive precision each time, yelling at Tymon to: "GET UP!".

Sheer luck allowed Tymon to grab onto his lasgun which was still submerged but within arms reach, getting to his feet again just before another hound tried to lunge at him. Instinctively he jabbed his arm out and managed to strike the creature in its face, dazing it momentarily but long enough for him to bring his muddied lasgun to bear and fire at it. Then, almost without explanation, the hounds started to retreat. Leaving a panting and hacking Tymon alongside a red faced eldar with her now tremendously scratched up armour.

What remained of the hounds was either the multitude of corpses around them or nowhere to be seen with their only indication being the again disturbed hanging leaves for a moment as the hounds seemed to have retreated back into the branches above them, but Tymon and his co-combatant were far from unscathed themselves. As soon as the guardsmans adrenaline high wore off, the pain from his shoulder injury decided to make itself known causing Tymon to hiss through gritted teeth and then release a withheld exclamation of pain. He looked at the injury, but it was obscured by a mix of both mud and blood that was starting to run free out of his shoulder. 'Knife-ear' was quick to notice the guardsmans pain as she quickly swung around to face him, exclaiming his name with surprise but then grimacing as she saw the injury. For the moment, she was stunned, not knowing what to do, he was human, and she had no idea if any of her remedies would help him, but Tymon would stun her once more as he with again gritted teeth used his other hand to rapidly and almost violently brush off the mud so he could get a better look at the injury, but that did little more than bring an immediate and pained scream from his lips. His breathing sped up while she couldn't even look at the injury for the moment.

"Oh frak!" he groaned through now withheld tears, there were multiple cuts, some of them mere scrapes from the hounds' insecure grip with its maw, but some of them deep as its teeth had sunken into his flesh and torn parts out when it did end up losing its grip, yet some of the mud still obscured his view.

"Water! I need water!" he half panted half moaned, vaguely gesturing towards the injury. Now finally with something to do the eldar acted, any hint of the irritation and anger from earlier gone as his pain seemed to strike even at her heart. Quickly she grabbed the hydrator from her hip belt and tried to hand it to him, but he would not grab it.

"No! No! On there!" he painfully yelled, bracing himself.

"On the.." she cluelessly asked with an almost quiet voice, an apprehensive anxiety on her face.

"YES JUST!..." He interrupted himself with another breathless pant, still gesturing at his shoulder. Grimacing, the eldar turned the open end of the hydrator to his bitten shoulder and squirted the water out of it and onto the wound, eliciting an even louder now blood-curdling exclamation from Tymon as the jet of water cleared the mud away and out of his wounds. The eldar continued while closing her eyes for a moment as she experienced a second hand pain from Tymon's. She hated it, his screams not only hurting her ears, but hurting her as he bore the agonizing process until she couldn't continue any longer, she turned away from the wound in shock, a tear coming from the corner of her left eye as her breath became shaky. Meanwhile Tymon seemed to have the wound under control, awkwardly opening his survival kit with his free hand and pulling out what the empire considered to be gauze; a temporary but self hardening patch of 'skin seal' which he, without hesitation but huge anticipation slapped onto the wound and held in place, hyperventilating through once again gritted teeth. Then it started to shrink around the wound, hardening beneath his hand, bringing forth another barrage of screams and exclamations from the guardsman. The eldar turned to face him again but still couldn't bear to look as the skin seal solidified around his shoulder while another tear came from her other eye.

Why is this hurting me?

Dozens of seconds later, the guardsman had finally stopped screaming, his lasgun no longer in his injured right arm and presumably somewhere in the mud once again, hesitantly the guardsman tapped the skin seal, wincing slightly, it was now flexibly fixed to his injured shoulder. Panting the guardsman tried to use his right arm to close the survival kit, but he could not do so without at least some difficulty. By this time, the eldar had finally gotten the guts to turn around and face him again albeit with an unleaving concern on her face. She wanted to ask if he was okay, yet the vocabulary just was not there, but Tymon did not need any vocabulary to understand that she was somehow concerned for him. Still dazed from the pain of 'treating' his wound, he answered with exhaustion:

"I'll be fine" he said, almost all in one word. The eldar had nothing to answer with besides a feeble:

"Yes…" followed by a quiet "okay…"

Wordlessly, the guardsman looked at his now covered shoulder, but then he noticed the cylinder he was carrying, it was open.

"Oh gak.." he said out loud, he arched his head further around his right shoulder and noticed it was empty. The eldar's concern remained, but this time she answered

"What?"

Swallowing nothing and still fighting his shoulders pain, the guardsman simply described his observation.

"Your crate opened in the fight" he said very frankly. A different concern suddenly took hold of the eldars face as she waded over to him and sans any thought turned the guardsman around by the shoulder to see for herself. As the guardsman exclaimed slightly in pain again, that concern on her face turned to fear as she saw the empty crate slung over Tymons back. Quickly she holstered her chainsword, took the crate off of her back and opened it up, holding it in her other arm as she noticed that the one she was carrying did not contain her rations, then she froze, holding the crate. Confused, Tymon answered:

"W-What?" She closed that crate and mounted it on her back again, not even looking Tymon in the eye as she answered:

"That was my~" Listlessly and with hesitation, she closed her mouth and tapped her lips a couple of times, hoping this would get the message across. For a moment, he remained confused but he quickly realised what she meant:

"Food?" The eldar apprehensively nodded her shocked head as Tymon mentioned the word, then he realised what this implied.

"O-Oh.." was all he could stammer up. With that clearly unsatisfactory response from the mon'keigh, she turned around with an almost crazed look on her face, but Tymon was quick to respond again.

"Y-You could have some of mine, I've got enough for~"

"I CAN'T!~" the eldar interrupted, but then interrupted herself not knowing how to point out their different nutritional requirements.

"I'm just trying to help!"

"They are like Gak-Hole!" She hesitantly resorted to saying, paying no mind to Tymon's poor excuse for an offer to help, at least in her eyes.

"Well.. What can I do?!" He answered, raising his voice to her level as he awkwardly tried to shrug, only managing to do so with one shoulder, but the eldar would not answer this as she turned around, resisting the urge to pull her own hair out. Seemingly oblivious to the clearly emotionally overloaded eldar, Tymon rapidly answered, anticipating that she would somehow blame him for this.

"Knife ear I swear to Terra if you're gonna fracking~"

Enough. No more Knife Ear.

The distressed eldar involuntarily interrupted him at the top of her voice, now somehow facing that same self-consciousness again as earlier alongside the fear of starving to death.

"KAE-LITH'A!"

This is not the time for shallow adolescent worries.

The guardsman grumbled, rolling his eyes, but shot back with a similar volume:

"I don't know what THAT MEANS!" But then it set in to her what she had just exclaimed. Dazed and overwhelmed, she just stood there, taking shaky but deep breaths, slowly getting her emotions at least partially back under control while Tymon just glared at the back of her head with his unwarranted anger rapidly being replaced once again by confusion.

"W-What is Kae-Lith'a…?" he eventually asked after further moments of silence and forced patience on his part. Amongst the storm of emotions within her, embarrassment and sheepishness now decided to surface too as she awkwardly turned around and faced the guardsman's general direction. Then his eyes met her own while she seemed unable to even look at him as she tapped her chest and repeated her name.
"Kae-Lith'a…"