Great! The very LAST thing I want to do right now is have an in-depth conversation with Rezso regarding my whereabouts the last few weeks. "Nothing's wrong. I have just been doing some hunting." Ylwa responded, plastering an artificial grin on her face… but no too large of a grin, lest it arouse suspicion. "The forest is beautiful this time of year."
"Mm-hmm. Have you been alone all this time?" he asked.
Ylwa was practically squirming under her skin at this point. He knew, didn't he? But how could he possibly know? They spent most of their time in a land far from her pack's land. But he knows that she wouldn't have wandered that far off and stayed gone that long on her own.
"No." Ylwa responded bashfully, averting her eyes from his gaze. Even if he had no idea what she was doing, she had been warned time and again not to talk to strangers.
"Who were you with?"
Ylwa knew that he would be able to tell if she were lying, so she might as well tell him the truth (but as little of it as possible). "I was chasing this large bull elk. I caught him, by the way, all on my own." Ylwa hoped that this tidbit might do at least a little to distract him from the topic at hand. "I chased him for a long time, and by the time that I had taken him down and eaten my fill, I had no idea where I was. It was a place I had never been before." She had best leave the details of the area out, in case there was something he knew about that area that she should have known beforehand. "I starting traveling in what I think was the right direction, but eventually it became light out, so I had to find a place to settle in for the day." Ylwa continues, thinking it best to share all the details of her night before she met them so that she would have something to downplay the encounter with Jergen and his pack next to. "So I slept that day, and got up in the evening and started to walk back towards home. On my way back, I was found by some others. They were like us. I tried to leave them, but they were following me, and I didn't want to lead them back here, so I sort of wandered off for a while."
Rezso waited for a pause in Ylwa's dialogue to ask her, "They were following you. In a threatening way?"
"No. Not a threatening way. They wanted me to hunt with them. So I hunted with them for a little bit. Then when I left them, I spent a few days out in the woods, making sure that I didn't leave a trail for them to follow back here."
"How many of them were there?" Rezso questioned.
"Three."
"And they were all like us?"
"Yes." Ylwa answered, and then decided to try to bring an end to this conversation by moving the topic in a different direction. "Why did no one ever tell me that there were others like us out there?" she asked.
"I suppose that's a topic you will have to learn about now. But you must be exhausted after your adventure. You are sure that you weren't followed back here?"
"Yes."
"Are you okay? They didn't hurt you in any way, did they?" Rezso asked.
"No. They were very good to me, and gave me an equal portion of all of their kills." Ylwa responded.
"Meet me at my tent tonight. I would like to go hunt with you this evening. Until then, don't speak a word of these others to anyone." Rezso ordered.
Ylwa nodded her assent. This is the VERY LAST thing that I wanted, Ylwa thought. She had some trouble falling asleep that day, worrying about what that night's encounter would hold. Rezso had never ordered her to hunt with him before. She wondered if he was taking her out to kill her. She didn't think that he would send her away like one of the weak ones, because they had already gifted her with the blood. Was there a way to un-gift the beast from someone? Ylwa lay awake for what felt like most of the day, running different lies and half-truths through her head, trying to determine which ones Rezso would be the least likely to question.