Citra had stumbled upon the little house by accident. A quick but thorough casing of the outside told her that no one was home, so she set to work picking the lock on the door. When it finally swung open to reveal a humble but clearly cared-for set of rooms, she couldn’t hide the upward twitch of her lips. A lucky find indeed.

Closing the door behind her, the teenager stepped inside and looked around. The weapon, naturally, drew her gaze first: a bow and accompanying quiver, hung on a hook by the door. Without a second thought, she slung both over her shoulder before turning to examine the unfamiliar tools that lay on the table toward the middle of the room. Citra pocketed the blade - one could never have enough of those - but the others didn’t seem particularly useful in terms of defending herself from any aggressors. In the corner, an inexplicable pile of leather scraps and bits of fur caught her attention, but they had been discarded for a reason: nothing among the tiny pieces seemed particularly salvageable.

Citra moved on. She found and claimed any bits of food that may have been stored in the place, and shamelessly, she drank some of the available water, too. By the time Savi poked his head through the door, Citra had moved on to the bedroom in the back. Distracted as she was in her rummaging, she had yet to realize that she was no longer alone.

A loud crack first alerted Citra to her unexpected company, and as the click of claws on wood followed shortly after, she froze in her searching. Despite the bow and quiver slung over the teenager’s shoulder, her hand fell to the dagger on her thigh as she turned to face the entrance to the sleeping room – and heard the challenge shouted across the little hut.

Citra paused. The voice was feminine, she clearly had some sort of dyr with her, and she wasn’t wrong about there only being one way out. That left Citra with limited options. She needed something with which to bargain for her safety. After another moment, she removed the bow from over her shoulder and held it in one hand, ready to attempt to snap in half if necessary, before stepping into view. Her other hand still hovered near the dagger on her thigh.

Dark eyes landed on the tall woman standing with her back to the door before flicking down to the long-legged dog at her feet. “Who are you?”

Citra was no stranger to anger. Though the aggression had her own hackles rising to meet the challenge, the teenager did not flinch in the face of the fury rolling off of the woman, who was allegedly the owner of this little hut and everything inside it, though her gaze shifted to the dyr when he took a step toward her. She considered the ultimatum, but she knew the tricks people played. “What’s to stop you from killing me the minute I put down what you want?”

What was to stop her from killing Citra now? Nothing, if her hair had been the right color. But, Citra thought, as she brought her other hand up to the bow in a silent threat, good bows were in short supply in Elderkeep. She was willing to bet that this woman cared about whether her belongings remained intact, and even if they attacked, she was confident that she could snap this bow in half before they snapped her neck.

The tension in the room eased not with the woman’s words but with hers and her dyr’s actions. Still keeping both hands on the bow, Citra eyed the dog as he backed up and sat down beside his pair, who also relaxed in turn. She had no idea what his element was, but given that nothing in, on, or around her had been manipulated, she guessed that it was probably not useful for combat.

The woman made her demands for her bow, quiver, and tools. Tentatively, Citra lowered the bow but kept both hands on the wood, one holding the weapon while the other mostly rested loosely on it. What the woman said was strange. She had a decent home to herself yet she was abandoning it - for what? And why? Hiems would arrive soon, and Citra knew from personal experience that those without homes would risk freezing every night. To leave now would be nothing less than foolish, but then, she didn’t know the woman. Maybe this stranger was simply an idiot. But first things first: “You’re leaving. Where are you going?”

For a moment, Citra eyed the woman and her dyr – Xanthe and Savi, apparently – for any sign of a lie. She had heard of Dresmondi disappearing into the estate for various reasons, but she had yet to meet any of them, let alone one who had returned. Did her survival mean that Xanthe had found favor with one of the redheads? If so, then Citra would have inadvertently found herself on thin ice and would need to tread carefully lest the teenager found herself with an angry Eldouir after her.

After taking a breath, she decided to offer her name in turn, hoping that it might placate the stranger if she did have the support of a redhead. Sometimes, she knew, people found it harder to kill someone, even indirectly, when they could put a name to a face. “I’m Citra. And Solus, but he’s shy and doesn’t like to talk to strangers.” Granted, it was hardly a problem Citra had, but if Xanthe was from Kushti, then the teenager suspected that the woman would be one of those people. “He wields fire, and we’re from the Adoi. Are there a lot of you in the estate?”

After she mentioned Solus, Citra watched Xanthe for any sign of disbelief, but as far as she could tell, the other woman didn’t doubt her fictional dyr’s existence. Good. Savi’s element might not have been the most dangerous, but the teenager had no desire to gain firsthand experience on how he could use it against her. A good bluff and the implicit threat of a fire dyr had a tendency to deter others from even trying.

While Xanthe made her way to the table, Citra remained standing on the fringes of the room, more comfortable with her back to the wall. After one look at the dog guarding the door deterred her from making a run for it, she turned her attention back toward the now-seated Dresmondi and listened as she spoke of the interior of the estate. Filled with the occupants of Elderkeep, trapped in place, and no one trusted anyone else. “So it’s no different than out here,” Citra summarized bluntly, not sure what else she had expected. “Except there are more Eldouir around.”