The feast continued and eventually ended.
Tribesmen returned to their homes and huts with full stomachs and lighter hearts, their faces holding something that had been absent for too long.
Hope!
They looked forward to a better tomorrow.
Damian slept through the night without any strange dreams or nightmares, his body sinking into the rough furs of his sleeping platform with the exhaustion of someone who had done too much in too short a time.
When morning came, he was one of the first to be up.
He had an odd sense of restlessness that wouldn't let him stay still.
He attributed it to the young woman who had been looking at him again and again throughout last night, her wing-shaped pupils tracking his every movement as if she was trying to figure him out. Every time he had glanced in her direction, she had been watching. Assessing. Cataloging details that she would later piece together into conclusions he might not want her to reach.
