Roe hold her breath. She was very close now and the wild boar did still not know she was there. If only she was older and allowed to hunt large preys for real! All she could do now was to practise her skills in tracking and moving without making a sound. Sometimes she could come so close to an animal that she could touch it. Of course some animals were better not to touch; she had learned this the hard way. In fact, it was best that this wild boar never realised she was close to it at all. She defied all her parent’s exhortations to be careful. Hunting in the way forest people did was definitely not without dangers but Roe enjoyed testing her own limits. It was inevitable that she would get smaller wounds every now and then but miraculously she was never seriously injured and she became more and more fearless. Although her parents constantly feared for their daughter’s safety they were also very proud of their skilful and brave child.


“What have you been up to today?” her father asked.

”Nothing, just walking around,” Roe shrugged her shoulders. She figured that it was best for her father to not know that she had been tracking wild boars. It was strange that this strong and brave man was so easily scared when it came to her. He should know that she could take care of herself.


One of Roe’s strongest childhood memories was the large Forest people meeting. She had only a few times before met others of her kind when she walked far away in the forest with her parents. Her parents taught her good manners and how greet other people. These spontaneous meeting were always very brief. After polite greetings the different groups parted and went in opposite directions.

"It is very rude to intrude on someone else’s hunting grounds. We forest people always respect each other,” Wolf told her.

The large meeting was something completely new for Roe. She had never seen so many of her own kind at the same time before.


Everyone ate and laughed together. There were different competitions. At night when everyone danced to the rhythm of drums in the light of the fires, Roe felt like she had been transferred to some other magical place far away from real life. She thought that she could feel the presence of the spirits closer than ever before.


Next evening an old man told stories by the fire.

“He is very old, probably more than 60 winters and has seen and heard many things”, Otter said to Roe.

“Worst of all creatures in the world are the cruel humans” the storyteller said in a dramatic voice. “They look similar to the elves but are completely different and mortal just like us. But unlike us they have many children so they spread everywhere. They destroy the forest so that our people have to flee from our hunting grounds. There are no other creatures that are as cruel as them. Animals are kept as prisoners and humans kill as often as they can, not only for food.” The storyteller told many stories about the humans’ cruelty.


“Do humans exist for real?” Roe asked her mother when she was about to fall asleep in Otter’s arms.

“I don’t know”, Otter replied slowly. “But you don’t have to be afraid. If they really do exist they must be very, very far away. I have never met anyone who has seen a human. You know, I think that the storyteller sometimes makes up stories just to entertain us.”

But Roe was not reassured. She had nightmares about humans who came to destroy her forest so that she and her parents had to flee from their home.