Northstar Vale no thing of this earth

she woke in the night. the bone-pulling tiredness had not lifted, and her wakefulness was an uneasy one that could easily have been dispelled should she have stilled and closed her eyes. but to each wild creature belongs an intuition that prickles at the spine and warns of things unseemly and dangerous, and the stillness of the night had that very thing dance down her nape. for a long moment, she was still, and the silence stretched on as the huntress waited for that prickle to materialize into the thing that had caused it. it did not. 

the careful breaths off Aditya were a lulling call back to the ease of sleep, and slowly, her head lowered onto her paws, though her gaze remained open and staring in the direction of the valley below. the knocking came then, an echoing rap-rap-rap of wood on wood. again, that prickle whispered warning in her ear, and given starker wakefulness by sharp curiosity, the woman made her careful way to where they had overlooked the vale days earlier. 

the place was blanketed in shadow, deeper and darker where the canopy hid from the searching glare of the moon the earth below. there was no movement, which surely ought to have sent the huntress back to her rest, but after a quarter hour of the same stillness, it became almost unnatural. she was still and crouched against the rock, and then it came. it moved with a gait entirely unknown to her, small as it seemed from her height, she knew instinctively that it was large. it moved with great speed, and only did it falter when its face turned to her and she felt keenly its eyes upon her, and for once did that fierce boldness of the hunter falter. and then it was gone and she alone in the heights, and knew it to be a creature not to be hunted nor to be seen again.