Hyacinthe had turned eight and, overnight, he seemed to grow twice as adept in his vocabulary, composition, penmanship, mathematics skills, and history retentions. Truss still did maths with him. Loch started a curriculum on politics throughout the country.

Hyacinthe didn't see a necessity to learn politics, historical and current. But he was not in the habit of questioning his caretakers. And they were always so happy when he succeeded in learning things that he almost welcomed the chance to learn a new subject, whatever it was! He looked forward to Truss's promises of proper courses of the sciences and magical theory. He also looked forward to Loch's little herbology and botany lessons. And the lessons in the arts of cooking, cleaning, and conversing that Liddy was, frankly, a little too happy to give.

It was as if they tried to absolutely fill his days with things. But never all at once, which Hyacinthe was grateful for. He was also grateful for the occasional free days, and the early mornings and mid afternoons where he was free to do as he pleased.

--

Hyacinthe was deep in the forest one day, letting the Wood guide him where it -- well -- she, rather. Where she wanted him to go. She always bore in mind the preferences of her young, polite, human friend. And his preference, that day, was to pick berries. He didn't care which kind, but he wished to surprise his caretakers.

The Wood lead him along winding, meandering paths that were true for him, but would lead any others astray. Except, perhaps, Loch. The Florus. As a Florus, Loch was in tune with the natural, including the wily ways of the Wood.

It was along this deceptive path that Hyacinthe ran across a human.

He knew it was a human, mostly, because it looked very unlike the faeries looked, to him. Its ears were round, so there wasn't elven blood in him, either. He was about as tall as the faeries, but still young and apt to grow more. He wore an excess of clothing that Hyacinthe -- who ran around in a tunic that was very nearly too short for him -- found a little bit sad. It was too warm for such an amount of clothing.

Only in winter could Hyacinthe see an appeal for so many layers. And such thick, patterned cloth.

Granted, it might not have been overly patterned. Hyacinthe was used to simply patterned, soft cloth.

Hyacinth watched the boy, who sat astride a horse that looked a mite uncomfortable in its rider-oriented apparel, turn around in a few circles, ever seated in the saddle. It became apparent to Hyacinthe that the human boy was lost.

He cleared his throat, though too quietly to achieve the human's notice. He tried again.

The boy spun halfway around in the saddle and then had the horse turn slowly, meticulously around so that both were looking straight at Hyacinthe.

"What on..." the human started.

Hyacinthe felt abruptly underdressed as the boy's brow furrowed and his eyes ran up and down Hyacinthe's form, catching briefly on his basket.

"You're on a dummy trail," Hyacinthe said, a bit too quickly.

"What?" The human adjusted his seat in the saddle. He looked about as uncomfortable in that saddle as the horse did, wearing it. There was a kind of symmetry in that. A fairness that the rider should feel some form of discomfort while the ridden felt discomfort.

"A dummy tail," Hyacinthe obliged. "That's why you're lost. You've gotten yourself on one of the Wood's dummy trails."

"Are you lost, too?" The boy asked his question almost as though he thought he weren't looking at something real. Maybe he thought Hyacinthe was a ghost, even. It was a dummy trail.

Hyacinthe didn't know if it offended him more that the boy seemed to think he wasn't real, or that the boy thought he could be lost, too. Lost? In his own home? With the Wood watching over him? It was a distinct impossibility.

"No, I know where I am. How else would I know where you are?" Hyacinthe asked.

The boy blinked at him, then leaned back in his saddle. "Fair enough. Where am I, then?"

"I told you." Hyacinthe had told him twice, in fact.

"Told me?" the boy seemed to disagree with the sentiment that he had been told.

"A dummy trail," Hyacinthe repeated, a third time.

The boy deflated. "Oh."

The air got heavy in the following silence as the boy sized Hyacinthe up and Hyacinthe sized the boy up. The boy was older than Hyacinthe was. Maybe twelve years old, to Hyacinthe's eight. Maybe thirteen years old. Hyacinthe wasn't entirely sure how to judge such a thing. For all he knew, the boy was only a year older, or was twenty years older.

The silence grew a bit too long to be comfortable and Hyacinthe shifted in place.

"Why do you have weapons?" he asked, nodding to the bow and arrows attached to the boy's saddle. There seemed to be a sheath on his belt, too, but it was the arrows that almost... concerned Hyacinthe. It seemed wrong to see something like that in a place like the Wood.

"Why don't you?" the boy returned. Hyacinthe couldn't tell if he was being evasive or curious. Maybe it was neither. Humans were different than faeries, after all. Maybe they emoted differently.

"I don't need weapons. That's why," Hyacinthe said. He took a beat, pursing his lips and picking at the handle of his basket. "Does that mean you do need them? Weapons?"

"The forest is dangerous. You should have something to protect yourself with," the boy said. However old he was, he sounded far too serious for his age in that moment. It made Hyacinthe want to laugh, but Liddy would have told him 'no, Hyacinthe, that's rude,' so he decided not to laugh. Instead, he settled with shaking his head softly. Disagreeing.

That seemed to fluster the boy, a bit. But that was what he deserved, for being so absurdly serious about a subject like weapons in the Wood.

"I don't need a weapon. I know how to stay out of danger. All I have to do is mind my own business," Hyacinthe told him.

The boy and Hyacinthe faced off for a moment.

The boy looked surprised, but then his expression shifted to a soft, almost puzzled frown. Or it would have been soft and puzzled on Loch. On the boy, it was a bit hard to tell if what his face was doing was what he meant it to be doing.

"I feel insulted," the boy said. Only a few breaths had paused between Hyacinthe's statement and his own, but it was still a marked pause wherein the thinking had been palpable.

"I didn't insult you," Hyacinthe returned, immediately.

"I feel like you must have meant to," the boy insisted. He was still on his horse, and it was more uncomfortable by the second to hold a conversation with him when he was up so much higher. Hyacinthe almost had to crane his neck to look the boy in the eye.

Looking someone in the eye was supposed to be polite. And Hyacinthe hoped that the politeness of meeting the boy's eye would be enough to balance out the rudeness of his coming comment.

"Feelings make you dumb, I guess. I mean, this is a dummy trail," Hyacinthe said. He felt very proud of himself for it. He hadn't gotten to properly insult someone in... well. He never really insulted anyone, and his previous comment really hadn't been an insult. Truss made insult bandying look like so much fun, and Hyacinthe could see the merit of insultingly employed wit.

"You're here, too!" the boy blustered, leaning forward in his saddle.

"Yes. But, I know I am," Hyacinthe pointed out. "You had no idea you were."

"Why are you here?" the boy asked.

"I'm out to pick some berries," Hyacinthe said. Honesty, he was told, was a good policy to have. Truss disagreed with that sentiment. The comment wasn't a full truth, anyhow. It didn't cover why Hyacinthe was so deep in the wood, or why he was alone. "What are you here for?" he returned, "I mean, here in the Wood. Not here on the dummy trail. I know why you're on the trail. It's because you got dumb and fell behind, probably."

"I'm hunting." The world stopped for a moment wherein Hyacinthe had to take a beat to process the word. He really only read the word. He never employed it to its meaning. And when he did, it was with a sudden sadness.

"Oh, but you mustn't hunt here!" Hyacinthe said, almost dropping his basket as he threw his arms out and stepped forward. He regathered himself and pursed his lips. Being a bit closer to the boy meant that Hyacinthe now had to lean his head back a bit more, crane a bit more, to look the human in the eye.

"Why not?" the human asked. It was a reasonably question. But one that was suddenly hard to answer.

How much should Hyacinthe tell him about the Wood? "You'll hurt something!" It didn't nearly encompass everything Hyacinthe wanted to say, nor did it say what was so important about the Wood. But it was a reason, at least.

"Well. That is rather the point of a hunt," the boy said. He stopped himself, though, and frowned, shaking his head. "Well, no," he corrected. Clearly he could feel just how poor a choice of words those had been. "Hunters are supposed to be merciful. Good stewards of the providence that abounds around them. We hunt, kill, harvest. We don't hurt."

"Oh, that just sounds awful!" Hyacinthe protested.

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does!" Hyacinthe cut in, raising his voice significantly. "Those poor animals!"

Another silence broke into the uneasy conversation. Hyacinthe was starting to wonder why the Wood didn't just guide him around the human. Hunting? In the Wood? Somehow, even though that was prt of the ways of nature, Hyacinthe hated the idea of it. Of eating an animal.

Hyacinthe took a deep, steadying breath. "Are you hungry?" he asked. The breath had broken the silence, but the words were what startled the human boy.

"What? No." He frowned at Hyacinthe. Hyacinthe didn't think he quite deserved that frown, though. Not when he was trying to be nice.

"How long have you been lost?" he asked. And the implication must have been plain as day, because the human patted around the saddle bags until he found one which was presumably packed with food of some kind. He patted it a few times, after finding it, as emphasis for Hyacinthe's sake. Hyacinthe thought he was being very silly.

"I have a lunch with me," the boy said, as if it were necessary.

For some people, it might have been necessary. But, once again, Hyacinthe just thought that the boy was being very silly.

"Oh, don't bother with that," he said. He waved the boy off, the handle of his basket bouncing around his wrist in an almost unpleasant manner. "I know where to pick the best apples from. You can have one, if you like. You can save your lunch for some other time."

Fresh food, in Hyacinthe's opinion, was always better than food that sat around for hours before you ate it. He wasn't overly fond of packed lunches, or premade ones. But it seemed that, back at the cottage, Truss was overly fond of premaking lunch at some earlier point in the day, to avoid the necessity of making lunch, later in the day. It was one of Hyacinthe's least favourite food-time trends.

"I should really be getting back to the hunt..." the boy said. He allowed his words to fade off at the end, expecting Hyacinthe's next interruption.

I'll help you off the dummy path, right after, I promise," Hyacinthe said.

That seemed to be just what the boy wanted to hear, because he lit up, then dismounted his horse. "Well, a chance to get un-lost is what I wanted. And if it involves apples... well... I haven't seen a single apple-bearing tree, yet, in this forest. So I'd like to see one, at least," he said.

He seemed to be an overly silly person, in Hyacinthe's opinion.

Hyacinthe jumped a little when the human boy offered a hand. It took him a moment to realize that the human wanted to shake hands. He gingerly accepted the proffered hand, then withdrew before a proper shake could take place.

Touching a human felt odd.

Probably because humans felt so far away and different, but shaking this one's hand seemed so... normal. Ordinary.

"My name's Pip," the human said.

"Hyacinthe," the other responded. He looked down at his hand for a moment, then settled back on his heels. "The apples aren't far."

"I'd hope not," Pip said.

--

The apples hadn't been far. Neither had the path that Pip needed to be on.

Pip was back with the other hunters, including his father, before they quite realized that his absence was something to be worried about. Pip, as they knew him, was always falling a bit behind, then trotting back up to them.

It was the apple in his hand that let his father know he'd been properly missing.

Philippe raised an eyebrow. "Apples?" he asked.

"Lucky find," was all Pip offered. He decided, with the barest prompting from the Wood, that his adventure with the little boy of the Wood was a private matter. There didn't seem to be a point into alarming a bunch of adults with the knowledge of a solitary little boy wandering the Wood with a basket. They probably would have searched for him.

Pip had seen that he was clean, well fed, and perfectly at home in the Wood. Taking him from the Wood would have been the wrong choice, and it would have certainly been the choice of Philippe and his company of adult hunters.

"Lucky find," Philippe echoed. He shrugged. "All right, Pip. Let's get a move on. We've lost our quarry, but we can't go back without something."

Pip nodded amenably.

The boy was nice, but Pip still thought hunting was nice, too.

--

Hyacinthe brought a basket full of green and green-and-red apples back to the cottage, instead of berries. It was just as good a surprise.

He didn't tell the faeries about the human, but he did tell them, "I made a new friend."

They didn't ask for details. As always, they expected notable details to be offered up without prompting, unless there were none to offer up. Hyacinthe felt that mentioning hunters in the Wood just... would not bring out the best in the faeries. Especially the Faunus, Liddy.

The natural cycle had animals dying and being eaten, all the time. Sure, Hyacinthe didn't really want to eat of the meat of an animal, himself, but he didn't want to see the human hunters condemned for doing as nature intended them to. It didn't seem right.