The deer turned around and walked away to disappear between the trees and the man turned to Rina instead. This time too, he nodded deep and politely towards her, and she returned the gesture. She could just stand there and look at him because at first she could hardly believe she had found him. Despite it being a cold and rainy autumn day, he didn’t wear anything on his upper body underneath his cloak, and Rina could see patterns of flowers and stars on his skin. He had tattoos on the chest and the hands, and more was most likely hidden under the cloak. The only tattoos Rina had seen before were the wedding tattoos Kitsune folk had on their necks. What the man had wasn’t the same thing.
  He came towards her with a small smile on his lips, with one hand reaching out to her. In his hand he had half an apple, the remainder of what he had fed the deer with. When she didn’t take it he put it in his mouth, but Rina were too occupied by looking into his eyes. One of his eyes was in a warm brown color, but it was the other one which made her stare a while longer. It was blood red.
  “Don’t worry, I’m not a threat”, he said with a soft voice, as he knew what she was thinking. He spoke the Elven language without accent or any specific dialect.
  “Who or what are you?” She couldn’t take her eyes of him, and didn’t know what she should believe. Vampires had red eyes, but they weren’t welcome to live on Esera.
  “A forest deity, a shaman, a man who talks to the animals. Does it matter what I am? You can call me Saiph. So tell me, Rina, why have you been looking for me?” He still had a friendly smile on his lips. “You might not remember it, but I also came to the village when you were a child.”
  Rina raised an eyebrow at him, as he answered how he knew her name before she even got to ask him. He didn’t really tell her what he was, but she realized it actually didn’t matter. Everything she had ever heard about vampires told her he wasn’t one anyway. This made her also realize that it were true, he was a deity. Her fingers fumbled for the red leather pouch, and hold it out for him.
  “Oh, thank you.” Saiph had a smile on his lips when he took the pouch from her hand. He weighed it in hand and looked surprised as it was heavier than he expected.
  “I thought it would be rude to bring it back empty, so I filled it with dried berries”, she said. “But that’s not the only reason why I came looking for you. I hoped you could tell me what’s wrong with the nature… I hoped you could do something…” Rina bit her lower lip, as she wasn’t sure he could do what she hoped for.
  “I’ll see what I can do for the children, but for the nature… I’m not the one doing this to the strange weather.”