by Xiang Xiang Liew

Created on: April 16, 2008

The forest was pitch black. Now and then starlight managed to slip through the lattice of leaves, creating smudges of smoky green on the canopy and sprinkling highlights on Ruwach's night blue hair.

'Is it just me, or did Ruwach cast an extra-strong Shine on his hair?' Snow mused as she followed him. The light reflecting off his silky tresses were all she could see of her colleague. Not wanting to see another pretty blue sparkle, she closed her eyes and let her other senses guide her feet over the grassy path.

With nothing much to do, she let her consciousness spread out over her permanent surveillance net. Her mind felt Ruwach's hot pulsating magical core in front of her; it was a familiar signature, this one, she knew every single clot and irregularity in it. She swept past it and lost herself in the soothing waves of the faint magical traces emitted by the trees. It was cleansing, somehow... Snow always felt it was better than a shower after work. Even after full-out battles, usually the dirtiest assignments, soaking up green aura always made her feel cleaner, even if she was actually sitting in the muddy grass coated with blood and gore and slime.

They walked on like that for a few more minutes, Snow enjoying the cool refreshing aura and the silence, which was slowly eroded by the tinkling sound of a stream in the distance.

Suddenly, the peaceful atmosphere surrounding Snow was disrupted. Points of heat had shown up on her surveillance net, less than twenty meters away. The intrinsic formation did not seem to be hostile, but the size and arrangement was perfect for the activation of a multitude of traps, both physical and magical or worse. Her subconscious processed all this in less than half a second, and was already preparing to send her senses into overdrive, when she realized that the points of magical energy she had sensed all had Ruwach's signature.

Her eyes snapped open, staring at the slivers of dark blue that faintly outlined the back of Ruwach's head. Impossible, she thought. Even if Ruwach was going to betray her, which was highly unlikely, he would know better than to display his magic so openly. He knew her abilities. He knew that she would be able to sense anything he constructed. He knew that she would get suspicious. But then again, she couldn't think of a single innocent reason for him to construct a magical formation like that in the middle of the forest. It just didn't make sense.

Still, there was still a low probability that an enemy had

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