Artemisia looks back and forth as the argument rages. Her face grows more and more expressionless until, at least, she states quietly but firmly, "Enko. Erin. Ryon. Everyone." She makes eye contact with everyone and waits until silence returns before she starts to talk in a low, earnest tone of voice. "Please, before I say this, everyone must understand that if word of what I'm about to say gets back to Pantheras, my mother and I will be exiled from the village. Enko knows why; ask him later if you really need to know."
She gathers in a deep breath and begins. "I don't know how or why, but I have ... an affinity, I suppose ... for the forest. Pantheras swears it's nothing to do with the spirits, and everyone knows I'm no spirit-talker. I'm not marked. But yet, I can sense the mood of the forest. I can feel its pleasure as a strong wind caresses the canopy, and I can feel the sorrow now that ash drapes the land. I have never once - not even when I was a little girl wandering alone - gotten lost in the forest. I have always had what others would call amazing luck with finding game and hunting predators.
"I know better, though. It's not luck. I get a feeling that guides me. That dire bear I slew? It was wounded by another hunter but got away and had gone mad with pain and rage. Its presence was a feeling of wrongness as it slew out of pleasure and insanity rather than for need. That feeling guided me to it." She turns and looks Enko straight in the eyes. "Enko, you have been kind to me when everyone else was indifferent at best. Understand that, when I say this, it is no slight towards your reaction here tonight.
"Those ... creatures ... whatever they are, the very forest recoils in horror at their presence. They are un-natural to the highest degree. The bear was a candle compared to these things' campfire. I don't know what they are, but I know what they represent. They are evil and destruction and malicious bringers of terror. Their only reason for existence is to destroy. Doesn't the fact that they have no genitals mean anything to you? These things cannot create, only destroy. Even their clothes and weapons are made by destroying other creatures." She shakes her head at the obvious retort to her last statement. "Yes, we use skins and bone as well, but we also grow crops and use unliving metal, and the skins and bones we take are always after propitiating the spirit of the slain. We have the capacity to create. The forest tells me that these do not. They kill for the simple joy of slaughter. They do not even comprehend that another way of thinking exists."
Reaching the end of her revelation, she seems to lose steam and deflate. "Or maybe I'm just delusional after all, like everyone thinks anyway." With that, she turns and makes her way back to the campsite, crouching down in front of the fire, her head bowed.
