With the dying light of the already dim day fading rapidly, the makeshift cooking area was alive with activity. Fires crackled beneath suspended pots, casting dancing shadows across the faces of the women who worked diligently to prepare the evening meal.
The smell of roasting dire wolf meat, enriched with the scant quantities of mana that permeated their flesh, mingled with the aroma of wild herbs that had been foraged from the surrounding woods.
Among these women were Tara, Hema, and Rhonia, the middle-aged woman with the Cook class who had arrived along with the Lumberjack and their son. Rhonia's hands moved efficiently as she stirred a pot of stew while her somewhat plump face flushed from the heat of the cooking fires.
Tara was preoccupied with cutting chunks of meat for the stew, while Hema sorted through various herbs she'd collected, adding pinches of this and that to the cooking pots to enhance the flavor of the otherwise gamey meat.
