Camp had just been...too much. Despite years of traveling with hodge-podge mercenary groups, the bustle and cacophony of the evening had been overwhelming to Cormac after the fighting earlier. He still felt as if he were reeling from all the memories that had surfaced in the past few days, clamoring for his attention. First Jill showing up, and then the fight with the darkspawn earlier today. It was little wonder that when the tents had been pitched and his share of the duties finished Cormac had snagged his pack, whistled for Shartan, and slipped off into the heavy woods for some peace and quiet.
The forest here was ancient, heavy and bowed beneath age. It was still far from Gwaren, but the massive oaks and elms, the way that the evening sunlight sifted through leaves, the thick smell of moss and loam - these things hadn't changed since he'd roamed the woods of his childhood. He had no real destination in mind, and it was getting too late in the evening to wander too far, but he had hope of finding some useful herbs or plants to mash into his crude poultices. A short distance from camp the sound of rushing water began overpowering the rustling and chirping of the forest and Cormac set off to investigate the source.
A grin slid across his face as he rounded a corner in the deer track he had been following and the water came into view. The warm evening sun burnished a merry little river bright gold, hardly larger than a stream but riddled with deep pools and frothing rapids as it tripped its way down a rocky riverbed. He had been hoping for a way to unwind, and the forest had provided the best possible means. Shading his eyes with one hand against the glare of the water, Cormac picked a likely looking pool, cool and deep, guarded from the hot sun by overhanging roots and a cutaway bank. It was here he shrugged his pack to the ground and seated himself on a rock still warm from the day, shaking his head with amusement as Shartan gamboled his way across the shallows downstream towards a covey of quails that had burst out of the underbrush.
Having spent nearly his entire life around water, and with an uncle that was a rabid angler, Cormac had grown up to become a skilled fisherman. There was something about fishing that calmed him in ways little else could, that gave him opportunity to relax and unwind. He had spent many evenings after a rough day on the banks of the rivers that fed into Lake Calenhad, working his frustrations out one cast at a time.Even now, as a man living on the road with no real home, he could always feel a little less lost on the banks of a river.
His fishing rod was a clever piece, carved of supple ash in multiple pieces that could be fitted together or pulled apart for stowing in his bag. While a grub would do in a pinch for bait, Cormac prided himself on creating lures from bits of feather and cloth, and he was always tucking away any scraps of bright material he came across for possible use in a lure. Assembling his rod and tying a likely lure onto the line he had attached to the end, Cormac settled himself more comfortably against his rock and cast out his line, the worst of the tension in his shoulders melting away at the satisfying plop of a lure meeting the surface of the water.
Mere moments had passed since he had shimmied the bright scrap of feathers towards the spot he had seen trout fins flashing in the cold deep holes where the oldest and largest fish hung out, when Shartan suddenly lifted his heavy head from whatever forest critter he had been tracking and came bounding back across the river, barking madly and splashing his master liberally in the process.