Valayne was born in a well hidden village deep inside the Sylvan forests into a rather normal family, a loving mother and a even more loving father. The small child didn’t miss a thing there, be it attention from both parents nor cheerful friends to play with under the shady green leaf canopy. Still the young elf learned quite quickly that she was still missing something, unknown yet what it was as she grew up more and more, the aching in her chest the driving force that led her to various places. She seemed curious to her kin for testing many things and professions without finding the one that she was searching for, a place that felt right until she met one of the older rangers. Being a young flower and not someone to teach her request to take her along was denied be the elder elf but stubborn and strong willed as she was that didn’t mean she would give up.
She followed him into the woods, causing her parents to worry about the young one but still it was tolerated. Of course she was noticed by the elder one, but he turned each time he went out, and noticed the clumsy girl behind him into a lesson. He taught her basic things by doing them. This continued over three years in which she would sneak out to watch the elder ranger and after returning going out herself to try and test the things she had seen. Unknown to her the elder ranger had followed her each time she had gone out on her own, smiling often to himself in a save distance while he watched her attempts to imitate the things he had shown her.
In the early weeks of their fourth year Valayne noticed the ranger watching her and managed to slip away and hide herself. Puzzled by the fact that he had been found out by the young one he still managed to find her easily after a few minutes, but with a broad smile on his lips. He told her that she had been a little cheeky brat, not familiar with the woods and the things necessary to live out there. But now he let her accompany him on the journeys between villages or hunts. From then on her education in the way of living with and solely off the forest began, and for more than a decade they wandered together.
Still they never asked each others names, the curiosity and the love for the dark green around them binding them closer together than any form of social interaction could do. She learned to use a bow for hunting and fighting, as well as the usage of a knife to make traps, skin a small animal or to make a light spear for fishing. She learned how to create a shelter only by the dead things the forest has left behind and offered for them as well as the basic plants that could be used for eating or tending to smaller wounds. Still he didn’t tell her what to do, he simply showed and watched as she did it herself until one day he left, without telling where he would go or where to meet. It was her graduation from being a mere follower to someone that was able to live within the forest’s embrace but it still left a hole in her heart to lose the companion she had spent most of a decade with.
Not sure where to go the small elf decided that she was old enough now to seek her own guiding spirit, a decision she never regretted even though she spent nearly another decade finding and learning from a beautiful, winged creature that had revealed itself to her. The owl showed her how to hunt without a sound, where to sit and watch for their prey as well as the way they lived, which trees they liked more and how to search for a mate, how to educate their little offspring until they became elegant and skilled hunters of the night.
When she finally decided that she had learned everything from the spirit that had taken her request of guidance the pale Sylvan had spent nearly more time outside the villages than inside, her feet leading her back to the place she had once called home to find that everything there was still the same. Her parents welcomed her with the same, loving embrace they had kept her in without holding her back and a night of celebration and send-off at the same time. On the very next day she picked up her worn out clothes, the bags and things she had decided were worth the effort to carry along before she embraced her parents and the friends of childhood a last time, turning her back on the village to leave again, curiosity and wanderlust engraved to deeply into her to stay in the world she already knew.