Eleanora was a different sort of wood sprite, the others whispered behind her back. Oh, she looked ordinary enough, standing about eight inches high, translucent wings rising high above her back. Chestnut brown hair fluttering down to her waist, and too-large moss green eyes. She looked like a perfectly normal wood sprite, but looks, as everyone always found out, were deceiving.

Eleanora was not content to sit back in her tree and let the seasons pass her by. Eleanora was always out and about, fluttering this way and that. Talking to the birds and the squirrels. Once, she even talked to a bear. Oh, yes, she stayed high up in a tree for that one, she wasn't stupid. But she actually talked to the husky, rough-furred creature that all the other wood sprites passed by with a tremble of fear, and even made friends with it.

The girl was unnatural.

Eleanora didn't care, though. The world was much too fascinating. She knew where the birds flew in the winter, where the squirrels hid their nuts. She knew the best and prettiest flowers. She knew where everything was in the forest because she had no fear. She talked to anybody and everybody that she could.

Until the day the hunter came.

Eleanora didn't know what he was at first. He looked a bit like a wood sprite. But he had no wings, and his features were much too broad and harsh. He carried something long and pointy over his back, a metal tube of some sort? Eleanora wasn't sure.

Her friend, Ruby, urged her to stay back.

"He's not safe," she whispered, her wings fluttering rapidly in her agitation. "Please, Eleanora."

But Eleanora wouldn't listen. Oh, she would be careful, she assured her friend, her green eyes sparkling in excitement as she shifted from foot to foot on the moss that carpeted her tree. She was not a stupid sprite. She would be careful and she would hide until she knew that he could be talked to. That he would understand.

But she was confident that would happen. After all, she had talked to the bear, hadn't she? Perhaps this was simply a different sort.

So Eleanora followed, flitting from tree to tree behind the hunter. He seemed a bit careless, crushing grass, moss, leaves, and flowers under his boots alike, but perhaps, she reasoned, he was just a little clumsy like the bear had been.

Or so Eleanora thought, until she saw him take the metal tube thing off his back, aim it, and kill one of her squirrel friends. Her scream of horror was masked by the sound of the shot. Eleanora felt dizzy and sick as she watched her friend fall, blood seeping from his head.

"No, oh no, no, no," Eleanora whispered. Her whole body shivered as she pressed back against the bark of the tree she sat in. "No. How...how could you?"

But the hunter paid no attention to her. He picked up the body of her friend and stowed it away in some sort of bag. The only evidence that he left was the bloodstain on the forest floor.

Eleanora still talked to the birds and the squirrels after that. She talked to the bears, to the deer, and whispered sweet endearments to the gently bobbing petals of the flowers.

But she warned the whole forest to hide whenever she saw another of the strange hunters approach, and would not come near one for anything. They could not be trusted. They had harmed one of the forest.

Eleanora had learned her lesson, and she would never forget it.