Sentient Prey

  Paper-thin senses couldn't stack up.  He'd laid a scent trail behind him, footsteps glowing in dusk's light.  It would have deceived her if his plan involved waiting, but she'd come close enough to spook him.  Little solace.  A few hours of stolen sleep, but the not-if-but-when fear drove his primate brain to flight.  Carelessness from exhaustion marked his trail as well.  A broken twig swayed in feather breeze, blowing from behind, the break inches from the tree and low enough to be him.  Bark rubbed raw from his hand.  Confirmed.
  She turned as sound echoed despite absorbent trees.  Too close.  It didn't add up.  Any closer, the fresh scent trail would approach sniffing his body.  Little else made noise.  The odor and near invisible sounds of an apex predator drove lesser animals cowering away from her notice.  A bird landed on a high branch, then took off before her sight fell upon it.  Even if he smelled his pursuer, he'd stopped again.  His trail wove, but remained juvenile.  The evasiveness hadn't opened the gap between hunter and prey.
  His plan certainly focused on endurance, a crippling over-reliance on walking out of this.  The rain hadn't washed things clean.  Water dissolved sweat and blood, dripping behind him.  Unbidden thrashing had marked him occasionally, calling back to her.  Moving forward, she cut left from the marked tree and branch.  He'd made a frantic, giant loop.  Up ahead was the burrow abandoned at late morning and her approach.  The shock when he looped to the clearing would have frozen him for minutes.  She waited.
  After several hundred breaths, she advanced with tail steady.  The clearing opened before her, yet she scanned carefully.  His markings were everywhere.
  She stared at unnaturally obvious woven vines thrown over low branches.  Loose.  No bent saplings to snare, an abandoned plan.  The firepit left unburied still smoldered in its dirt circle, half prepared for tonight already.  A discarded canteen hung with another vine swinging in breeze by the firepit, half-full and making long ovals.  That'd been there earlier, but not the woven vines.  Memories replayed.  How he managed to double back was unclear.  Only one scent trail leading out.  The one she'd followed in stopped clear of any method upward.  Unlikely to be in the trees, predator quiet.  Forward on padded feet, every sense tuned, knife riding on her thigh now unsheathed.
  Unswept ground ruled out a hasty tripwire.  A slow circle took her around.  It didn't add up.  Unquestionably close, especially without a fresh trail away.
  Examining the clues in turn, she reviewed his known inventory.  A small Victorinox pocketknife, flint, some paracord, and compass.  She hadn't seen an emergency blanket missing before pursuing him, an eventual crippling problem.  Common Boy Scout gear.  Not enough to speedily manufacture complex traps for a sentient hunter.  Dumb animal, but not her.
  Eyes narrowed at the burrow on her second loop.  Fallen trees made a mostly dry place, too shallow to effectively hide in.
  A third trip revealed it.  He'd been planning to trap her here.  Audacity indeed.  The emergency blanket was folded against a tree, but the securing lines didn't make sense.  Nor did the angles.  He couldn't have aimed it properly.  She backed away, walked in an sideways arc, keeping eyes centered on the potential trap.  No visible triggering device, so she slapped the closest braided vine in annoyance.  If she had senses as poor as his, she'd have suspected this delay to let his trail fade some.
  Swinging like bait, the canteen summoned thirst.  Hers rode empty at the off-hand hip.  She tugged at the vine holding it.  No give.  Whatever his plan, the strap was knotted tight to the vine, and that to branch.  Blade slashing, she hissed.
  The vine shot away as the canteen fell, her eyes following upward motion.  A stone fell in the firepit beside her, crashing into the random sticks without result, except noise.  She sighed as the knife found sheath again.  Squatting to scoop up the canteen, she opened it.
  A sharp crack shocked her, canteen falling again.  The trigger stick flew past towards the tied and folded blanket, eliciting a shocked curse.
  Stones zipped past as the emergency blanket hit.  The impact unbalanced her, falling onto her tail, cursing loudly enough for him to hear.  The asshole rigged a net snare that'd looked triggerless, pinning her arms sufficiently to prevent a fast escape.
  A thud hit the forest floor, then susurration of something coiling after.  He walked up without reeking of fear.
  "That shouldn't have gotten you.  And once again, impatience undid you."
  "Get me out of this.  I'd have figured it out sooner if you hadn't ran us through the woods for a day and some."
  He opened the pocketknife, slowly cutting away entangling vines and stones.  Her paced breaths were all the payment he'd get for now.
  "Lesson one from my sensei as a kid.  I was the smallest and youngest human kid, but if you went for a run, he expected you to be ready for an ambush on returning."
  "Going to reveal how you dealt with scent this time?  That trick will have me guessing next time, unless you're in sight."
  "You haven't revealed your secrets from last time I hunted.  I thought I'd herded you, yet you traversed a run triggered to snap at half your weight."
  She ignored his acknowledgement of equality.  "Still, being captured even once is humbling."
  The last vine cut loose, and between them they removed the blanket.  She stretched as she stood, nearly two feet taller.  Hardly a tiny human child anymore, now tall for his kind, the size remained petite versus her.  That insouciant grin had been spit in the handshake when they'd met, and continued to arouse interest.
  "Get those halfboots off.  Victor's spoils.  I get to massage tension out those legs."
  "All you've got going for you are wits, that grin, and those fingers.  Keep teaching me that some people are more than a printed dossier."