Day 1

I packed my bag before dawn was close to breaking; I had to leave before anyone found out. I would travel as light as possible. But I had to stay safe and be able to protect myself. The Teeluw people don't spend their entire lives in the tree-tops because of the view. I donned the Hazelignum armour I had inherited from Garren, and I fastened the scabbard that contained my father's Shard-Blade to my belt.
I ran.
With an acrobatic flip I jumped off the platform and began to plummet towards the ground. I grabbed a vine to slow my descent. I jumped from branch to branch until I finally crashed down into the soft, moist earth of the forest floor. After a quick check to see if I my rough landing had broken any bones (it hadn't), I began to head east towards the rising sun.

By the time I was out of the forest the sun was already high in the sky. It was almost noon. My journey to the edge of the forest had been relatively uneventful. Shadows seemed to move in the darkness behind the trees but any monsters lurking there only had life in my imagination.
As I stepped from the shadow of the canopy into the daylight and took a moment to absorb my new surroundings, I felt all of the fatigue and tiredness that I had been so determined to avoid finally catch up with me. I marched to the top of an incline just outside the forest edge and found what I was now looking for. A sign of civilisation. Smoke was rising up from behind a distant hill. I set off in its direction.

I arrived at a small inn with a kindly keeper who offered me a room for the night in exchange for merely some help tending the three fruit trees that grew outside, and my company. I told him my story, or at least part of it – of course I left out certain details – and he suggested I keep a record of my life in this strange new world that my people have never ventured into so that, should I ever return to them, I could tell my tales and become the famous Teeluw who left the trees. An unlikely event, but the possibility of fame appealed to me nonetheless.

The treetop town of Teeluw

Out of the woods