Day 30

Icecarry River. That must be what we crossed today.

We have been travelling west for the last nine days. As I have written before, the rocky hills seemed like they would go on forever. Every day has looked the same; not even the weather changed. That is, until last night. Lanua and I were arguing about which way to go today. Toward the eerie light of an unknown civilisation or onward to the West. Neither of us wanted to back down and submit to the other. We were both quite tense after more than a week of nothing but each other's company. That is when we heard it. From the South came the terrifying rumble of thunder, as if the sky was cracking its ethereal bones. The lightning began soon after that and by midnight, despite us being beyond the reach of the storm, the flashes lit up the sky as if it were noon. It would have been foolish to head that way today as the battle between sky and ground carried on.

And so it was that our path led us to a river. For once I knew something about the world outside the forest that Lanua didn't. The river we came to was Icecarry River, and if we had attempted to canoe down it, our bodies would have washed up on the shores of Flowing Lake. I know this because I have been to Flowing Lake once before in my life. It is on the edge of Teeluw, at the end of Teeluw River. I have seen the spears of ice stabbing themselves into the turbulent waters of the lake, as I saw them today making swimming or canoeing across the water impossible.

But the river hasn't been the only change of scenery this day. It would seem that we are finally out of the barren wilderness, for today we came to the first trees of Adramalech Forest - the forest north of the Flowing Lake and south of the edge of the world. Only a few trees grow this far away from their siblings, and only a single tree found its way across the water all those years ago. But one was enough. Like a fish put back in water after being held out for minutes, I returned to the trees. The branches of a tree on the far side of the river came out far enough for me to be able to jump across from half way up the single, adventurous tree.

Unfortunately, Lanua grew up on the ground, where any step is guaranteed to be placed also on the ground. It was enough of a struggle just to show her how to climb a tree.

When she was finally on the branch from which I had jumped over the river, I had already decided that she would need to cross another way. If she had jumped, her body would be skewered by the ice in the water, and I would be on this journey alone.

Instead, I took the length of rope out of my pack and tied an end to each of the two tree trunks. Then, after I had taken Lanua's things across for her, she grabbed the horizontal rope from above and crawled over the gap like a worm.

On the other side of the river we carried on walking west until we came to the edge of the main part of the forest. It was early when we decided to set up camp for the night but I wanted to craft a bow and some arrows before entering Adramalech. Besides, we had almost run out of food so we needed to refill our packs, and the opportunity to catch some fish from the shallow streams nearby seemed perfect.