Day 43

I do not know what time it was when I awoke, but I did so with a start. When I opened my eyes I was still in the same dark, musty room that I trapped myself in two days ago.

I heard a whisper. It was like the breeze passing through the leaves in the trees, but it had more structure. I could hear words slithering into my ears.

"You can't count shadows in the dark."

Again and again the sentence was repeated. Without light from outside, and only a small room to wander around in, I could not guess at the time; at how long the bodiless voice spoke the same words to me countless times. Minutes? Hours?

I thought I was going insane from not eating or drinking in too long. Then the voices stopped. The silence pierced my ears. I heard my heart begin to race until it was drowned out my the dull roar of my empty stomach. Then, as I bent over in discomfort I was blinded by a ray of light from the gap in the slowly and silently opening door.

As the door slid into its fully open position a silhouette materialised in the doorway. A man spoke with a voice terrible and deep, "can you count them now?"

I was stunned as I watched the silhouette fade into nothingness, consumed by the sunlight.


As quickly as I could, I made my way to where I had left Lanua and Enan. I hoped to find her sitting up, her body's natural restorative powers turning the tide of battle against the fever. I prepared myself to find that the battle had been lost. I did not expect to find nothing.

I was certain that I had gone back to where I left her. I searched around a little more and, sure enough, I found traces of our being there (such as bones from the fish I had eaten for supper). I was in the right place, but there was no one else here. Had she had a miraculous recovery and was now on her way to Pon without me, not knowing where I could have gone? Or was she searching for me? Surely not, or Enan would have led her to the temple.

I called out, a little reservedly at first, not wanting to disturb the forest, but then I called out again as loud as I could manage. Birds flapped overhead as they flew away from the sudden burst of noise. A moment later I heard the footsteps of a small, four legged creature running toward me. Joyfully, it was a familiar stripy boar piglet that came through the undergrowth. Lanua followed, much more quietly. She pushed her way past a bush into the clearing in which I had last seen her. How different she was when I left to when I returned. There was no sign of any illness about her. In fact, she seemed healthier than me - I still had not eaten.

As desperate as I was to learn about her last two days, my stomach was unaware that we had been reunited and was still calling out into the forest. I did not even wait for the food to be cooked before I ate it.

Lanua recalled what happened after I went in search of water as I swallowed mouthfuls and mouthfuls of food down whole. It was only this morning that events began to unfold differently to how I had expected. It was similar to my experience, in fact. When she had resigned herself to thinking that there was no hope, a mysterious stranger appeared before her. He was tall - taller than anyone she had ever met (this was emphasised a lot when she told me, but I would like to point out as a reminder that all the people in her village have Dwarven blood in their veins). When he came to her she was so ill that her vision was all a blur, but his skin had an odd texture to it. He knelt next to her lying on the ground, put on a glove, took something green out of a purse and tickled the palm of her hand with it. She recalls how it made her muscles spasm, as if her fingers wanted to hold onto whatever it was and never let go. As this went on Lanua's health rapidly restored. When she began to stir, the man put the thing back into the purse and took out something else; this time it was blue. He told her to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them seconds later, there was no sign of him.