We Are Here

The first light of dawn crept over the eastern hills, a hesitant promise of pale gold spilling across the clearing as the last stars faded into blue. The air was crisp and clean, touched with damp grass and distant pine, and somewhere beyond the rise larks and thrushes lifted their voices into the morning.

A lone deer stepped into the camp.

It moved with delicate caution, hooves nearly soundless in the grass, ears turning at every rustle. Near the dying embers, it stopped and raised its head, dark eyes passing over the cloaked figures scattered around the clearing.

Jaeshu woke at the sound. His eyes opened beneath the shadow of his hood, and in one smooth motion his hand found the shortbow beside him. An arrow came free without a whisper, settled to the string, and the wood bent beneath his draw.

Lunara’s hand closed gently over his wrist.

She said nothing. Her hair lay loose across one cheek, caught pale gold at the edges by the dawn. She looked toward the deer and shook her head once.

Jaeshu held the draw for another breath, then slowly let the tension from the string. The deer startled at the movement and bounded through the heather, its white tail flashing once before the sunrise swallowed it.

He lowered the bow across his chest and lay back again, though sleep did not return.

One by one, the others woke.

Oesora rose from beneath her cloak and brushed a strand of dark hair from Navian’s brow, then watched the slow rise and fall beneath his armor before standing. A short distance from camp she began gathering what the land offered—roots, berries, narrow leaves beaded with dew—testing each between her fingers before laying it carefully into the fold of her robe.

Karneth woke against Beeps with a rough snort. The bramblehorn answered with one of his own, and for several moments the two simply stared at each other. Then Karneth dragged a hand across his jaw, pushed himself upright, and disappeared into a patch of brambles. The dwarf returned with two quail hanging from one fist and several fresh scratches across the other, muttering at the bushes as though the matter between them remained unfinished.

Beeps, for his part, found breakfast conveniently at his feet.

Gaz sat up more slowly. His staff rested across his knees while he looked toward the eastern sky, still pale from exhaustion. After a time he wandered among the nearby trees with one hand raised. Branches stirred, leaves whispering where no wind reached them, and several pieces of ripe fruit loosened from the boughs. They drifted through the grass and settled near his boots.

Lunara returned with a handful of wild greens. Jaeshu slipped away without announcement and came back carrying three silver fish, river water still dripping from their tails.

Breakfast was prepared in silence.

They ate apart, each claiming some small piece of the clearing as though distance might make thought easier. Lunara wandered to the bramblehorn, tearing greens between her fingers while the beast’s broad muzzle covered her palm. Thick lips picked the weeds from her hand with surprising delicacy, and the sensation drew a quiet laugh from her—one she immediately regretted when pain caught beneath her ribs. She had forgotten how much adrenaline could hide, and how much mornings didn’t.

Karneth ate steadily, though his attention returned again and again to the dark edge of the forest behind them. The treeline stood silent and unmoving, yet he could not quite rid himself of the sense that something within it was looking back.

Jaeshu remained standing, a fish in one hand and his knife still sheathed at his side, his gaze fixed on the open hills beyond the camp. He would get to the gutting eventually.

When the wonder of a new horizon let him.

Oesora did not eat. Her portion remained untouched beside Navian. She lifted his head carefully, gave him a little water, then lowered him back onto the folded cloak beneath him. When his throat moved, she stayed there a moment longer with one hand behind his neck.

No one remarked upon it.

In fact, no one had spoken to one another all morning.

When the last of the food was gone, Gaz let out a breath, rose, and stepped into a patch of bare earth near the fire. He drew the end of his staff through the dirt. At first the marks seemed without meaning, but they gathered slowly into ridges, roads, and the bend of distant country, each line corrected from memory until a rough map lay before his boots.

“We,” he said, touching the center, “are here.”

The wizard’s voice broke the morning. The others lifted their heads and, one by one, gathered around him. Oesora remained beside Navian but shifted where she sat so she could see.

Gaz marked the western side of the map. “The Golden Quiet, thankfully, lies behind us. From the maps I procured in Caerhaven, the next safe landmark for us should be a trading town…” He dragged the foot of his staff through the dirt, pushing a thin furrow eastward until it reached a small X.

“…here.” He frowned at the mark. “Felward. Fenspeak. Something equally forgettable. The cartographer’s handwriting was atrocious.”

Karneth folded his arms. “Comforting.”

Gaz gave him a brief glance, then returned to the map. “Beyond it, the road divides toward Astyanax Falls and the red plains.” He traced the two routes apart with the end of his staff. “Two days’ march if we move carefully,” he said. “And if the weather permits.”

“And if it don’t?”

Gaz looked up across the clearing toward his brother. “Then we lose more than time.”

The dwarf's eyes settled on the still figure beside Oesora.

He said nothing further.

Gaz dragged the staff farther eastward, across the open country and toward the jagged line he had given the Ironspines. “Beyond that are the passes, which I only know from ink and other people’s mistakes.”

He looked toward Jaeshu.

“Perhaps our ranger has some insight.”

Jaeshu crouched beside the map. He drew the knife from his boot and scratched another narrow line through the dirt, then placed a small mark near what Gaz had shaped into the mountains.

“There’s said to be a settlement here.”

“Name?” Lunara asked.

“I’ve heard several.” Jaeshu widened the line with the knife point. “People describe the place differently too. Or not at all. Could be a city, could be a myth. The stories about it have traveled farther than I have.”

Karneth grunted. “Me neither.”

Beeps huffed beside him.

“But I’ve never heard anything dangerous said of it,” Jaeshu continued. “Last name I heard was the River Glimmer. Whatever it truly is, it should be safe enough to pass through.”

Oesora’s hand came to rest lightly against Navian’s shoulder. “With his Light gone and our number diminished, safe enough may have to be enough.”

Gaz glanced toward her. “We’ll see when he wakes.”

When.

The word carried a moment of comfort none of them expected. No one corrected him, and somehow they all seemed to straighten a little.

“If I am being truthful, I am far from full strength myself,” he said. “It will take more than a restless night and a handful of berries to undo what the forest took out of me.”

Lunara shrugged. “Then we stay another day.”

Jaeshu looked up.

She gestured toward Navian. “The least we owe him is one quiet day and night without dragging him across the downs like baggage. Food is easy enough here. Water is close. I need arrows before we go much farther anyway.”

Karneth rubbed at the stubble along his jaw. “I’m no healer, but even I can see the man’s in no shape to march.” He pressed one broad hand into the grass beside him. “The food is good, the earth is soft, and my axes need tending.”

He looked toward Navian.

“Besides, I’d rather not be the one explaining why we jostled him halfway to the mountains while he was still snoring.”

A faint breath escaped Jaeshu, almost a laugh. He looked toward the eastern hills, then back to the crude lines in the dirt. Pulling his hood up around his face, he said, “Another day, then.”

Gaz studied the map a while longer. “Another day.”

No one argued.

The map remained between them, its roads crooked, its distances uncertain, the mountains little more than scratches beneath Gaz’s staff. Their path forward was there, though nothing about it promised ease. Around that rough drawing stood five people who had spent most of the journey following someone else.

For the first time, no single voice seemed to belong at the front.

They remained around the map a little longer, looking at the road ahead while the weight of what came next settled quietly among them. Then, one by one, they broke away to gather what they could.

For now, they were here.

High above the clearing, upon a distant rise, two figures stood watching. They had been there since before dawn.

The larger of them was an enormous man, broad enough that the furs draped across his shoulders seemed almost another hide. Bark, vine, and old leaves had been worked through the heavy layers of his clothing until, standing motionless among the scrub and stone, he seemed almost part of the hillside.

“They are so wounded,” he said softly. “And lost.”

Beside him stood an old woman wrapped in weathered druid robes. A crooked staff rested against one shoulder, its ancient wood bound with strips of leather and a small sprig of rowan that stirred whenever the wind passed over the rise.

She gave no answer.

“They should be told, Mother. The truth would give them direction.”

The wind moved over the hill.

The old woman turned her head toward him.

“Not… yet.”

His gaze remained fixed on the clearing below.

“Perhaps never,” she said. “For now, we watch.”

Far beneath them, the companions began to separate from the map, each returning to the small labors of another day.

Neither figure moved.

And none below thought to look toward the hill.