It has been many years since I spent time
amongst others for this many days, certainly this is the longest outside
of the mountains in people's company. No matter the hardships, I miss
the rugged beauty of the snowy peaks I have spent my adult life
traversing. There are dangers, of course, but ones I am knowledgeable
to deal with or avoid. Nothing like my time down here, in the valleys
and forests.
I look on my notes of Shadow of the Pride's journey
here, ones I thought fanciful when I first heard them, and found them to
be far more likely to be truth than not. The land here is beset by
such random chaotic forces, magics, hostile peoples, and dangers, that
each day brings with it new experiences of ways to perish than I ever
thought I would be witness to, nevermind them happening to me.
It
was giant bugs yesterday. Lured by little figurines I found in a
burned out house. I managed to destroy them, rendering the bulk of the
creatures back to their normal location elsewhere in the forest, but not
before I had been rendered unconscious from the damage undertaken by
them. I can only say that I am lucky to be with a group who are skilled
in helping to stabilise and heal, and willing to do so.
Luck
is perhaps not the right word, for it is far more a mutual need that
keeps the group together. I have found myself having to take a more
front-line position while in combat in order to protect others, and it
is not my natural skill. I am used to finding enemies from afar, and
dealing with them from there before they get to me, and this new
learning, forced as it is by circumstances, is undoubtedly why I have
struggled so greatly.
Is this why I have still felt no direct
pull to return to the mountains? Is such training what keeps my steps
from moving on? I am so used to feeling the pull, the nudge towards one
place or another, that it is unsettling to be left without it for so
long.
I rest tonight in the fortified lodge, resigned that
tomorrow will likely bring new experiences that remind me how little I
know outside the mountains.