When Brandyé next knew the world, he was in a forest; of little else he was certain. Fleeting glimpses of snow and of cold passed through his thoughts, but he found he could not connect them to any concrete memory. He had no idea how he had come to be where he was now, nor of where he had been before. Come to think of it, he had no idea where ‘here’ was, and as he looked about him, he began to wonder how he might find a way from ‘here’, and to anywhere else.
Elven could sense the shocked and disheartened mood of the rest of their convoy by their utter silence as they began to make their way along the road and through the desolate fields. Like him, they had been expecting to see great fields of green, luscious growth and fruitful trees abounding everywhere. The tales of old, the legends and myths, held that Kiriün was bountiful land of plenty, a place of year-round harvests and free-flowing drink.
By the following morning, the rain had abated only a little, and Elven was thoroughly as wet and miserable as he had ever been. No one had spoken much since Tharom’s song of the previous evening, and it was in grim silence they set out in the gray dawn, Elỳn leading the way. Farathé’s party would have advanced some miles since the day before, it was assumed, and so they followed the stream from the village as it meandered south and west: it would cross Farathé’s path eventually, Elỳn said. It was not easy going, for there was no road, and the stream had grown wide and spilled over its own banks, creating great marshes and swamps from the grasslands.
Satis Writes 