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distributed from the center, but many subtleties are lost after a few days of backpacking. I have to rest, he says. My knees are killing me. Okay, she says tolerantly. They both find a nearby log that is relatively free of the encroaching damp, and sit. Instinctively, they huddle close, their breaths already cloudy with cold. Flashlight clamped between her teeth, she studies the map while he pulls gently at the strands of her hair. Where are we? he asks. We should start a fire for dinner, she says. Can you gather up some wood?  |
With a verbal shrug he hauls himself up and wanders off. She can hear his feet crunch against the dead leaves. The map suggests they are close to a lake. A mountain lake, that would be nice. Probably freezing right now, though, she thinks. If some of the local legends are to be believed, a town once existed here, and one can imagine the etched drawings in the dusty, sun-bleached books about local legends she saw in the night market a few days before - tidy little places rendered charming in the simplicity of the art. The town was said to be devastated during one of the previous wars, the rubble serving as fertile soil that has nurtured these forests. Hard to believe that this was once fields and town roads, she thinks, but of course it is possible; how many centuries of history are layered atop  |
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