 | Antaran's Journal |
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It will take another day until we will arrive at Emtik. I've never been there before, so I'm quite eager to see it.
When we woke up today we prepared for our journey. Ontarm took a last look at Tartek's wound and our horses' injuries and did everything in his powers to support the healing process. Ontarm insisted on us keeping the animal hides for the journey to Emtik. "You will need them, even though Winter has almost disappeared," he said. "You don't want to catch a cold, do you?" Of course we didn't, that's why we thankfully kept the hides. We couldn't give anything in return, so it was a bit embarrassing. "It's no problem," he mumbled through his brown beard. "Just remember that you are in debt to me." The journey up until now wasn't really out of the ordinary. After a while Tartek pointed in a direction east of us and told me that Mirnda's Inn should be a few miles in that direction. At first I wondered how he could know this, but then I saw some smoke rising above the trees in the far distance. And there is only one house that produces so much smoke when warming its guests. If Ontarm's description was true and Emtik really lay north of Astatik this would mean that we had already left half of the way to Emtik behind us. It was already late afternoon, so we started looking for a place to spend the night. We didn't really find a special place, like a clearing or something of the like. So when we saw the moon high up the sky already, we just stopped and unmounted our horses. Tartek wanted to look around for wood, but I told him to sit down and rest. He shouldn't play the hero with such a wound like the one he suffers from. Carana and Sereliaen unpacked some of our provisions and our animal hides. I was a bit frightened when I had to look around for wood in the dark forest. Only once in a while the light of the half-moon shone through the branches above me to light my way. I had to make sure not to get lost, always looking back and always trying to go straight ahead, so I could just turn around and arrive at the camp sooner or later. I wonder if Ontarm couldn't have given us some flint stones. Making fire with bare wood is just impossible, especially when it's cold and wet. Tartek always told me what to do. Do this, do that - until I gave up. I don't know for how long I'd been trying to get a flame going, but I still felt a slight pain from the escape out of Insomida, so I just couldn't continue anymore. Carana told me to step aside and let her try it. She used a different technique than me, but because of the darkness around us I couldn't really see what exactly she did. Then - the first sparks, and finally a small flame. We patiently added limb after limb, trying not to choke the fire, increasing the size of it until we felt its warmth in our bodies. We don't really talk much. Just the basics. Like "Good morning", "Sleep well", "How are you?" and "Are we ready to ride again?". There is a weird atmosphere around us. I think it's just that we all still don't know what situation we're in right now... |
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