They had hardly been at the Fort for an hour when a Captain advanced the four messengers and requested they follow him. It was time for them to learn in more depth what exactly they were to be doing.

It was a dark room into which they were admitted, and upon first glance, it appeared not to have any people in it. They were led down to the very end of the room, it was like the rest of the fort, made entirely of great stone slabs which fit roughly together, some containing tiny shells seeming to have come from the sea at one point. The captain had been holding a torch, and now he shoved it into a small crevice between two slabs of stone; instantly flame leapt up and began to spread along the wall lengthwise. This startled the others for a moment, until they noticed how a part of the wall had been hollowed out slightly to form a canal holding lamp oil, so when the torch touched the oil, flame spread along the entire room, lighting it beautifully.

This sudden light also revealed a sleeping soldier on the floor. He shot to his feet upon hearing the captain's voice, and with mumbled apologies and many little bows to the guests, he took a dead torch from where it had been lying beside him on the floor and lit it in the flaming trail snaking along the wall. Then he darted to a small ladder in the back wall, which was shelfed inwards about halfway up into a loft piled with goods. He hastily shoved the ladder (and a few bags of grain and flour which had been leaning against it) aside, then began to knock franticly on the wall behind, with a series of rapid little taps, then a few loud resounding booms. Trout, being the closest, saw that the wall—so solid looking a moment before—was now sliding back, revealing another room much like the first, only smaller.

Trout and the others followed the sleepy guard in rather tentatively, but he was already at work sliding goods and bits of furniture as well as a rug away from the center of the room. He seemed to be fumbling with something on the floor, then there was a loud bang, causing the messengers to jump, as the stone door they had entered through slammed shut. Just at that moment the guard shoved his hair back out of his face and gave whatever he had been trying pull up off the floor a hard yank. The thing he had been pulling at, they now saw it was a trapdoor, gave way easily at last, sending the poor guard sprawling on the ground. Muttering some more, and shaking his head, he slipped down a ladder and disappeared through the floor. A moment later he was back, beckoning them to follow him, and upon their dropping into the space bellow, all four felt a strange tingle of excitement and shock.

Below the fort was a huge cavern, older than the fort itself, and no one had known about it for centuries besides the Lord of the Wood and his Lady. It was into this cavern, (consisting of many hundreds and thousands of halls, chambers, and even several subterranean streams) that the four soon-to-be-messengers stepped. They were led through a fantastic maze of connected caves and halls until they reached a large empty cavern, much taller and wider than that which they had entered through. At first none of them could figure how this had happened, the truth of it was that they had been sloping downwards ever since entering the cavern, but so gently no one had noticed until coming upon this hall, where the roof (or the ground rather) was so much farther above them. The room was empty save for the great pillars holding up the celling and twelve thrones arranged in a U shape which occupied the center of that hall.

Pervinca spun around and around, gazing up at the cavernous roof in awe, trying to take it all in. They jumped and spun around quickly upon hearing a soft, echoing boom come from the massive doors behind them. Columns of soldiers entered the chamber and spread out against the walls. In the middle, between the columns and somewhat towards the end of the procession walked an old female Liean. That is, she looked old and wrinkled, long white hair flowed down her back, but she stood straight and walked briskly and unassisted. And her eyes were odd, there was no doubt about that. They were so large and dark and unblinking that for just a moment, the messengers wondered if she was perhaps blind, or missing her real eyes and had these simply as frightening replacements. But they were real—deep and prodding, but certainly real.

Soon the guards were spread out along every wall but tucked back into the shadows so that they were not visible unless one happened to be looking very hard at them. It appeared as though the four messengers were alone in the room with that mysterious lady, but none of them could shake the feeling of the hundreds of eyes continuously boring into the backs of their heads. 

It was uncomfortable to say the least.

She looked hard at each of them in turn, then asked, "What do you wish to know? Of this journey, first."

They shared uncomfortable glances, then Sandy spoke up at last, "Ah...Lady—" he hesitated, hating the slight tremor in his voice, and not quite sure what to call her; he didn't wish to offend, she certainly held herself like some great lady. "General Haolims—he's the general in Raye—"

"I am well aware of who he is, boy." She interrupted coolly, but the corner of her mouth seemed to quirk up into some semblance of a smile for the briefest instant.

Sandy's eyes seemed ready to pop from his head, face bright and hot, "Oh, yes...yes, of course my lady..." he stammered, looking down and feeling more intimidated than he ever had in his life, unsure as to whether she intended for him to go on with his question or not. When she gave no sign of speaking again, Sandy hurried on, as if to make up for time lost in his hesitation. "I just had a little question, nothing of importance really..." he swallowed hard, "I was just wondering when exactly we are going to set out?"

"That will depend," she replied smoothly.

The four wide-eyed messengers stared up at her, waiting for her to continue—or rather, Eggs stared up at her, Pervinca looked her nearly in the eyes, while Trout and Sandy looked down from their respective heights to meet her eyes. But her presence was such that she seemed to tower over all of them.

Sandy swallowed and was about to ask her to expand on her answer when Eggs did it for him.

"Depend...on what?" Her voice seemed unnecessarily loud in that large room to her, and she nearly wished she had said nothing at all. She had managed to get her words out in a smoother manner than her cousin had, but not by much, and she flinched as her words seemed to echo throughout the cavern.

"On the movement from the north, and on the speed of your development, of course. What else? But mainly on your development. You might say solely on that. If the entire forest had burned to join the Wastelands and the Fort crumbled above us and yet you were not prepared, I would not send you. Not if we five were the only Lieans remaining alive in Nordland would I send you before you had proven yourselves capable of the task which you will be burdened with. Does that satisfy your question?"

Their accessions tumbled over each other as they tried to make it clear that she had.

"Is that all then?" she asked, seeming to know very well that it was not. But all the questions that had been filling the messengers' minds had run and hidden away in shrouded corners upon seeing her, and for the moment their minds remained mostly blank. She took in their awestruck faces with simply a nod, "Very well then, your training shall begin immediately."

The instant the words were out of her mouth and her gaze removed from their faces, it was as though a spell had been broken, and the questions and curiosities came flooding back tenfold.

Trout was suddenly wondering aloud what on earth they would do if they ran out of food, or what if they were robbed? Eggs declared stoutly that she was not swimming the Single Star Channel—among her worst fears being torn to shreds by sharks ranked at the top—but how would they ever find a ship? Pervinca was wondering what she should do if those...things... those Makezen Searchers were to find her. She said nothing aloud, though.

But it was Sandy who silenced the sudden outburst by asking, "And the war...what of that? Are we to have no part in it beyond this?"

Amber had turned aside and was speaking to a guard who had come with her, and she slowly looked back to them as Sandy's words hung, rank and foul, in the air. Unknowingly both girls had wrinkled up their faces in horror, and Trout's eyes had lighted up with a morbid desire and excitement.

The lady's face stayed cold and expressionless as ever, but Pervinca thought she saw a flicker of unease in her eyes as she studied Sandy's face intently. "We will not speak of this now," she said in a soft, dangerous tone. "War is an evil beyond the creation of the world; an evil which was born straight from the darkness and consumes men's hearts, destroys their minds. Yet they long for it, and embrace the so-called 'glory' of it, all while being unimaginably revolted by its inhumanity."

Sandy shivered, suddenly cold, and pulled his gaze from hers.

"No," she said decidedly, "we will not speak of this now. You have had a long journey. Loc here"—she motioned to the guard behind her— "will show you to your rooms. Rest, and then your training will commence, in the morning."

Pervinca frowned, commence? What did she mean, commence? We haven't done anything yet! But a yawn escaped her in spite of attempts at holding it in, and she willingly followed Loc to the small room he showed her and Eggs into.

~*~*~*~

She was sitting in a chair of some sort. Pervinca looked around. No, not a chair. She was sitting in one of the massive thrones in the cavern where they had met the lady earlier that day and wearing nothing but a massive shirt of her father's which she always wore as a nightgown. She quickly laced the front of the shirt all the way up and looked around the room, red-faced, and hoped no soldiers hid there any longer.

She got up and walked slowly around the chamber, then jumped and darted behind a pillar upon hearing two voices. One was a man's voice, and the other seemed to belong to the lady they had met that evening.

"He simply wishes to protect, Amber." The man was saying.

So that's her name...

"It is a natural instinct for all males, young or old. They wish to protect their people."

"It was not a natural question, Loc," she said sternly, "nor was the look in his eyes natural as he spoke it."

There was a tense silence, then Loc spoke up again, "Clear your mind, Amber, think plainly, speak plainly. Listen to yourself! Next you'll be saying he's the Child of the Prophecies!"

Pervinca could tell he meant it as a joke, but Amber did not take it as such.

"And perhaps it is time you considered that a possibility. But I did not say he was. There is something in him though... I could feel it. He is shifting those around him, changing fate, as it were, without even an inkling. And the girl...she could be his twin. There is something about her as well. A Crier, I would say, but stronger than most. A Dreamer. No, Loc, they are not the same, though most Criers dream as well."

"And what of the other two?"

"I couldn't say. They seem to be nothing more than what they are—an unusually attractive girl and an unusually energetic boy. But perhaps that girl's the Crier. I don't know, Loc, and I don't like not knowing. An aura surrounds the four, and scents like I have never before known. But when I say surrounds them, Loc, I mean a wall. A fortress that I cannot see inside. One of them, or perhaps all four, are vitally important to the weaving of time, though how I cannot say. Not because I could not learn, but because I have been blocked from seeing. Enough about that, however, we need to focus on their training. I will be seeing to it personally that you—"

The Voice faded out of Pervinca's head, and suddenly she was sitting up in her bed, trembling and sweating. Eggs was sound asleep in the bed next to hers, and she worked to calm her breathing.

It was a dream. Just a dream. Nothing more than that. It couldn't be anything more than that...

She settled back down into the bed and closed her eyes. Whatever other dreams were forgotten upon waking, yet this one remained clear in her memory as though it had really happened; it was as if she had truly been in the room and heard the conversation. But she didn't see how that was possible.

~*~*~*~

"Maps!" Trout was confused, "but we already have maps..."

Loc gave him a level gaze and his words trailed off into silence. "As I was about to say, before I was so rudely interrupted—" he glared back in Trout's direction, who blushed and ducked his head in embarrassment. Loc spread the maps out in front of them.

In the small hours of the morning, a while before dawn, Loc had barged into their rooms and lit all the lamps, shouting for them to be up in less than five minutes if they wanted anything to eat before their lessons.

Eggs had rolled her eyes and muttered, "These military men...always have to be so precise." But she did not sound particularly displeased. The exciting turn her life had recently taken had still not faded, and adrenaline seemed to be fulling her every move, making her nearly as energetic as Trout.

Pervinca hadn't said anything, frowning and thinking about her dream from the night before, as well as occasionally glancing towards Loc in bewilderment. This went on all throughout their morning lessons to the point where Eggs leaned over and whispered in her ear.

"What's the matter? The way you're glaring at him would make me think he was singlehandedly responsible for this war."

"What?" Pervinca had been startled, "oh, no. No, I was thinking about something...Eggs," she asked suddenly, "ask him what her name is...the lady we met yesterday."

Eggs brow wrinkled in confusion, but she did anyway.

"You will continue to call her 'my lady' when addressing her directly, unless commanded otherwise," Loc instructed them, "but if you wish to address her otherwise, it will be Lady Amber, and mind you speak of her to no one outside these caverns!"

Pervinca went so pale that for a moment Eggs thought she might be ill. But the only answer she got to asking what had happened was Pervinca muttering something about dreams and groaning, "It can't be Amber...it can't be!"

They had gotten a brief lunch break, food provided, and an hour in the massive library to do as they pleased—the boys had gotten themselves into trouble with a sliding ladder early on and were made to clean up the books they had dumped all over for the remainder of the hour. Then Loc was back with large maps to outline the details of their journeys.

"Auora and Pervinca, you will be the messengers dispatched to the Hawk Hills, a journey roughly one hundred miles as the crow flies. By foot, and by ship, as you will have to cross the Single Star Channel, the distance is roughly fifty miles more, provided you have hard days of traveling. The soonest you could get there would be within nine days, going a hard twenty miles a day. This may not seem far now, but tramping cross-country like that at a steady pace...your opinions will have certainly changed by the third day. But numbers are simply numbers, and will mean nothing to you once you are out of civilization. Your lives will be ruled by the sun, you will eat only when extremely hungry, and ration your food, because that will become natural. You will change on this journey, and the part of you that desires to be wild and alone will be woken. Take a care that it does not get to far! Now, as for the rout you shall stick to..."

Loc proceeded to lay out the way they should take. They were to travel on foot as far as the town of Bridgewater, and from there they could perhaps hitchhike past the Streaming Falls and on to Livton, another small port, maybe twenty miles south of Bridgewater, and the chain of commerce between the two villages was thriving. Travelers along those roads were frequent, and almost always welcomed. In Livton they would find a ship and pay them for the passage across the Single Star Channel. Most ships would go to a port just north of the Lincho de Hornitas; a great and dangerous forest which would surely take much too long to travel through.

From that point it would not be far to the Hawk Hills, mostly straightforward march.

"And your message," Loc handed Pervinca a scroll, smaller than the map. "Read this day and night, take care never to lose the words. The scroll may get lost, or torn, but you must never forget the words. The seal is what is important here, the seal of the Lord of the Wood. If in the end you all decide to go on with this journey this seal will need to be branded into your flesh—more often then not the messages are lost and proof of truth required. It is not something to fear and will not harm you, though it will be permanent. It is a symbol of importance to the Lord of the Wood, and often given as a reward to those Generals who prove to be once-in-a-lifetime leaders. It is a symbol to be proud of.

"And you other two, your travels will be not as difficult in some manners, but more so in others. You will be on horseback, and will therefore be able to carry more luggage, but know that most of what you will be given in addition to that which you already possess will be water. You will have to cross the desert. But we are not to that yet. First you will go through Hartland, a larger village not forty miles south of where we now stand. But you will make better time on horseback then on foot. Take a care not to travel to far to the east, the mountains that lie between Shiel's Desert and the Silent Seas are treacherous. This is where a waste of time is necessary. You will travel along the road to the east after Hartland, until you come to Baymount. This village lies just outside the small forest surrounding Four Pine Lake. This is where you shall refill your water, spend the night, then move on. Shiel's Desert comes after, a good sixty miles of sand and sun straight on.

"Moving straight south from the roots of the last mountains on the western desert mountains is the oasis. Be cautious when approaching this oasis though, surrounding it live the decedents of Shiel, whom the desert is named for. You will need to reach this Oasis the first day you enter the desert, you cannot, whatever you do, sleep in the desert. You will die for lack of water, and also, for the non-stop attacks of jackals and other strange creatures that live there.

"The second part of the desert is shorter. Then you must ford the river Luxum, and cross through the L'arbe Wall, into the Hidden Valley. Here is your message. This comes to you will the same warnings as the others received theirs with. Not ever under any circumstances are you to forget what this scroll says."

Back in the library Pervinca and Eggs bent over their map, studying it intensely. Suddenly Trout burst in, hair disheveled and breathing hard, with an excited glimmer in his wide eyes.

"You'll never believe what we just found!" he exclaimed.

Eggs looked up, plainly intrigued, "What?"

He just shook his head, "You'll have to see it to believe it! Come on—hurry! Sandy says he can't hold it for long,"

Eggs jumped to her feet, then glanced at Pervinca. "Go ahead, I want to keep going over this," she gestured to the map. It was probably a prank anyway. For an instant she felt bad for not warning Eggs, then figured she couldn't truly be that gullible, and if she was, she needed to learn a lesson. And she felt as though she should be alone right them, thought why she couldn't say.

The instant the door was closed behind them, she looked around the room, the hair on the back of her neck prickling. "I know you're in here somewhere," she called softly, "you can come out now..."

At first there was no answer; she wasn't sure what she had been expecting, or who, and for a moment felt foolish assuming there was another person in the room. But then a soft, kind laughter floated through the room.

"I am always here, child. I cannot show myself of my own will. But I am always here and have always been here, watching over you."

Pervinca shuddered. "What...? What are you?"

"Not what, who. And you will know when the time is right. For now, be satisfied with the claim that I live—if that is truly what it can be called—solely to protect you."

Pervinca blinked, "oh...alright then." At first, hearing the Voice in her bedroom, she had run in terror. Now a curiosity began to seep through, enough to overcome the original impulse to flee, but not quite enough to steady her voice or ease her nerves. "Why did you want them to go?" she managed after a moment.

The Voice seemed mildly annoyed, "Their loyalty to you and each other is strong, I wished to speak with you and have been attempting to get you alone all day. I had to create a mild...distraction, if you will, to finally shoo them all away."

Pervinca's eyebrows raised slightly, and she wondered if Sandy really had caught something.

The Voice was speaking again, "For generations the heir to the throne of the Makezens has been trained in the history and use of his or her abilities. Rules were made and given; harsh punishment relayed if any were broken."

Fear began to creep back into Pervinca's gaze, harsh punishment?

"I do not mean to punish you child," Pervinca sagged in relief, "but a warning I will give you. Save your strength. This power—it was not meant to be handled by a mortal's body, yet somehow your ancestors tamed it and held it. It weakened from that day onward; in some it was nothing more than a simple trick or two of lighting a fire or eavesdropping. But in you it has come back with its full strength and tenfold over. Use too much and it will consume you, and you will become nothing more than myself—a thought, a breath of wind—and thus the power will have returned to roam wild and free throughout the earth, aiding and destroying at will. You will lose yourself to it, and remember everything that was, but nothing that was you. Use too much and you will starve before you realize you are hungry. Be wary! It draws from you as much as you draw from it, and I believe you will need every bit you possess before the end."

The Voice faded away, and Pervinca was left in the silence, head spinning. You will starve before you realize you are hungry...

"Alright then," she muttered to herself, "I won't use it. Not until I have no other option. There will be no need to worry about me starving!"

Just then the library doors banged back open, and Trout's head popped in. His face was panicked.

"Hurry, Glub!" he shouted, "before Loc finds out! Eggs got him mostly bandaged and stopped the bleeding, but he's trying to get it again!"

She leapt to her feet, "Trout, slow down! What did Sandy get?"

"A baby bat—and it tried to eat his arm!"

"Eat his...Trout!" she hollered after him, but he was already halfway down the hall. "Hold on, I'm coming!" she darted out of the library and followed him to wherever the cousins were.

Sandy and Eggs were near a fistfight when the arrived—she trying to wrap his arm with a cloth, and he trying to shove her away so he could grab the baby bat again, which was hanging from the ceiling in the boys' bedroom, though how it had come to be there was anyone's guess.

Suddenly the bat blinked open it's black eyes, seemed to stare hard at them in a disapproving way, then fluttered out the open door. Sandy dropped back to a seated position on his bed, glaring at Eggs.

"And now it's gone. Nice work."

She yanked the homemade bandage off his arm and threw it at him. "That's it, I've had enough. You can do it yourself if you're going to keep getting yourself into such ridiculous predicaments. For all we know the bat might have been rabid and serves you right if you are raving mad in an hour. And when you're dead from infection in two, I'll laugh." She was fuming and started to storm out, but Pervinca caught her by the shoulder and turned her back around.

"I'll do it,"

Eggs snorted, but plopped down on Trout's bed, seeming a bit calmer. "Good luck, he'd as soon go without the arm if he could hold the bat."

Sandy glared at her, then winced when Pervinca took his arm in her hand.

"You certainly made quite a mess with this," she told him.

"Me! I'm not the one who tried to tie it down and tear it off using a—"

"Enough, Sandy. Yes, you made a mess of it, Eggs was trying to help, and you were making her job harder than it ever should be, and therefore it is your fault. Now, let me wrap it." Pervinca reached for the cloth, and suddenly froze. A liquid blast of heat seemed to flow through her, starting at her core and rushing through into her hand, out of her, and into Sandy. A spark seemed to flash in the air, and then the heat was gone, leaving Pervinca so cold she shivered.

Sandy, on the other hand, was sweating.

Pervinca swallowed hard and stumbled backwards, collapsing into a seated position on Trout's bed, trembling. Sandy scrubbed away the dried blood on his arm; the bite and scratch marks had vanished, leaving nothing but a few tiny scars.

His head raised and he looked uneasily at Pervinca, "What..." he paused to clear his throat, "what was that?"

She just shook her head, "I..." she discarded the words 'don't know', and stood weakly instead, "don't want to talk about it."

"Glub," Eggs said quietly, "we—"

"I don't want to talk about it!" she yelled, then turned and fled.

~*~*~*~

She was sprawled across her bed fast asleep when Eggs went to fetch her for dinner, so she left her there. Late in the night Pervinca awoke to find a lamp still lit and Eggs sitting up in bed, knees drawn up to her chest, watching her carefully. Pervinca closed her eyes again, then whispered, "I didn't try to. I don't know how. It just...it just happens."

Eggs simply nodded, and nothing more was said of the matter.

~*~*~*~

The next few days flew by in a flurry of hard, long hours of weaponry, followed by a little food, and then endless hours spent in the large library filled with dusty volumes and maps. Accounts of travels were poured over by the messengers, the messages were memorized, and maps as well. Finally, there came a day where Amber called them all together again in the same place where they had met originally.

"You have been deemed ready," she said quietly, and those who would take the brand of the Messengers of the Wood may. From now onward you shall enter the world of men as adults, and you shall act and speak as such. Your names are your given ones, those and those alone shall be used.

"Auora Eglantine Roper, do you take the mark of the Messengers of the Wood and swear with honor and fealty to serve the current and future Lord of the Wood in whichever way he sees fit?"

Eggs, or Auora, stammered in surprise. She had expected far less formality and certainly not a swearing-in-service. "I...yes. Yes, I swear."

A guard stepped forward and took Auora by the arm, then escorted her away. She looked startled and nervous, but a hint of prideful excitement was in her eyes as well.

"Pervinca Narolia Haolims, do you take the mark of the Messengers of the Wood and swear with honor and fealty to serve the current and future Lord of the Wood in whichever way he sees fit?"

Pervinca murmured, "I swear," and another guard stepped forward to lead her off.
Next, she called up Trout— "Camden Greenholm, do you swear?" And the, once he was led off, Sandy; "Sancho Hardwater—do you swear?"

They met together that night to show off their seals. Each person had been allowed to choose the placement of theirs, the boys had both wanted theirs on their shoulders, but had been warned against it. How would it look, stripping down before a queen and kind simply to prove authenticity? In the end they all wound up getting their seals on their forearms—except for Camden, who wanted to be different, and asked for it on his bicep. They were hardly "brands" as had been feared initially, but rather a dark red paint was globed onto the arm, and then a carved stone with the messenger brand was held against the paint until dry. The stone was a bit more than uncomfortably hot, but it didn't burn, it merely set the paint into the skin and dyed it red in the pattern of the symbol. The excess paint washed off and the mark, they were told, would fade a bit when coming in contact with water for the first few days, then it would remain for the rest of their lives. Until their limbs rotted away, the Brander had joked morbidly.

Before dawn the next morning they had all their things gathered together and were marching out of the Fort. A small crowd had gathered to see them off—a few curious children, their mothers and siblings, and what guards there were on duty in the Fort.

Once out, the boys were given their horses, and the girls walking sticks, and they set off on their way. As soon as the Fort was hidden in the trees Pervinca climbed on behind Sandy and Eggs heaved her things and then herself up behind Camden.

Sandy had complained and put up a fight—with no one really—about having to go by his given name. Sancho, he declared, was an old, unheard of, strange name that was more likely to draw attention then Sandy was. He despised the name Sancho. The other three had simply taken it in stride, knowing that their days of silly nicknames was bound to end sooner or later, it might as well be now, but Sandy had insisted that they call him Sandy, and nothing else.

"Alright Nothing-Else," Auora had snickered, "As you wish, Nothing-Else, whatever you say."
He sneered at her, then glanced at Camden, "Ignore her. She's impossible. Whatever you do, don't let her get under your skin."

Camden laughed and Pervinca shook her head, "Practice what you preach!" she told him, "And maybe you wouldn't have to worry about her annoying you so often."

But now they were off, set to take on the world and deliver their messages as true messengers, and all jokes were laid aside in the sudden weight of responsibility they were feeling. They had discarded the first part of Loc's instructions and decided to stick together longer than suggested. South of Bridgewater there was a bridge crossing the River of Hope, and south of that a little ways were crossroads; that was where they would split up at last. The boys would turn southward and take the road leading to Hartland and the girls would head north into Bridgewater.

Sandy paused and looked back once, then frowned looked again. He could have sworn he had seen a figure behind him that looked about the right size and shape to be Ponto or Porto, but when he looked again there was no one there.

It was mid-afternoon before they reached the crossroads, and the girls were groaning and glad to be off the horses and back on their own two feet; it was rough going being the second passenger. They paused for a half-hour or so, then Pervinca nodded in the direction of the road she was to take.

"We'd better get going, if we're to reach Bridgewater and get an inn before nightfall."
Auora agreed reluctantly.

"We'll be sleeping outside, chances are," Sandy added, "but no harm in getting as far as we can tonight."

There were solemn goodbyes and awkward hugs all around, then they marched off down their separate paths. 

A/N: I'm just now realizing how ridiculously long these chapters are...this one's official word count is 5608...