A dribble of grease sizzled down Asters chin as he thrust a dagger full of pork into his mouth. Wafting scents of meat and herbs, honey and beer, and a medley of other delightful smells drifted through the dusty air. 

Hunching over a makeshift table, Aster let his eyes drift over the sea of bodies that filled the town. Huge Elderwood tables sat in a square around the stone pavilion in the center of the city with rows of workbench tables like the one he sat at assembled around them. Moonwalkers, still donned in the dull metal of their armor, sat or wandered around the inner tables - tables of high honor as they appeared. Around and beside them sat Endel and his officers, characterized as a vastness of white wolf pelt in contrast to the black of the moonwalker's garb. 

Eerie, he shivered, that the sun reflects nothing off their plate. 

He shook his head and turned back to the slab of dirty wood that held a heap of roast pork. 

"Keep eating," Canth suggested from beside him. "The meat's good. And the mead," he starred into a wooden flask beside him where a thick brown brew sloshed, "well - it's better than the dishwater at Ton's."

Aster licked a bead of hot grease from his steel. "I've lost much of my appetite." 

The smaller boy shook his head. "You will be hard pressed to find a meal like this again soon. Word has it Emereld ordered the fat sows from the south pastures butchered for the guests." He looked over his nearly empty plate. "Then again, our sup is probably some would-be shepherds crippled sow, but meat is meat." 

Aster was silent. 

"Look on the bright side," Canth insisted, "you joined the Watch so you might go into the woods. You finally can and -" he hesitated. "Well, you'll have a way out after its over." 

Dropping his dagger, Aster slowly turned to Canth. "You mean because I'll be dead?" 

"You - you don't know that for certain. We have no idea what awaits. It might be that a hundred and ninety nine axes beside you are able to turn any foul beast."

"You're right." At least I'm still alive, he considered. It had been a surprise when the Watchmen turned him and Castleia loose to the feast, but he supposed there was not much of anywhere for them to run. "If you'll excuse me," he pushed his bench back, "I'll go see to it that at least my ax is a fair bit sharper." 

Canth nodded a goodbye, snitching some strands of meat from his now-absent friend's plate. 

Arcath was as dead as the pigs sizzling in its square. Those with curiosity to see the moonwalker's or a stomach for orast had already made their way to the square. Those who feared or were unsettled by the elves' presence had already made themselves scarce. 

Pacing down the cobblestone side-road, Aster stopped by Ton's tavern to retrieve  his weapon. The innkeeper was absent. No doubt filling himself on the city's pork, he mused. A picture of the short, dim man chin deep in a pile of sizzling meat brought a ghost of a smile to his lips. 

A thin layer of water sloshed incompletely under his feet as he descended through the sweeping lowroad. Spring had brought more than wolf packs - rains seeped into the lower streets, filling the drainless mud and stone dikes like canals. Thankfully it had been a drier than normal spring, making the wild animals wilder but the water a bit tamer. 

He followed the path until it skirted the city's outer wall. Snippets of conversation occasionally drifted to his ear from bored Watchmen unlucky enough to draw the midday shift on the Wall. 

The West gate was a fair deal smaller than the North, its mouth wide and low with the metal portcullis biting into the stones below. Two Watchmen manned the post, idling on either side. 

"Who's this?" barked one. He slung his ax from where he had been leaning to rest it on his shoulder. 

"Aster of the Watch," the boy answered stiffly. 

"Of the Watch?" the second man cackled between absent teeth. "Mine ear whispers that one by that name was clacked up in the Strongfast, he was." 

"Just so," Aster uttered. "My sentence is to be executed in the wood." 

"Executed it will be," the first spat. "And you with it, shall the stars decree. What business have you outside the wall?"

"Only to walk beyond the dust of the city's streets. And try my blade at a few trunks before we lose the light of day." 

"Aye, it's been a filthy grey sky today," the toothless Watchmen nodded. "What say you, Poligar? We've no orders to keep anyone out." 

"My current freedom is testament enough to the truth of my words."

The first Watchman scowled. "Unless you've won your freedom by cunning rather than the Captain's command."

"Eh, we've heard no horns nor received no orders. Let him by," the second insisted. 

Poligar hesitated for only another moment. "Aye, alright then." His hand shifted his ax to its comrade while he drew a ring of keys from a belt at his waist. Going to the portcullis, he unlocked a small section of bar that formed a miniature door within the greater gate. After jamming a key into the box of the gate's lock, he pushed the small barred door open and nodded to Aster.

"Alright then, have your way of it. But be back by sundown or you'll find yourself within the Wood several days before the rest of the company."

Aster nodded wordlessly. He ducked through the small hole and did not look back as he heard the clamor of iron closing behind him. 

Tall reeds of grass grew undisturbed outside the Wall. The rampart's boulders cast long shadows over the grass despite the noonday, painting the tranquil blades a color dark enough to match the heavy clouds above. Not a quarter mile from the end of the wall's shadow stood a different sort of wall. This of timber, Aster could just make out huge tree trunks that stood like columns at the edge of Astfall. Huge swaths of murky green leaves blanketed their branches. 

He stopped and took a deep breath, savoring the sweetness of the spring air. It was not common that he left the confines of the city - a fact I'll likely regret, he mused. The curses that descended on the city in the dark corrupted many folks' thought of leaving it during the day. As if to protest its reputation, the woods sung with tweeting birds and the music of bugs and frogs.

One footstep led to another as he walked toward the looming forest. Every trunk and branch grew with his approach. The curling grain of their bark contorted like chinks of armor growing from the softness of the midday. Each tree morphed from a tall, stout column into a vast spider with crawling branches that hung maliciously over the battered ground. Even the beauty of the green leaves were faded in the shadowy swath until they became only a canopy of black. The sweetness of the air choked under the heavy scent of must and mildew wafting from a layer of decomposing leaves on the ground. 

He let his ax drop beside one of the huge trunks. Following it, he plopped to the ground cross-legged and stared deeper into the trees. 

It was hardly a welcoming view. 

The timbers grew closer together beyond Astfall's edge until there was scant room to slip between the colossal pillars of tree trunk. Not much farther, a curtain of dark hung from their branches, holding out the scant sunlight with a shield of foliage. 

He twisted his fingers through the small blades of green grass that defied the shade of the trees. They were vibrant if small and the softness of their shoots felt good against his hand. 

He sat there for some time. At one point he took a whetstone from a pouch on his belt and scraped it across the slant of his ax blade. He could remember when he was small and the rasping of his uncle's whetstone had set his ears scratching with discomfort. Now the sight of tiny metal shavings and the hiss of the metal and stone was nearly as relaxing as the sound of nature around him. 

On one pass with his stone, another sensation abruptly set his muscles tense.  Carefully replacing the tool, his fingers wrapped around his weapon's handle. 

Something had changed. He closed his eyes trying to single it out. The birds continued to chirp, though at perhaps a different tone. The air remained still and slightly humid. The sun still hid behind a veil of clouds and a blanket of leaves. 

Finally he simply shook his head and smiled as he felt the coarse bark of the tree on his head. 

Opening his eyes, he started. 

A girl stood no more than five feet away. She was tall and slight with long, auburn hair that fell slightly past her chest. Two narrow eyes studied him intently from a pale face that looked even younger than Castleia. 

Most telling of her appearance was the midnight black bracers that clad her right arm and upper legs. He realized the sharp ears and slender features of an elf likely hid beneath her fair hair. A mottled green cloak covered her. 

Aster scampered to his feet, fumbling for his ax. "Who are you?" 

She tilted her head, eyes still examining his face intently. 

He blinked waiting, but she remained wordless. 

"Who - who are you?" he asked again, raising his ax defensively. 

The elf smiled slightly. Her small hand slipped beneath her cloak, clenching something beneath her robe.

"Are you going for a blade?" His voice was shakier than he would have liked, but something about the girl's cavernous eyes made him shake. It was as though he was looking a two beautiful pieces of glass just cloudy enough to hide a vault of thoughts 

"Aren't you?" she finally replied.

Her voice was cool and perfectly calm as though the air between them obeyed it rather than displaced by it.

Aster glanced at his weapon. "I suppose. But I wasn't the one who snuck up on the other."

The girl made a strange expression – he expected it would have looked like she crinkled her nose if her face was not so fair. "I was here long prior to you."

It was Aster's turn to make a face. "When? Where?" He looked to either side without knowing what he was looking for, which made the moonwalker laugh lightly.

Her voice fluttered for another breath. "It is a strange people that do not look for something when it is right before their eyes yet search for it when they know it gone."

"Who are you?"

"You've asked me that already," she said.

"But..." He hesitated. "But you didn't answer."

"And you believe I now will?"

Aster searched for words until the girl began to laugh again.

"I tell you this, wolf-warrior," she said at last. One of her fingers drummed lightly against her lips. "What is a name of your people? Sarah, no?" He nodded and she smiled. "There, then I am Sarah." 

"Where are you from?" He could not say where the words came from, but he could hardly take them back.

He expected her to laugh again but instead her glassy eyes clouded. "A good question. You call us moonwalkers, no?" She breathed so softly Aster thought it might have been a sigh. "Perhaps we truly are. The heavens are as near as my home." Her hand left her cloak to touch a trunk beside her. Pale fingers traced the cracks of the grain and the stiff armor of the dark brown bark. "This wood reminds me of one I left many seasons ago. It is no doubt a fair many years younger but feels as ancient and beautiful as I remember of home."

"Surely there are many between here and there?"

Stardaughter's eyes searched his face again. "You have not left this land in quite some time."

It was a statement rather than a question, but he nodded anyway. "Never, to be truthful. It has been a long while since we got any proper visitors – five years at least. The last man to have left Arcath's land and return was easily four times as long ago."

"A shame," she murmured. "There are many fair realms outside of this."

"Fair and peaceful?"

Her eyes traced the height of the tree sadly. "Not for us."

"Are you anxious then to enter Astfall on the morrow?"

"Quite. And you? Will an axman such as yourself be joining us?"

"Aye," he muttered. "And another ninety-nine like me."

"But you do not share my eagerness?"

He shrugged. "The condition for my entrance is far less hopeful than yours." Sarah began to open her mouth to question so he hurried to continue. "Still, a curiosity within me will be satisfied."

Her slender eyebrow arched. "What curiosity might that be?"

Aster realized he still held his ax. Lowering the weapon, he leaned against it. "My uncle was a captain of the Watch and ranger in his day. The only family I had. Five years back he led a small company, five or six men perhaps, into Astfall." He paused. "Neither he nor any of his men were seen again."

"And you want revenge," Sarah concluded.

He shrugged. "Answers, revenge." He shrugged again. "Closure at the least."

She smiled in the small, sad way she had. "Then I hope you find it, wolf-warrior."

"And you – I hope you find a new home if every realm till here has so cruelly robbed you of it."

"Robbed us," she mused. "Yes, that may describe it. But, as so many things in this life, perhaps there is more to it."

"I'm sorry?" There was some sort of meaning in her tone but her words failed to express it. It was as though she wrote in a frantic language he could not decipher. 

"Pay me no mind. Perhaps we should pay better mind to the sun and stars? The former dies and the latter threaten to come out if we do not move."

Aster looked up through the leaves as best he could and saw she was right. The sun had dipped low and the moon was peeking through a gap in the clouds.

"Alas, the spring does suffers shorter days. Until the morrow then," she nodded at Aster.

"Goodnight," he called. The words were scarcely fast enough to chase after her fleet feet. Her cloak billowed behind her slight form until she was lost in the trees.

He turned back toward the city and wrapped his knuckles on the tree beside him. It called back in a muffled tone that made him smile. Timber, that is all. Wolves and timber.

Aster slung his ax over his shoulder and made his way through the trees, the weight of the wood as distinct as the ax on his shoulder