thinking of you

He didn't let on that they had exhausted all the other options as they continued on, instead opting to lapse into silence, unwilling to meet the rise that came with the turn of Charon's commentary. The rise of the land shifted, their scenery becoming more and more blackened as they nestled along the curve of the borders. Though time had been allowed to pass since that fire, it very well may have been as though it still smoldered there. Mordecai felt his throat constrict briefly at the overview of it all, wondering just how much worse things could have been if it had clung to the mountainsides and continued to spread.

They had been more than just unfortunate. If not for the rain, who knew what would have become of them all. Charon could have just as easily approached their borders only to find them all nothing more than charred bones and ashy husks. Anyone could have, for that matter. Meeting the rise of a steep grade, Mordecai hauled himself up with much more vigor than he thought he had, as though he had not forgotten what it was like to scale a rocky ledge. And there, he thought he found something, his pause sudden and without warning as he teetered.

Testing the air, he tried to pinpoint what it was that he had scented.