Great Bear Wilderness pale touch

Predawn light lit the sky by the time he had left Moonspear behind him proper, and a low fog lingered in the fields where the forests no longer reached. Here the flood water had receded, leaving behind its detritus. It was a strewn mess that tangled with still tall stalks and grasses already bleached by waning light and falling temperatures. The season had changed and he wondered if it would be for the better—rather, he hoped it would be for the better.

It had been a quiet stretch of days since the most recent events along their borderland; his venturing out seemed a bit of a gamble but the necessity overrode it. He had longed to stretch his legs, knowing all too well that snows would blanket the mountain long before the valleys, and not much longer after that he knew they would stretch as far as the eye was willing to see. So he followed a muddied deer trail with no particular interest in the hunt as he did to see where it went; the fog would obscure them as it would he, and as it would from any company wanted or not.

A bird called off in the distance, and the world was tranquil.