Little Goat Mountain Was it love or fear of the cold that led us through the night?

He did as he said; he found some things to feed the girl and the elder, and once they were squared away within the woods, he set off again. This time Glaukos sought one of the misshapen mountain passes he had spied on his patrols of the forest. Within a day he was halfway up the cliffside, growing accustomed to the work of mountaineering again, and after two nights he was able to look down in to the valley from on high, seeing the forest as it rose in black spires from the mist below.

After a moment, he carried on. The pair he had left behind would fare well enough within the confines of that place, he told himself. He need not worry for them now, or expend any further thought. Their arrangement had met his end and Glaukos wanted only to be home again.

The mountain wasn't one he knew. As he meandered to higher reaches and further among the range, the dreariness of the clouds gave way to rain, and Glaukos was slowly soaked through. He didn't care much for shelter as he went, and so he was a mess of wet tangles by the time the rain eased off.