Blackfeather Woods praying for the faithless

Somewhere near Namira's Mire

There were signs everywhere of the change in the season: the deepening of color in the leaves of some trees, the blanket of the forest floor by those that had already dried out and been discarded, and the shifting of the weather towards something more melancholy. Mou couldn't see the sky very well from deep within the woods, but he did not need to. He could see the graying of the light and feel the coming of the rain clouds in his very bones — this morning he woke to the sensation of his hips aching. That was a clear sign that there was a storm on its way.

He was groggy from sleep as he sat up, got his feet, and stretched. About five minutes later he paused in his morning routine because he realized something else — his hips hurt. Okay, yeah, we've gone over that already, but this was important. His hips hurt, and after flexing his legs and popping the joints, Mou was staring down at himself as if he'd just sprouted a new set of limbs. The pins-and-needles feelings in his lower back were gone; he could feel his hips. They hurt.

He was grinning like an idiot as he tested his weight on his slender legs, and while they still tired very quickly they did not quake nearly as much. Maybe he'd just had a really good sleep, and everything would be in shambles by that afternoon — but for now he was filled with an inexact amount of glee, and decided to scout out parts of the territory he hadn't visited before, heading due east through the shadows.