Twisted Slough I'm going back to 505

maybe an @Ines?

As a compass is drawn to north, so too was Matteo drawn to the hinterlands.

He still had a lot to learn adjusting to life at the ocean's edge. There was plenty of new fish to catch, new birds to watch and new faces to see. In time he would pluck up the courage to seek out the plateau's inhabitants and introduce himself, but for now it all felt a little... too much. 

That morning the sunrise saw the raven boy slip from his temporary den and head south to where he knew the isle lay. Yet, as was an easy mistake to make for a young traveller, one wrong turn led to another and soon he stood at the edge of a vast and tangled swamp. 

This was the way, right? With an ever-growing feeling that something somewhere had gone wrong, he began to pick his way clumsily through the ice-crusted maze until his belly was slick with mud and his eyes were glazed with exhaustion.