Moonlight bathed Efa's face as she slowed her horse from a gallop to a canter then continued on at a trot. It had been an hour since she galloped out of Cayrnr. The girl and her horse had made it out onto a flat pasture with trees and woodland in the distance. The grass under her feet shifted quietly whenever a passing breeze blew by. 

 The sun had set in its fullest. Galaxies of stars were visible in the night sky, appearing like a splendiferous tapestry woven out of light and space dust. Her eyes were glued to the sky. At a distance behind her, the sky above Cayrnr was a visibly red gradient. The fire hadn't been put out yet. Efa felt ashamed that she had abandoned her town. Actually Efa felt a lot of things. She had seen a lot of things. But her mind was too numb to process it. It wasn't just her mind either.

Her body ached from being thrown against that wall, and the gash on her head had bled a lot too. Speaking of blood, her shirt was still drenched in dried blood. She had just gotten used to the smell by now. It was not a pleasant ride. Hurting her the most however, was her wrist. It was even swollen slightly. The fireball she had projected seemed to have damaged her worse than she had initially thought. When a few hundred more yards had been covered, it got hard to even hold the rein without her wrist pain spiking up. Rest. . . rest might be good. 

The trees in the distance got closer and closer until eventually Efa wasn't even fully conscious on the saddle. Fatigue racked her starved body. She was about to fall off when Doyle who had been following along behind made a landing on Efa's head. 

"Don't sleep Efa," he cawed abysmally, "you'll fall if you sleep on saddle."

Making as if to shoo the bird off herself, she raised her right hand on accident and immediately felt the backlash as her entire arm began to throb with a pain from her wrist. It was akin to being impaled by a sword.  Ah shit, I need to stop. . .

She had almost reached the treeline when her body gave way and she tumbled off the saddle and onto the grass of the ground below. With nothing left, she began to crawl towards the trees, desperately, pathetically. Halfway through she gave up, flipping onto her back so that she could at least die facing the stars. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the horse's curious face peering over her own. 

Her nightmares that night were vivid. There was blood. A lot of blood. Decapitated heads of all the people she knew rolled around on a giant horse, while from out the horse's mouth caterpillars crawled. Crows appeared from the decapitated heads and ate the caterpillars in a swift motion. Then suddenly another scene where she felt as if her essence was being painted onto a canvas, the brush was long and luxurious, the paints, mild and colorful. Her abnormal dream came to an abrupt end as the sensation of being painted on a canvas faded in and out with reality. She awoke screaming, afraid of the fact that she was a paint on an palette. 

Reality however, did not govern the laws of randomly turning into paint. She swung her head around and took in her situation. 

Her horse was laying on the ground, asleep by the looks of it, and she had been snuggled up against it. Even as she watched, the horse's tail came swooshing onto her. I thought that a tail was a paint brush huh. . . dreams are weird.

standing up and stretching revealed that they were about thirty yards into the forest. 

"By the devil did you drag me all the way here," she asked the sleeping horse, who gave a sort of half snort in way of response. She smiled for the first time proper since going to Pagnodd's house the day before. She knelt and wrapped her arms around the horse's neck and stayed there for a while. She needed the big warm animal. 

It was a large draft horse, a mare too. Efa didn't get to examine her properly owing to the sudden dash away from Cayrnr. She had a beautiful black coat that almost shone in the sunlight. On her face was a white marking that went from the middle of her head to her muzzle, and her feathered hooves were white up to mid cannon.

"A shire huh. . . " she wondered, loud enough for the horse to hear her.

The shire in question neighed loudly and stood up to its full height, with Efa still hanging onto her neck. she turned her head to look at Efa. Her eyes gazed into the girl's. Eyes that were full of mischief. She whinnied loudly, laughing at the girl who was hanging on to her neck. 

"Set me down damnit," Efa ordered. She smiled happily as the horse went down on one knee to let her off. "You're a mischievous little shit, aren't you?" She smirked and patted the shire on the neck. "Thank you," she said, eyeing the black coat and the twinkle in her eye. 

"Raven. I'm going to call you Raven." She turned expectantly to the horse who nickered and nudged Efa with her nose. Taking it as a sign of acknowledgement, she left the horse to graze and walked a bit deeper into the woods.

Overhead, the canopy was quite spaced out, with large openings through which sunlight streamed into the underbrush. It didn't seem that dense. There were quite a varied selection of trees from Efa's perspective, with many fallen trunks and jutting rocks littering the forest floor, which itself was covered by grass. A few bushes sprouted here and there while the wind whistled through the forest. cool and relaxing. Even through all that had happened, Efa felt slightly at ease.

With her mind calmed and her body slightly more relaxed than the night before; though her wrist was still quite sprained, she decided on a course of action. Essentials first, mission later. Without question the first thing she needed was to sort out however, was her blood-soaked shirt. After meandering around the forest for bit, she came upon a decently secluded spot.

It was a tall tree, almost two hundred and thirty feet from root to apex, that was sort of surrounded by small cairns, boulders and bushes. To be safe she whistled and Raven came quite obediently and started sniffing around her makeshift camp. She took off her satchel and dropped it near the base of the tree and glanced through the forest. She was assured at this point that there was no one in the forest with her and quite frankly nonplussed if anyone were to see her naked. 

She stripped off her shirt as fast as she could without ripping it and hung it up on a low hanging branch. A gust of cold wind breezed through the forest rustling leaves and bushes. Efa shivered at the cold air against her bare skin. She had on a linen brassiere, she had worn it more so because the nuns at the orphanage had told her to; something about being a 'young lady'. Regardless, she wasn't exactly well developed, Alyaeh had teased her about it quite a bit, which had been rather hurtful at the time. The orphanage didn't exactly starve the children, but they didn't treat them to a banquet every single night either. She was quite malnourished and as a result wasn't exactly 'voluptuous'. She had jumped for joy every time she noticed even a slight bit of growth. Since her trousers weren't in any immediate trouble, she left them on and decided on what to do about the blood on the shirt. 

Water would have worked but out of the seven spells she knew, none of them covered anything water related. She thought of trying to find an actual water source but that seemed rather time-consuming. The spell book! She had forgotten about that. Bending down to the satchel, Efa dug around in it frantically. All her things were still there, neatly packed like she had done. . . some two nights ago. Upon discovery of the spell book, she dropped to the ground and started riffling through the pages. 

About midway through the book she came upon a water spell. Gwlychu. It seemed straight forward enough. A few minutes were spent trying to cast it with her left hand due to her right hand, which was her casting hand, being sprained. She got it at last without much incident and started blasting it off at her shirt. It caused a decent sized shape of water to splatter onto the intended target. 

 After drenching the shirt entirely in water, she left it on the branch so that the blood would seep out on its own. Due to the convenience of the clearing she was in, Efa decided to set up a sort of camp. She also caught sight of Raven's saddlebags which she hadn't opened. Sorting through them revealed a folded up cloak, some bread, a canteen of water and the thing that caught Efa's attention, a dagger. Keen on both edges, it was relatively small but it's blade was honed to a deadly edge. Considering the saddlebags a Godsend, the girl set about building a campfire and sorting out her inventory and maps.

The day raced soon into the night. Under the protection of another moonlit night, Efa's campfire blazed on strongly as she studied a map of the area. She had had a productive day. By using Doyle she had managed to scavenge for berries and fruits that were edible, he had sniffed them and relayed whether or not they were poisonous. The edible ones she had collected and stored them in Raven's saddlebags.

On the other hand, thinking ahead, she had used the berries which Doyle did confirm were poisonous by grinding them on a stone and mixing them together with a few drops of water in a bowl shaped log she had found. She had then proceeded to apply this sludge to the dagger she had found. Which, incidentally fit into her concealed knife strap on her boot. 

After sorting out the knife situation, she had flipped through her spell book and tried finding the incantations she already knew and studied up on them. She went through the lledrith users book as well but no where was it mentioned however, about the stockpiling of same syntax incantations in a single hand like she had done for llosgi. A considerable part of the day had been spent on the two books and the knowledge they imparted. 

She had kept herself busy so as to not dwell too much on the sadness. It certainly worked, as when she pulled down her now-clean-shirt, it was with a wide grin on her face. She had decided to add the cloak she had found to her apparel. It flowed down to just below her waistline and it had a hood which was an added bonus. 

As she studied the maps, Doyle was sleeping on a nearby branch. Raven was laying down near Efa. All was quiet, peace was prevalent and for once it actually stayed that way for a change. Efa had managed to more or less figure out her position by using Doyle as a scout. He identified the landmarks and Efa put it all together. Currently they were in a grassy plain intermixed occasionally with forests and shrubs. According to the map, some five leagues to their north was a small town. Having nothing to go off on besides a map, Efa plotted a course to the town. 

Wide was the yawn she emitted halfway through packing up her maps. Raven looked over at her with accusatory eyes and snorted. Efa smiled. She wanted to sleep early. The faster they reached The unnamed town, the faster they could restructure the travel plan. The girl was brimming with confidence. The day had gone smoothly. She only hoped that tomorrow would as well. 

She set her satchel next to her and curled up next to Raven who was laying with her back to the tree, her hands were in draw distance of her boot knife, she had instructed Doyle to wake her if anyone was to approach and with all these measures in affect, she hoped she could get a good nights rest as her eyes wandered once more to the woven tapestry of the stars. 

The moon smiled down upon the young girl as a quiet breeze whistled through the forest.