Exile

by Forceful Will

Trail

Jinx opened his eyes in the sunlight. He raised his head from the ground to look up at the sun shining from directly above—it was noon. He looked at the surrounding campsite. Just as there had been no evidence of the fungus the first time Jinx had woken up in the riverlands, there was nothing here either. He ate a quick meal of his dried supplies—there was no way he was going to eat any more plants that had been covered in spores overnight. Jinx paced around the cleared space looking for evidence of where whoever had made it had gone and come from. There were two sets of tracks leading into the space from one direction, but three sets coming out the opposite end. Jinx had no clue what that could mean.

Jinx had three useful choices. He could head due north and try to get out of the riverlands before night, he could try to trace back along the trail in whatever direction the two sets of tracks came from, or he could follow the three sets. Presumably, whoever had made this clearing had forged a safe path into the riverlands from wherever they were from, so Jinx should be able to work backwards using their trail to find more old campsites. But there were no guarantees that older sites were still protected enough from the fungi. If he followed their trail he should be able to reach newer sites and possibly even catch up to them. Deciding to follow the outgoing trail, even if it was leading southwest, Jinx packed his bags and set out.

The trail was not only easy to follow, but easy to walk. The zebras who had made it weren’t just traveling as Jinx had; they were blazing a trail. The strangest thing about the trail was that at least half the time, one of the sets of hoofprints disappeared. Sometimes there would be two sets again, but the third didn’t walk out of the trail, the prints just vanished only to reappear briefly further down the path before vanishing again just as suddenly. Jinx paused to study one point where the tracks rejoined the others and noticed how the first set of impressions was noticeably deeper than the rest, as though the zebra had jumped; but that didn’t make any sense: it wasn’t possible for zebras to fly.

Just as the sun began to set, Jinx reached another clearing, this time situated next to a brook. The trail continued on the opposite end of the water, but Jinx resolved to wait the night in this one. Hopefully not getting a face-full of spores would allow him to rise in the morning tomorrow and he would be able to cover more ground. He settled himself in the center of the circle and fell asleep.

It was sunrise when Jinx woke this time, and that made him smile. He couldn’t say why, but he had a feeling that today would be a good day. He ate quickly and drank his fill of the brook’s water before wading through the shallow water. His steps light, Jinx managed a quick pace until after noon, when he paused for lunch. He was surprised that he hadn’t run into another clearing at this point, but as long as he found one before dark he wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t as if they would have suddenly stopped needing them after the last one.

Comments

[Regidar]

A filler chapter, but it was nice. LET'S GET TO THE ACTION, DAMMIT!