Writing for my lord Steward is a discipline instilled within me. I take the opportunity to do so with Amlarad out to hunt - 'and hunt what?' I asked him, 'I have seen little of beast or bird this far north'. But if any can find some trail, a hidden creature, it is him.
He pulled his hood up over his grey-flecked hair with a weary smile, while his eyes sparkled at the implied challenge. The fresh day dawned to greet him, and within a few strides, he was gone. How the land opens to receive him. It is as though it willingly takes him into itself, enfolds him so that in a blink of an eye the graceful bulk of him disappears as though there had never been a man there, just a spirit conjured by tired eyes.
I have my reports spread before me, but in truth I find it hard to write today. To dismember my actions and place them coolly upon the page. My imagination rises in me as I read old reports, my own words and actions in the past seem grey and without life. Did I write them?
The rising sun dances on the new snow, sparking like water in a fountain and my mind drifts to home. I see flashes of home - and flashes of home. With a small shock I realise that home is a high valley, the stars bright and low, the pine trees lit silver by the radiance of moon on snow. The great moon rises silent and near-full, slipping through the monochrome clouds, lighting them from within as they move swiftly, whilst the larch and struggling birches trace their branches against it. I sense the man standing beside me, as shadow-laden as myself, tipping his face up to the cool sky, entranced.
Home is there; a wild night caught in the branches of his trees, a rough jumble of pelts full of our scent, like a den of wolves.
