Chap. 30
The Lore In Limbo
Mraan waited impatiently for his father to waken. He himself had slept badly, so great was his fear that their discovery by the enemy was imminent. He had finally given up on sleep an hour or so earlier, when his fear became compounded by the sense that something, perhaps everything, was wrong.
The previous afternoon, Haloch had tried to assure his son that the enemy was not so very near; that the trees were not, in fact, dying, but that it was natural for their leaves to turn brown and fall off; for the grass to turn yellow, for the birds to depart in flocks, and for the world in general to change.
Regardless, to Mraan’s eyes, the world itself looked as though it was mortally stricken by some blight, and would never appear green and hale again.
The small shed, though it had sheltered them from last night’s storm, seemed an ominously conspicuous place for them to stay, as it was the only standing structure for miles around, and would undoubtedly provoke inspection were the enemy to come across it. Indeed, it felt as though safety itself were a thing of the past, that the world around them had become unstable, untrustworthy, uncaring, unreadable, and treacherous.
Last night, Haloch had made a strange remark concerning just that observation. The world was not a safer place before. It only seemed safe to us because we had imposed our will upon it, to the woe of our fellow Faerie creatures.