Chapter 4: Predawn

Location wilderness, White Wand Territory
Time Predawn 900 hours (6 hours before dawn)

The caravan had stopped in order to harvest the falling mana. Reluctantly Kin started to get up.

Illia eyes fluttered. She smiled as she saw him.

“I am starting to remember. Your name is Illia, and we had a friend called Maiho.”

She nodded.

He remembered that both of them had held him when he cried over missing his parents. Sometimes Maiho had cried too. Illia never did. Kin realised that Maiho would be an adult now. He tried to imagine what Maiho would look like all grown up. Illia looked very good all grown up.

“You are pretty. You shouldn’t cover your face” he said.

“Kin, lazy-bones, you be hurrying up. You be getting your arse out there. You be scouting the trees,” yelled Zav.

“I had better go. Talk to you later?” he asked.

She smiled and nodded.

Kin jumped off the shard crab wagon onto Ka. He waved to Illia and the Greens then headed out to scout around the camp.

By the time Kin had completed his first circuit the lunch tables were out even though it as a little early and foragers had collected leaves, nuts, fruit and of course mana. Kin hoped it was not tube worm soup again. He could see something simmering over fire crystals.

Zav waved Kin over. “Grab lunch while you can. We be not staying long. We cannot afford to be spending too much time harvesting mana as we be needing to be at Village of the Lonely Sceptre before dawn” said Zav.

Illia was serving food again. He noticed her hair was now tied back.

“I like your hair that way.” He commented as she served him. She gave a smile in response, and then he had to move on.

Lunch was a thickened stew with a hodgepodge of ingredients, there was night hare, tube worm and a variety of greenery fresh from the forest. He finished up quickly and returned his bowl. He was hoping to catch Illia free, so that he could spend time with her.

However she seemed busy with packing up the camp. Many of the Greens were engaged in either gathering mana, or compressing it into bricks.

Kin mounted Ka and started his circuit. By the time he looped back to the camp the caravan was leaving. Many of the Greens were looking wistfully at the falling mana. Regretting not being able to collect it. However getting caught by the rising sun was a mistake you only made once.

The falling mana brought out many night creatures. He shot two night hares and hung them from his saddle.

Shortly after mana stopped falling, the night trees started withdrawing into their tubes and the night life disappeared into their caves.

Kin spotted Illia riding one of the shard crab wagons. He pulled up beside the wagon.

“Would these be of any use to you?” asked Kin indicating the hares.

Illia nodded.

Kin tossed up the night hares. “I used to know someone who would roast hare marinated in fire fruit juice on a bed of razor grass shoots. It was delicious. You wouldn’t know anyone like that would you?” He asked.

Illia smiled and nodded.

Kin waved goodbye, pulled ahead and to the left. The night trees and the night life had disappeared from view, leaving only stone and crystal shapes of the day trees, the sleeping day life, and the occasional abandoned Artificia.

The mana clouds were parting revealing the hidden stars. There was a lightening of the sky in the direction of dawn.

Kin consulted the map Zav had given him, singing the activation sequence instead of bothering with the flute. He galloped over to Zav.

“Cutting it close, aren’t we?” Kin asked.

Zav pulled out a crystal that flashed different colours at different intervals. It was a time counter. “It should be fine.”

“Should be fine?” Asked Kin.

“We being inside the Village of the Lonely Sceptre’s day nest before dawn breaks.”

“I will hold you to that,” Kin said as he studied the Eastern sky.

The Eastern sky continued to brighten. A hot wind started to blow from the east.

Finally, the air lock of the village came into view. Zav rode up and played the activation sequence to open the outer doors of the air lock on his flute. The caravan streamed into the air lock, and Zav then closed the outer doors. As the doors slammed shut Kin let out a breath he did not know he was holding. Zav opened the inner doors and they were inside the nest.

They continued down the main thoroughfare, and instead of stopping at the uncomfortably hot foreign quarter they continued on to the cooler, deeper sections of the nest. The caravan pulled into one of the empty compounds and the wagons arranged themselves around the compound.