Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-seven

“That’s pretty!” Murunel exclaimed as they looked down the cliff to the glittering lake below.

“It really is.” Kay agreed quietly.

When the forest had finally ended, the land started to rise as they traveled. After passing through a very hilly area, the group of three had found a valley sloping downward. Kay had decided that they’d go up to get a better view of the area before deciding whether or not to go down into the valley itself.

Eleniah leaned forward as she looked down. “That looks like a good place to make a base. The lake’s a good source of water, I bet, the trees over there and that mountain,” She pointed into the distance across the lake, “Will make it easy to get resources we need.”

“Are you planning on having us settle here?”

“I mean, we could if we wanted to, but I was just planning on making us a base for a couple of years.”

“A couple of years?”

She looked at him with confusion in her eyes. Slowly understanding dawned. “Oh. Kay, you’re going to live hundreds of years longer than you would have on your homeworld, as long as nothing kills you. A few years living in the wilds to train you up and get you some experience isn’t that long now.”

“I...”

Her smile was small. “There’s a lot more time in the world now, at least from your perspective.”

Kay stared down into the valley, his thoughts running a marathon. “I need... I need some time to process that.”

“Yeah.” Eleniah looked slightly guilty, “Sorry, that’s something most people just, well they just know it. I forgot you wouldn’t.”

“It’s fine.” He waved her off. “I’ll think about it for a bit.” He retreated back to a safer topic, “We climbed up here and took a good look around. There’s nothing down in the valley that I’m too worried about, and I can’t think of a good reason to stay up here on the side of the mountain right now. Anything I’m not thinking of, or should we just head down?”

“There are all kinds of reasons to explore mountains,” Murunel replied, “But I don’t think we’re prepared for it at the moment.”

“Alright, down into the valley it is.”

It had taken them most of a day to climb up to that point, so they found a good spot to set up camp. Eleniah decided that his punishment for failing to locate her before she ambushed him and sometimes for not reacting to her attacks adequately was to do all the camp chores by himself. So he set up camp by himself, tore it down in the mornings, cooked, cleaned, all of it by himself. It was an effective punishment to him since it was annoying as all hell to do all that work with no help.

He handed Eleniah her portion of the simple meal he’d made out of some small game they’d hunted on the way up the mountainside.

“Thanks.” She stared at him as she took a bite.

He ignored her for the moment as he started in on his dish. He slowly chewed as he thought over the topic he’d been avoiding while he worked. “I’m going to live a lot longer than I was going to before all this.”

“Right.”

“Leave me alone while I pack everything up!”

“No, it makes your punishment that much worse.” She laughed again when he glared at her. “Don’t be mad, you’ve only got what, ten more days backed up? You’ve been doing well recently. Pretty soon, we’ll have you all trained up properly.”

He grumbled as he continued to clean up, and they made their way back down towards the valley as the sun rose in front of them. They paused and watched the sun soar into the air in a beautiful and glorious display.

“We need to do that again.”

“Yeah.”

They continued on after the show ended and made their way into the valley proper. Kay didn’t really have anything back on Earth to compare it to. The valley itself was oval-shaped, with the lake taking up a large portion of the northern edge. The rest of the northern part was wooded, with the edges of the valley making a softer bowl shape compared to the sides that made it hard, difficult to climb walls in their own ways. The western side was the mountain they had climbed part of the way up, with some difficulty, while the eastern and southern sides were... plateaus? They were flat, and the valley went down and then came back up. Maybe they were just... ground? Kay wasn’t bad at geography; he was actually pretty good at it, which was part of his interest in making maps, whether that became a class for him or not. But he wasn’t really sure what the correct terminology here was. Either way, the northern and southern sides had gentler slopes, the eastern side was basically a cliff, and the western side was a mountain. If you came at the mountain from the side, it wasn’t that difficult to make your way up and around a bit, but coming straight up from the bottom of the valley would be an exercise in high-level rock climbing.

Getting into the valley was easier than getting above it since there was a path down into it, formed by various animals and monsters wanting to get to the water most likely.

They made good time to the valley’s floor, and they decided to look in the northeastern side for a good location first. Eleniah hoped to find a good spot to use the cliff as a natural wall to their backs.

As they walked, Kay glanced around the valley, a frown forming over his face.

“What’s wrong?” Murunel asked, looking up at him from around his neck.

“This valley is triggering my instincts somehow.”

Eleniah glanced back at him from the small boulder she was climbing. “In a ‘there’s danger’ way?”

“No, in a ‘something is weird’ way.” He turned to look at the eastern cliff. “I feel like something about it isn’t natural. Like valleys aren’t supposed to be like this.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But it’s bugging me.”

“Well, maybe you’re wrong. Or maybe there’s a magical explanation.”

Kay opened his mouth to complain about that idea, then stopped. There really wasn’t anything saying there couldn’t be a magical explanation. For all he knew, lots of geographical formations could be magically based here on Torotia.

“Don’t worry too much about it for now. We can always look into it later.”

He shrugged in agreement and started going around the boulder. “Why did you climb up there?”

“It’s fun!”