We were sitting in our little row boat, and eventually it was discovered that Dogboy (his real name, it appears, is Johnethry, but I still think of him as Dogboy and Dogboy he will remain) had done some sailing at some point in his life. He was able to rig a makeshift sail and off we went, following the Sunset Empires towards wherever it was that we were going. I wanted to go in a different direction, but no one else agreed with me, and I suppose from a strictly practical point of view, they were right, but still!

Nothing interesting happened for quite a while after this; mostly, all I was able to do was rest and amuse myself by listening to Haley snoring. But eventually, we found ourselves approaching a storm front, and even though I'd been complaining bitterly of boredom earlier, I would gladly have gone back to being bored rather than going through the ordeal that followed!

Being bright types, we took our sail down as the wind and waves started picking up, and in order to help keep us from having to bail as much, we covered the boat as best we could with our blankets. But all our precautions were for nothing, as we later discovered. First, we got lost in the spray and pouring rain (it was amazingly hard to see!), and then, just when we thought we were saved because we saw a ship in the storm, we were able to read the name: it was the Relentless! For those of you who don't know, the Relentless is some ghost ship, the appearance of which, according to Haley, is a guarantee of a shipwreck or whatnot. While I find such superstitions laughable, I have to admit that, this time at least, it was accurate!

You see, we didn't go much farther before we caught up with the Sunset Empires just in time to watch it run aground. Alerted to the dangers, we were trying to brace ourselves, but just then, a large wave knocked Haley and Leighla overboard! Leighla was able to grab an oar and scramble back in, fortunately, but poor Haley wasn't as lucky. I was just getting ready to try to save her, even though I don't know how to swim, when the bottom of the wave dropped out and we bashed into a huge rock! I was thrown overboard, and the last thing I remember is thinking how miserable of a way of dying drowning is...

When I came to, I had washed up on the shore of some island. Imagine my relief when I found the others there as well! By some miracle, we had all survived! Not without injuries or losses (I, for example, had lost a large number of my possessions, and one of Dogboy's dogs was nowhere to be found), but we survived. Of course, I was a little worried about Leighla at first, as she seems to have confused me with her mother (what are the chances of that?!? Her mother must obviously have been a talented, wonderful, gorgeous, amazing elfess, just like me!), but she soon showed that she was more or less herself.

The truly unfortunate thing about our situation was that some of the sailors from the Sunset Empires had also washed up here. The ship itself was out a ways, but they told some obviously exaggerated tale about a giant squid, and refused to go back to the ship for supplies. This was very unfortunate, since Liss' pendant had washed off and was over by the ship as well. But there wasn't anything we could do, so while the sailors worked on constructing shelter for the night, Leighla and I went hunting, and Haley and the rest did their best to retrieve Liss' pendant. Of course, given that Haley had become our captain (well, the sailors obviously weren't suited for it, and Leighla and I didn't want to, so I just saved Haley the trouble of volunteering by electing her; hopefully she doesn't mind!), I'm not sure why she didn't make someone else do it, but oh well...

Haley and the others apparently had some strange and deadly encounter with this giant squid thingy, but aside from the fact that all of them were injured when they made it back to shore, I didn't pay too much attention. After all, Leighla and I had an interesting encounter of our own.

There was, you see, a thing following us. I guess it must have been humanoid, but we couldn't really tell. Finally, we decided to try to flank it, and it immediately started running away; all I could really tell was that it had on what looked like a nifty cloak and that it ran on two feet. I pursued cautiously, while Leighla, enthusiastic as always, alternately wasted arrows shooting at it and sprinted after it. This turned out to be a bad move, as I had half anticipated, when she ran across a trip wire and managed to drop the larger portion of a tree trunk onto herself. Fortunately, she wasn't smushed completely, but getting her out from underneath the huge log took enough time that we weren't able to catch up to whatever it was we were chasing.

Not to be discouraged, we headed back towards camp, and next thing you know, we stumbled across a pair of deer! I wanted to confer with Leighla long enough to suggest that she shoot one and I shoot the other, to make sure we'd get them both, but she just glared at me and then fired at both of them. Of course, one of the two went down and the other was wounded but able to run away. Leighla left me with the dead one and tracked down the other, bringing it back after about half an hour or so. She then proceeded to do all sorts of barbaric things to the poor animals, cutting into their stomachs and making a huge mess and it was so totally gross! Yuck!

We brought the venison back to camp, where we had dinner, and aside from Leighla teasing me mercilessly ("do you want me to make you a bowstring out of these intestines, Jen? How about a wineskin from this kidney?"), pretty much everything's been peaceful. I'll have to explain to Leighla, though, that just because she likes playing with blood and guts and all that kind of stuff doesn't mean that those of us who are more civilized enjoy the same!

Oh, and before I forget: sometime during my early watch, while I was working on this entry, we heard a scream of unearthly pain coming from the jungle; while it sounded like a person, we couldn't tell if it was a male or a female; all we knew is that we didn't care for it very much. I don't think this bodes well for tomorrow...