[240103.15 Ancient ch`Rihan....]
The little girl skipped merrily on her way down the path to Hirhy, the stream that eventually flowed into the river Rhyne. The path was only a week or so old. The pilgrims found the stream before they found the Great-One's fortress and made a new village around the strange hulking mass. Eryie knew she would find her mother on the banks of the stream's shore, washing the clothes with the other pilgrims mothers and chatting away at their gossip and comparing each other's children, the way mothers often did. Eryie didn't plan on running into her mother today though, else she would've been made to stay with them and help with the washing. And today was too nice a day for chores. Eryie wanted nothing more then to run under the hot sun, and cool off further upstream from the clothes-washing elder females. It was a fine day for a swim.
Perhaps after she swam and dried herself in the sun she would seek out the lady with the strange bag that had helped poor old tr`Ghishus. Ghishus was a kindly old man that often told Eryie stories about the far-travel days and what it was like to live on a ship. Eryie would've liked to have tried that. But her family set foot on ch`Rihan and firmly planted roots for themselves with their farm and the livestock they tamed. Eryie hadn't known what flying through the stars had been like. She had been born here on ch`Rihan, and had to settle for looking up at the universe with her feet stuck firmly on the ground. Perhaps if she found that 'Lady from the Fortress' later, she would get to see the mysterious things in the bag once more. And perhaps, if Eryie was lucky, the Lady would tell her stories of the stars as well.
Eryie was lost in her own childish hopes and dreams and thoroughly enjoying every moment of her day the way children often do, when she came to the old gnarled tree upstream from her mother.
When her childish eyes fell on the scene displayed before her, Eryie didn't scream, she didn't run, she didn't so much as whimper. But her face drained of all color, and her eyes took on a hollow - haunted look. Turning around, she walked with a slow, detached step; the walk of someone who has shut out everything else around them, to hide themselves in the safety of the farther recesses of their own mind.
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