Mouse Travels Elders Path

"It’s the first day of falling leaves. That means I've traveled over five thousand trees from the Ironwood edge if I'm on schedule. I've never met another who’s gone this far away from Arcolin before. Riders only circle the forest and visitors are rarely allowed deeper than the second level. I’ve been using the paths of our elders to guide me. It's hard for me to imagine living outside a city today but before Arcolin they made their homes in the burrows and depths beneath trees. Almost all of them have collapsed, but the surviving hovels have been a necessary blessing for this journey.

I listened to every story the chroniclers shared in the library five times over, but nothing quite compares witnessing it all first hand. I would hear of the giant trees that towered over the elder's journey, but they never mention that in the day they blanket the forest in beautiful silhouettes. I read about the endless tall grass in the wilds beyond, but I’d never imagined the labyrinthine it would become during the rain. I painted my fair share the art of the Bitter Swamps during lectures, but nothing could prepare me for the overwhelming terror and assault to the senses it is to trudge through the murky waters yourself. I was told that the ocean was just a bigger version of our lake, but when you see it stretch across the land and swallow the horizon. Its beautiful and enigmatic and shocking all at once.

Now that I'm here in front of the shimmering sea, listening to waves crass against the rocks, and watching the sun set across the blue horizon I know. I wasted the nine seasons I spent as a scribe. No amount of study or research could have prepared me for this journey and words only mean so much. I realize now what the incomplete old scrolls and books the elders left us were really for. They aren’t records to preserve our history, they're invitations to the world around us. They're meant to entice us into the world to see for ourselves what parchment, chalk, and ink can't describe to us. The further I go from Arcolin the more I know I can't go back. There are no stories, no poetry nor words that can bring it all together like the real thing.”      - Barnabas, Senior Cartographer