The night is long. It seems much longer than nights back home, Ikni reflects to herself as she sits her watch. The sounds are all wrong, for one thing. Her footsteps on the covered porch do not echo comfortingly back to her from stone walls and ceiling, but disappear silently into the vastness of the forest, echoed back only by the strange chittering cries and creaks of the forest's denizens. And the light, for another. Neither the warm flicker of firelight nor the relaxing glow of phosporescent fungi, it was a cold white radiance from a half-disk of light, impossibly far away. It flickered in and out of sight behind enormous billowing celestial shadows, like a great uncaring eye, blinking as it ponders unfathomable thoughts. Ikni shivers, and for the hundredth time wrenches her gaze away from the moon and back to the forest she is supposed to be watching.
When her watch ends, she tries to sleep, but to no avail. It is just too
wrong, this terrifying alien landscape. With nothing else to do, she returns to her new sword. Swords, at least, she knows -- or thought she did. This one's secrets had eluded her; her attempts to link it to her mind and will failing. She examines it again by moonlight, eyes only inches from it. Pommel, grip, guard, tapering blade, rounded point; her eyes travel over it again and again, the familiar curves and relations soothing in the midst of all the nocturnal chaos of this forest. Over and over, her eyes caress the grooved blade, breath slowing and deepening. The blade becomes easier to see as she concentrates on her task, ignoring all else. When she feels like she knows every curve, every groove and notch and angle, still she continues to examine it, not learning anything but just for the pleasure. Suddenly she realizes that though she is still studying the sword, her eyes have been closed for some time! She opens her eyes, finding the sword exactly as she pictured it, just as she knew she would. She closes her eyes again, and finds the image of the sword still there before her eyes, perfect and whole. For the first time since leaving her clan's wagons in the depths of the world, her face relaxes into a smile.
[sblock=ooc]Yes, I'll swordbond to it. We're calling it Acidic, now? That's fine.
Edit: And yes, we needed an extended rest pretty bad, I think, and it seems called for by th pacing anyways. [/sblock]
