[Mineal Shade]

It was slow, plodding progress. Actually Mineal could not even tell if it was progress. For all he knew he was going in the completely wrong direction. Gauging one's heading in a forest was difficult enough but the fog made it nigh impossible. But more than that was the crushing silence, it filled everything so that even nothing had a sound now. It probably would have really bothered most people but Mineal was used to the expanse of everything around him being devoid of other people. He had been alone for a very long time, so much that he avoided large cities now. The noise hurt his ears and he felt intensely more alone an dout of place in the middle of a sea of people than here or the wastes. But he also disliked cities because of N'danosh. There he had been treated as a freak, an oddity left to die with his Aelyrian brethren out in the wastes beyond the walls in a dirty ghetto.

Mineal looked up and noticed again the blue light out of the corner of his eye. This time however, he ignored it until he reached the next tree and secured his wire. Mineal wanted to investigate the bobbing light but he also did not want to lose his path again. When he took the time to focus his gaze out on the blue orb this time it did not fade away into the murky background of misty forest but bobbed alongside him at distance. The ranger thought to call out to the light, chance that it was a kind and curious entity. But he stopped himself, he was still not tired and the rodenti felt he should make some more progress along before he decided to take a break. And so Mineal went back to the task of wire walking, accompanied by a strange blue light.

As he made his way deeper into the fog-drenched forest Mineal was assaulted by a bright light. In response he closed his eyes and held up an arm in front of his face. He stood very still as his eyes slowly readjusted, hurt slightly by the intense light. His rodenti light-sensitive eyes did not take such changes well as they were more fitted for using low light rods to see as opposed to high light cones. Mineal fumbled a paw on his forehead before pulling down his sun goggles, darkened to fight the oppressive glare of the desert suns. He lowered his arm and blinked a number of times. The dark lens made the light bearable though still bright. Mineal took a moment to backtrack and make sure he was moving in the right direction before continuing. Along the way he also stepped in a puddle. Looking around he was slightly perplexed as everythign else seemed to be frozen solid except for this one puddle. Perhaps it was proof that what was going on in the forest was magically done. Or maybe the puddle was attached to some sort of underground stream or aquifer. Mineal had heard that it was very difficult to freeze large bodies of water because the ground warmed them too much, maybe this was just the tip of a larger body of water. All the same it simply could have been cleared of an iced surface by some other traveler seeking water. No matter what it was the forest was showing some serious quirks and hiccups.

It was not lost on the mosat that the farther he delved into the woods the more resistance the fog put up. To Mineal all these strange things were a good sign, stiffer resistance meant he was headed in the right direction. Maybe he was coming even dangerously close to stumbling onto the elf city. Given the circumstances Mineal decided to take a short break and see if he stayed still the fog would dissipate any. It could be the mist was reactive only to his movement, magic was a strange thing to try and understand.

Having become used to the blue orb floating alongside him in the distance the rodenti had nearly forgotten it was there. The ranger raised a hand then let it droop slightly, he was not quite sure how to call out to floating lights in the distance. Especially ones that could be potentially dangerous. Well, simplicity worked best in such things. Raising his paw again he waved it at the blue light.

"Serale."