For three days, she walked.  Three days before she either died or killed again.  Given what awaited her, Lyra had felt a need to relax a little, to make her journey on foot and spend some time at large in this new landscape.

Soil shifted under each step, grinding between her naked toes as she pushed her way through the endless fields, moving slowly and carefully enough that the long yellow stalks were barely disturbed by her passage.  Gentle winds blew down around her from time to time, and the wheat swayed in response, back and forth, with a kind of quiet harmony. She saw crickets, beetles, ants, but nothing so large as to trouble her.  It was a strange kind of wilderness: flat, unassuming, serene.

The middle of nowhere. Nothing to do, nothing exceptional to attract anyone from abroad, yet at the same time that [i]lack[/i] of distraction held its own allure. She strode across the land, drinking in the golden seas with her eyes and gently caressing the tips of passing stalks, her Shroud dancing around her like a tiny black snake.  Amidst it all, she let her worries slip away, and lost herself in meditation.

Night fell, and she sprawled out on her back, squashing a small rectangle of wheat that scratched against her skin in protest. Nary a cloud had crossed the sky during the day, and once the myriad hues of the setting sun faded away past the horizon, the stars gleamed crisp and clear, tiny eyes watching from the heavens.  Beneath their gaze, Lyra drifted away into stillness, dead as a stone embedded in the great wide plain.

On the second day, she pulled out some yarn from her light little pouch and wove herself a dress, with threads of gold and green. Vertical patterns, like the armies of swaying wheat, arranged such that each one flowed into the next, a living thing rather than a harshly divided mandala. Over the course of a morning it took shape: two wide strips coming down from her shoulders and crossing over her chest, stitched into a loose horizontal wrapping around her waist and hips, which continued down to a ragged end a few inches above her knees.  Comfortable, as if the land had reached up and embraced her in its earthy arms.  She stood, cast aside her former garment, and tied back her soft brown hair in a thin tail, then carried on her way, always staring out at her surroundings with the innocence and wonder of a child.

Then, sometime in the afternoon of the third day, she came to a sudden stop.

It would be close, now. No more time for experience and contemplation, not when the peace of this land was so soon to be shattered. She gripped her spear, and called the Shroud to her.  It came eagerly, flooding outwards from its previous form and swallowing Lyra and her surroundings in the blink of an eye, plunging them into a cold, smooth darkness. Her eyes and ears shut off, and she let the cloud take over her senses, the world opening up around her. It had been surreal, the first few times, seeing up and down and left and right and every other side all at once through what seemed like a thousand eyes, but really it was not so different- just [i]more[/i], forcing her to push her mind a little harder to keep up.  [i]Time to be sharp, now.[/i]

From there on, she crept forwards with a dreadful purpose, the Shroud flowing across the field before her like a wave.  For now it held a rough, rounded shape, seven feet tall and seven feet wide and ten feet deep, more or less. Not merely dark, but sucking up all the light that touched it, like a black hole come to life.

It drew itself to a halt near an earthen road, resting in place, its outer edges slowly churning and shifting. Lyra waited within, crouching low and holding her spear diagonally in her right hand so that no part of it protruded beyond her Shroud. She breathed in, her heart pumping in a steady beat, but the sounds were masked by the black cloud, and its borders gave no clue as to what might be occurring within. No sign of her presence on the electromagnetic spectrum, nor in any vibrations of the air.  Other clues, Lyra could erase personally, through stillness, focus, and careful control of her own thoughts.

On the far side of the road, near a dilapidated farmhouse, something else had come.  Another oddity, another wanderer far from home, and now one whose life lay on the balance opposite hers.

This journey, at last, had reached its hard and bitter end.