[i]'It's not useful,'[/i] Griffin could almost wail. [i]'But I'll make it worth my time.'[/i]

He had spent good coin to go on that tour. Better coin, coin that he needed to stock his return to Crossroads, was spent to retrace his steps to the Mote on the second tour. Perhaps if he hadn't needed to replace his hand-pick, Griff would have enough for a third. There was room and board to consider as well. The fisher's wife had gotten stingier with her crawlspace as the days trickled by in Laku, and Griff knew that travelers with deeper pockets were due to approach any day now.

An [i]expert[/i] had taken the party to visit the stone. He was old, and half-blind. Griff wanted to see sparks of lightning; shards of crystal springing forth from the rock's rounded face; perhaps the rings of vapor that you could sometimes see seeping out of the forest in the middle of the night would be exhaled from the Mote.

A dervish of junk spun above the monolith. Griff frowned as he recalled the spectacle. Useless. 

It was disheartening, but it wouldn't stop him. He'd memorized the path that the half-blind expert had taken to get out of the village. Footprints in the sand had been swept away by tide; though the sun had set long ago, Griffin felt as if he could see them clear as day. As he neared part of the shoreline that dropped steeply into the waters below, he swung around the well-traveled trail and ducked behind a thicket of tall, threadbare cattails. 

Time was short, and Griffin had wasted so much already. Yet here he stooped, immobilized as he rehearsed the motions in his head. Appraised the tools at his disposal. He reached into a hide pouch on his belt. Leather-working tools he had re-purposed for a new mission. Metal for carving, scraping. Blunted the end of a narrow pick so that he could wedge it into the stone's smallest imperfection. A rawhide mallet, expensive but reliable. Needles. A compass. Griff had his dagger, too, but that would hopefully stay snug against his hip. 

The Mote was over this dune. All he had to do was swoop around and approach it from an angle opposing the expert's path. None would dare travel at this hour, but it still couldn't hurt to be careful. Patience was something Griff usually didn't have the luxury to have in high supply, but he didn't want to mess this up. As others in Laku slept, or sorted their wares for tomorrow's market, or idled their time in the ramshackle pub near the docks, Griffin took a deep breath. 

He scurried from behind the thicket, crested the dune, and made his way towards the glow of the beach.