Tristan nods. "That makes sense. My fear is that if we meet it before we understand the problem, it will not let us observe it, ending in bloodshed. I had thought - if it is a place it cannot go back to, it is a place we cannot find by following it. We could look for where it [i]cannot[/i] be, but could have been? Perhaps where a new mineshaft has been cut? Or a dam has formed in an inconvenient place?"

To observe without being observed is an unforgiving art: A thousand rights are undone by a single wrong. Tristan's more hesitant about that single point of failure than he is about the thing itself.