Not long ago, there was balance between the sky and the land. Sunshine, brighter than this morning, would bathe the scenery from plain to lake. The grass was dry right to the blade. When it rained, the island was wet and grey, and the next day changed back. Nature had her way. The weather of Orisia was in order. Morning dew might linger like residue from a forest fire, the like of which was no less vital to rejuvenate vegetation, but the cycle was final. 

These darkened days, though, no flames could take trees drenched day and night, and even time could not escape the rain. The very forest floor, once hardened, was treacherous as quicksand in places. The mud was soaked as much as the hood and would break the hoof so that the horse and rider would share the same fate if it could.

So he knew to go slow. He navigated with patience. He was alone as he rode, eyes and ears alert to his surroundings, where even critters who once found no taste for the rain had adapted to it and come out. They still had to eat. Like them, he learned to see between the cascade, to hear beyond the droplets, watch and listen for trouble. 

That was adjustment. It was accepting this new reality, where every moment was a puddle, and the very ocean had all but swallowed this island with the crying sky as its ally. He tried not to look up, not least because he need not get his face wet beneath his garment, but needed not be reminded of his opponent. Those skies were winning, every raindrop like a taunt as if to tell Orisia’s victims that they would never go thirsty but would wish for thirst if it meant an end to the pour. 

Lost in thought, it was all he could do as he watched for signs for a squall. He had also learned to almost sense the presence of a storm like a shadow at his back, more than ever before when the lord had a tower and a forest in his land, and was not merely some traveler in a forest on horseback with a sword and a backpack. These were no mere woods though. The bark, so soaked it peeled off like skin from bone as his fingertips brushed it, was from an ancient tree that stood as a sentry of many—as much as an orchestra for Orsia’s queen. 

He walked onward, peering between the trees, seeing the past, present and future amalgamated in a silent symphony save for the rain. He tilted his head, spied an abandoned nest in the canopy, glimpsed large wings arcing above the crowns if beneath the clouds. He turned his face, spied no tree, no lake, but something that nature had not made.

It was an abandoned building. 

Clicking his teeth, shifting the reins, the rider led his steed toward the structure, every step measured, but unwavering. The mare paused not but a walk away as the rider swept his gaze over the home, or what he had taken for one. Like everything else, it was not spared time’s scar. Its wooden steps, once proud and hard, looked rotten. Sparing a look at the clouds as lightning flashed on the horizon, and thunder rocked the stones, he dismounted his horse and approached. 

Guiding his mare by the reins, he wrapped them around a post. With her secured, offering a whinny as if to tell him not to take too long, he cautiously walked up the steps. He wondered if their wooden frame might break like that bark did as much as whether some threat might dwell within. Who could tell? Yet his sword was sheathed at his hip, and he did not fall, as he entered the building, footsteps creaking over the floorboards, and walked into the hall.