“So, you really don't remember anything?” Sam said while Sol winced in pain as she applied a swab soaked in alcohol to his wound, which really wasn't more than a scratch.

“Ouch!... nope.”

“Do you know where you live?”

“Nope”

“What's your mom's name?”

“I'm not sure....” His brows furrowed. Before Sam could ask him more questions, he presented one of his own. “How about you, what's your name?”

Sam raised her eyebrows, amused to have the questions turned back on her. “Sam.” She finished wrapping his scrape and stood, extending a hand to help him up.

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” Sol beamed. “So, what are you doing out here then? Since you seem to be telling this isn’t a normal place for people to be wandering around.”

“I work out here, actually.” As Sam pulled him up, Sol stumbled. He almost fell before managing to catch himself on a nearby tree branch. Sam put her hands up in case he lost his footing again, and then continued, “I'm a ritualist.”

“A ritualist?”

“It basically means...” Sam paused a moment und tried to choose her words in a way that would be easy to understand. “I basically cast spells that make things grow, like these trees, or crops or anything else really.”

“They don’t grow on their own?”

Sam looked up at the sky and gestured toward the wall of cloudy smog. “Do you see those dark clouds?” Sol nodded. “Well, basically, if I don't cast spells to prevent it, those clouds cover the sky and suffocate the life in the area.”

Sol craned his neck and gazed around the large circle that surrounded the area.

“All right, we'd better take you back to Shoehorn and find you a place to stay. I have a friend Mo who knows everybody around here. If you’re from the area, he might have heard news about you going missing.”

Sam picked up her bag and pulled out her locator, which was gently pulling her back in the direction of the rocky clearing. She started off in that direction, walking slowly to make sure Sol could keep up.

~

Sol was staring wide eyed up at the cliff face towering above them. “We're going to climb up there?” The slight tremble in his voice gave away his doubt.

“Well, we could, but it's going to be a lot easier to climb up that bit.” Sam indicated by pointing at a tangle of trees and roots that were beside the rock face. “It's a much better hold, that's how I got down earlier.”

Sol tentatively approached the tangle of branches and pulled himself up a step, carefully placing both feet. He paused a moment, and then lifted his foot to the next branch. His foot slipped, and for just a moment he was left dangling helplessly from a branch. Sam grabbed him around the stomach to take the weight from his arms and lowered him to the ground.

She could see the fear in his eyes, and that along with his obvious lack of coordination made her reevaluate her plan. “Sol, maybe it would be better if we took a different way around, with a bit less climbing.”

The fear washed away from Sol's face, and a broad smile was left behind. “Thank you, I really didn't think I was going to make it up there.” Sam returned the smile, not vocalizing her own doubts of his ability, and couldn't help but find the clumsiness endearing. She pulled out her locator to keep her bearings and led Sol through the woods to find a way around. She pulled out a falling protection charm and told Sol to put it into the jacket pocket, and not take it out.

~

Sol tripped over a root, and his face stopped inches short of hitting a stone on the ground, when the piece of paper from his jacket pocket made a gentle pop, turning into a small puff of smoke.

“Whoever you are, you don’t get out too much, did you?” Sam said playfully as she pulled out yet another falling protection charm.

“Uh yeah, I guess not.” Sol agreed with a sheepish smile before taking Sam’s hand and standing up. “What are these things anyways?” he said as the activation glow of new charm faded and he stuffed it into his pocket.

“Falling protection charms,” Sam explained as she held a branch back so it wouldn't snap back and hit Sol in the face. “They stop you right before you hit the ground, so you won't get injured if you fall down something.”

“Oh! So, you're giving these to me, so I don't get hurt when I trip over this stuff?” he said, almost tripping over another root, but pausing and carefully placing his foot over it before continuing proudly.

“Well, it’s actually because I'm worried about you pitching yourself off of a cliff,” Sam laughed. “I nearly fell off the one from earlier, and no offense, but you, you...” Sam never finished the sentence. Sam held out her arm to stop Sol from continuing forward.

There Tim was, what was left of him anyways. Next to a tree, there was a pristine map and a box of protection sigils, open and empty. Dozens of unused papers were flung along the ground. His bag was also there, mostly decayed. There were bones everywhere, scattered among the small clearing. Torn scraps of his clothes were also left sitting there by the tree.

“Tim...” Sam stood there, staring, and struggling to process the sight.

“Tim?” Sol asked as he pushed past Sam's arm.

After just a moment, Sam was back to her senses. “No! wait!” She only just met Sol, but everything she knew about him told her this would be too much. Sam tried to grab him and pull him back, but it was already too late.

Sol froze, and the color drained from his face. Sam grabbed him and pushed him back a few steps, so the scene was out of sight. Sam stood there and waited for Sol to regain his composure. A burning dread was building in her chest, but she repressed it because Sol had fallen to his knees and was starting to breathe short, shallow breaths.

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“Hey,” Sam tried to compose herself and look as calm as possible. “Hey, it’s going to be alright.” She put a hand on his shoulder and got closer, trying to look him in the eyes. “Hey Sol. Do some breathing with me okay?”

“in... out... in... out...” She continued to take deep regular breaths with him until the focus started returning to his eyes. The regular breathing was also helping Sam keep her composure.

“Who is Tim?”

Sam sighed, “Timothy swain, this area was his assignment before I came here last winter.”

“What happened?”

She sighed again. “Well, I'm going to have to investigate, but I think he fell off that cliff from earlier. I suspected it ever since I found this.” She showed Sol Tim's ritual book.

Sol stared at it for a moment, and although he had somewhat regained his composure, he still looked shaken. “I don't want to go over there.”

“You don't have to. Can you stay right here for a minute?”

Sol agreed with a nod.

“Okay, I'll be back before you know it,” Sam assured him before taking a moment and stepping towards the clearing. She glanced back before rounding the corner and saw Sol staring at the ground.

There really wasn't much left of Tim. The only thing that made Sam so certain it was him was the pristine journal sitting on the ground with his name clearly printed along the front, and the eerily clean skull sitting in the center of the scattered bones.

It was impossible to tell for certain what had happened based on what was lying out in front of her. Sam took a gulp and picked up the journal and flipped through a couple pages. It was mostly mundane, talking about the status of the forest, how rituals were going, along with more personal things like what he planned to do with his upcoming leave.

Finally, he had written about making some observations about strange growth patterns happening along the edge of the region while he was doing surveys. Apparently, he had accidentally used a double dose of reagents when performing one of his rituals, and to make up for it he was going to skip the next weeks’ nourishment ritual, to try and make up for the lost resources.

“That’s not going to work…” Sam muttered to herself as she scanned through the pages. And she was right, the landscape had seen harsh consequences because of the missed spell. Leaves had begun to turn brown in late spring, when buds should have given way to the robust green coverings of summer.

Well, that is, most of the region had this adverse effect.

The north-west region continued to flourish. Tim had written a note in his journal reminding himself to go investigate, but by the looks of it, he had decided to spend a few weeks trying to clean up the mess that was his dying land assignment. He had spent time trying to convince the townspeople that this was normal and that the crop yield for fall would be good.

The last entry in the journal was written in an uneven hand, and in broken sentences. He described how he had fallen off the cliff, just as Sam had suspected, and crawled off to the side in an attempt to get himself to safety. He hadn’t gotten very far.

Sam had to close the journal, as she began to read his desperate attempts to remember medical spells without the help of his ritualists book. And finally, he wrote his goodbyes.

Sam remembered Sol standing by himself in the woods nearby, and the state had been in. She took a cursory look around to make sure she had not missed anything and went to him.

“Hey, are you alright?” Sam said as she poked her head around a dead tree to see Sol tracing patterns in the dirt.

“Yeah, I think I’m okay,” he replied, but his face was concerned, and Sam thought his eyes looked slightly wetter than before. “I really don’t want to see it again. We don’t have to do anything with him, do we?”

“No, we don’t. I’ll take you around.” As Sol got up Sam led them in a slightly different direction so that they would not stumble into the same clearing again.

“So…” Sam was trying to think of something to say to break the silence as they walked through the woods. Nothing came to mind.

“It’s really beautiful out here.” Sam looked back to see Sol gazing up at the canopy. His face was filled with the same awe that she had seen in it before finding the body.

“Yeah, it really is.”

~

They worked their way back to the cliff edge, and then started off towards the direction of the town. At this point it was beginning to be quite late in the evening. The lush greens began to slowly become thinner and thinner as they entered back into the ritual region. Eventually everything was back to the way it was expected to be at this point in the regrowth cycle, with the stalks of young trees sticking out of the dirt.

The sun was shining brilliantly past the dead mature trees that littered the forest. Sol stopped, and Sam took a step back to watch him bend down and touch the dirt that was spawning thousands of tiny new growths.

“Why is it like this?” Sol asked as he got up and Sam began walking again. “Surely it wasn’t always like this, right? What about before the ritualists?”

Sam thought about it before replying “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. The ritualists guild is very old. As far as I’m aware, they’ve been doing it forever.”

Sol continued to ask questions on their way back into town, especially about the Rituals and how they work, and Sam delightedly answered them to the best of her ability.

“So, you can't create energy, only harness what's already here?” Sol asked as Sam was explaining the regrowth rituals that she was currently performing in the region.

“That's right.” Sam rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a book with mostly blank pages. “Normally, we're forced to recycle organic materials for rituals. You could cast a small lighting spell with even a small pile of leaves. Sam reached down and scooped up some brown, dry leaves from the ground. She drew a small symbol in the book and crumbled the leaves on to it. The symbol then began to glow very slightly, until it was around as bright as a candle flame, before dimming and fading away leaving only a small pile of ash, which she brushed away. “It's like burning wood to get the energy out of it, but you can do so much more. If you just know how to control it.”

“Wow,” Sol was completely captivated. “and you can grow a forest like that? That’s amazing! But what sort of energy source would be powerful enough for something like that?”

“Well, there are certain types of crystal that can capture energy from their surroundings.” Sam began to dig around in her bag. “This is a type of crystal that forms deep underground, after collecting thousands of years of energy from the organic material it was buried with.” Sam held out a small orange crystal, around the size of her thumbnail. The Sun's rays filtered through the trees and struck the crystal making it glow brilliantly. “Just a few of these crystals hold enough energy to clear the smog from this region of forest for a week.”

Sol reached out for the crystal to take a closer look, but Sam pulled back. “Erm. Sorry Sol, but until you regain your balance, I think not, all that energy can be quite volatile if it isn’t handled correctly.” Sol looked up and smiled. “I guess that’s fair, I can barely keep myself from falling over every other root.”

~

The sun had set by the time they reached Mo's Inn. A candle was burning in a storm lantern that hung from the signpost. Mo had probably been considerate, thinking of Sam’s return, in case the clouds darkened the night and made it hard for Sam to find her way back.

Sam pushed open the door before turning back to Sol with her finger pressed to her lips. Mo had fallen asleep at the bar. She led Sol upstairs and showed him where her room was so he could start to settle in. After he was situated, she went downstairs and nudged Mo, who woke up and grumbled a groggy thank you before making his way to his own room. She decided to explain the situation in the morning.

Sam made her way back upstairs and opened the door, and started explaining that Sol could have the bed if he wanted. But she stopped short, because he was already lying on the floor next to the bed curled up in a ball.

Sam shook her head and smiled, amused. What a rough day he must have had. They could figure it all the next morning.

She grabbed the comforter off the mattress and covered him, before taking a spare blanket from the closet and crawling into bed. It didn't take long for her to fall asleep.