The next two days passed quickly. Even though he normally liked to explore, Mono spent only a small portion of the time actually doing so in the village — and that was only because the siblings had asked him to join them. After the morning outing was over, he spent the rest of the first day inside his room, working on Weaving.

While he was now able to cause water to condense from the surrounding air, it turned out to be the only phrase that worked for him. He was undeterred, however, and continued to study both the Weaver’s language as well as his own thoughts in hopes of improving. Mono was determined to do something concrete enough to impress the siblings before telling them about his progress. A few drops of water wasn’t going to cut it when Vivian could create massive flames and Adamas could lift extremely heavy objects without breaking a sweat.

On the second day, the trio began their journey into the mountains. It was uneventful, and that suited Mono just fine. In between the casual conversations, he kept practicing by repeatedly drawing the symbols across the pages.

“What’s wrong?” Adamas asked upon seeing Mono grimace from a sudden realization.

“I just realized that I’m going to run out of paper.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Vivian replied from the front of the cart. “Tracing the symbols with your finger will be just as effective.”

“Really?” Mono asked.

Adamas nodded. “The goal of the exercise is to internalize the meaning of each word, and that can be done by either writing or tracing.”

“Alright.” Mono set aside the quill and capped the bottle of ink. He proceeded to use his finger to trace the symbols on the sheets with dried ink for the remainder of the day.

That night, they set up camp on the trail itself. Bundled up in several blankets and his cloak, Mono looked up at the stars in the sky as he tried to fall asleep.

There were hundreds twinkling in the sky, unobstructed by the thin mountain air and brilliant in their array of colors. The red, blue, orange, and green orbs spanned as far as his eyes could perceive. As someone who used to live in a large city, he had never been able to see so many at once and with such a clear view. Inevitably, he began to try to find patterns in the stars. Many cultures used groups of stars as the basis for their myths. Did the Weavers have anything like that? Mono decided that he would ask Vivian tomorrow.

Tonight, however, he created his own constellations and stories. A web of stars there to represent St. George and his dragon, an arc of light here for a bow, a curve of orbs which formed a candy cane. Mono noticed several squares of stars next to the cane, and decided that it was actually a crook for the shepherd guiding the square “sheep.” How many were there? One sheep, two sheep… three sheep… four...

As he stared up into the heavens, counting the celestial bodies of sheep, Mono drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, immediately after waking up, Mono jumped to his feet. He was dying to ask Vivian about stars and any stories attached to them. The path’s gravelly surface crunched underneath his steps as he made his way to the wagon to wake her up.

“Good morning,” he said, pushing away the wagon’s back cover to allow the early morning light to pour in.

“Geaddanjerrimono!” Vivian yelled as she was abruptly woken up by the light shining straight into her face. She turned away as quickly as she could.

Mono immediately let go of the cover. “Oh, sorry.” He hadn’t realized that Vivian was still asleep. She was very much a morning person, and was normally awake at this hour.

Interestingly, Mono noted, her words hadn’t been properly translated by the stone in her half asleep state. This confirmed his theory about how the stone operated, at least verbally: some part of it was connected to the speaker’s intent or concentration. A reflex response only conveyed to him a general feeling of irritated surprise — which wasn’t really helpful anyways since it would have been easy to tell without the stone.

What had she said? He was pretty sure that she had cursed, but that wasn’t something Vivian normally did. Actually, he mused, why did people curse? Or, perhaps more importantly, why did they curse with specific words? Vivian had used the word “gead,” which was the word for deity or god in the Weaver’s language. Was there a reason that a lot of swears tended to involve religion or something inappropriate? What would happen if he said a word that wasn’t a swear but with the intent of cursing?

Mono’s mind continued to wander until Vivian finally slunk out of the wagon and snapped him out of his reverie. Well, almost.

“Sorry about that,” Vivian said.

“Schist,” Mono replied, aggressively.

She scrunched her brow in confusion. “What?”

“What did that word translate to when I said it?” He asked.

Vivian hesitated. “Something... unpleasant. It was quite surprising to hear it from you.”

“Well, I didn’t actually say anything inappropriate. The word itself is a name for a type of rock.” Mono made a mental note of this test. If the stone was able to convey intent regardless of the actual words, then there was a lot of potential for some interesting conversations; the term doublespeak could be brought to a whole new level. “Anyways, I should be the one apologizing for waking you. I thought you were already up.”

“It’s always difficult being in the pass for me.” Vivian said as she rubbed her slightly baggy eyes. “I’m actually surprised that you’re so energetic in the thin air here.”

“Is it really that surprising?” Now that they were at such a high elevation, Mono was able to breathe comfortably for the first time since he had left Earth. Before, a part of him had to keep his altered breathing in the back of his mind at all times; it had ended up causing him to sleep lightly every night here except for the previous one.

“Everyone’s affected when they travel through,” Adamas said from the front of the cart, where he was harnessing the horses. “This is the first time I’ve seen someone feel better from being in the mountains, however.”

“I just slept really well last night,” Mono replied. It was also easier to get up in the mornings since he had something to wake up for now.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Once Adamas was done with the horses, the journey continued.

“So,” Mono said as he turned to Vivian, who was sitting across from him, “are there stories for the stars?” Though he worded the question strangely, he focused on the meaning behind the words to get his intentions across.

Vivian seemed to immediately understand and nodded. “There are quite a few tales involving certain patterns in the sky.”

“Could you tell me about some of them?”

“If you want me to,” she replied. “I don’t think I could tell the stories as well as you do, however.”

“That’s fine, as long as you try your best,” he assured her; Sojourn’s stone would pick up the slack anyways.

“Is there a particular constellation you want to know about? I imagine you know some of the most common ones.”

Mono was sure that he didn’t know the common ones. There wasn’t a single pattern that he recognized last night. “Any will be fine. I don’t mind listening to something I already know.”

“Alright.”

Vivian began to tell various stories over the next several hours. Using one of Mono’s remaining blank pages, she drew a picture of several of the constellations, going out of her way to show how certain bunches could be redrawn or combined to create new images with their own narrative. As she was outlining a ship using the shepherd’s crook and squares he had seen last night, the wagon ground to a halt. “Are we there, Ad?”

Adamas stood up from the front and took a step down onto the ground outside. “Yes, we are.”

“Where?” Mono asked.

“The start of the glacial portion of the pass,” the elder Weaver responded. “The trail is pretty steep here, so I normally get out to make it a little easier on the horses.”

“Should I get out too?”

“If you want.”

“You don’t have to, though,” Vivian said.

“It’s fine.” Mono wanted to stretch his legs anyways.

Outside, the air was far colder than he had expected. Even though the sun was now well overhead, Mono could see the misty wisps of his breath. The puffs of condensed water quickly dispersed in the frosty wind, which had also grown in strength in the relatively short amount of time they had travelled.

Once Vivian had moved to the front to direct the horses, Adamas and Mono began to follow the wagon, ascending the steep gradient which slanted at about thirty degrees.

“You’re handling this pretty well,” Adamas remarked when the two walked up roughly half of the slope.

Mono responded in between deep breaths. “Am I? I think I’m dying here.” The thinner air, which he had been thankful for less than an hour ago, was now a torturous detriment as he exerted himself.

“You can do it, we’re almost there.”

“That’s terribly optimistic,” Mono huffed as he looked up at the top of the incline where the trail began to level off. It seemed so far away.

“If it helps, the view up there is amazing.”

“But is it worth all of this effort?”

“The only way to know is to see for yourself.” Adamas began to increase the pace of his stride until he was running. “Meet you there.”

Mono watched in disbelief as the elder Weaver bounded up the slope, easily passing the wagon which had slowed down as the horses struggled. With great effort, Mono began to speed up as well.

“You look terrible, do you want to sit back down?” Vivian asked when he managed to reach the front of the cart.

He was seriously tempted, but shook his head. “I can do this.”

When Mono had managed to soak the page with water using Weaving, he had made a promise to himself that he would no longer back down from or try to skirt around a challenge. So, pushing past his fatigue, he passed the wagon as he ran to the top of the trail.

Adamas was standing a few steps away from the summit, looking out over the landscape. “Good, you made it. I told you the view would be worth it.”

“Gahhh,” was all Mono could say. He rested his hands on his knees as he tried to get his breath back. “I don’t think anything could be worth—” The words died in his throat as he gaped at the scenery.

From this height, the peaks of the mountains were visible. Caps of ice and snow covered each tip, and the white ran down the sides in rivulets which created a stark contrast with the dark stone. As the sun shone over the large, deep valley formed by the mountains, the thin layer of normally clear ice on every surface refracted the light into various colors. It was a stunning sight to see the ebony rock shine, and even change color whenever Mono turned his head.

Even though he was starved for oxygen, the view made him pause his breathing for a whole second. It was literally breathtaking. After several moments of taking in the scenery, Mono felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Vivian’s caught up with us,” Adamas said. “Do you want to get back in the cart?”

It was a struggle to tear his eyes away from the view and look at the wagon. “I think we should walk a little bit longer,” he suggested. “That way, the horses can get more rest.”

“And so you can see more of the mountains?”

Mono smiled. “That too.”

After a brief conversation with Vivian, Adamas and Mono walked beside the slowly moving wagon as she allowed the horses to recover. The only thing that could have been better, Mono thought, was if it wasn’t so unbearably cold. The air was now chilling to the bone, and he wrapped himself tighter in his cloak to block out the wind and stay warm.

“Adam,” Mono said once enough time had passed for him to catch his breath, “why is Vivian doing that?”

While the trail was wide enough to accommodate two wagons side by side, Vivian was keeping the wagon right next to the side of the mountain that they were travelling on.

“It’s safer there,” Adamas replied.

“What do you mean by safer?” As Mono began to ask for clarification, the wind suddenly picked up speed. The unexpected force knocked him off balance. Taking a step to the left with his right leg to find stability, his foot slipped on the gravelly surface. Mono began to fall over the edge of the trail.

Fortunately, Adamas managed to grab Mono’s arm before he could actually take the lethal plunge.

“That’s what I mean,” the elder Weaver said as he pulled Mono back. “If you aren’t careful, you might end up getting too close to the view.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Mono watched his cloak, now lost in the breeze, fly over the valley; another brush with death. He shivered from both the cold and the realization. “I’m going back to the wagon.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

Vivian had stopped the wagon the moment that she noticed Mono had slipped. Once she was assured that he was fine, Mono entered the back of the cart and wrapped a blanket around himself.

“Looks like you were a bit too close to the scenery,” she teased.

“Adam said that too.” His words were terse and shaky.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so, just processing what happened.” Mono rubbed his hands together to warm them, setting aside Sojourn’s stone to do so. Thankfully, keeping a tight grip on the thing had become a habit, and he hadn’t lost it during the tumble. Once he had finished getting comfortable, he picked up the stone again. The rock’s warmth reminded him of his situation.

Making a promise to take challenges head on was good and all, but maybe not when death was a possibility, Mono decided. It didn’t matter if the adventure was amazing or if he learned magic, everything was secondary to survival. Wherever he was, wherever he went, whoever he met, he would be gone in a year. Everything, Mono repeated, was secondary to survival.

The rest of the day passed silently as he continued to mentally hammer in his realization. By the time he was done, the sun had begun to set and the siblings were trying to find a place to stay the night.

“Since it’s so cold up here, we can’t sleep outside anymore,” Adamas explained. At some point, he had also gotten back into the wagon. “We’ll be staying in one of the grottos made along the trail for shelter tonight.”

“Found one!” Vivian called. She began to direct the horses into the man-made cave. Just in time, too. The wind was beginning to grow even stronger, making any attempt to travel the trail extremely dangerous — regardless of where one was on it. There was probably a storm outside now. Once the horses were comfortably settled inside, the siblings went to work preparing an evening meal.

Nibbling on a piece of dried kiegato, Mono listened to the wind. Sometimes, when the breeze passed the grotto’s opening at just the right angle, there was a whistling or howling sound. The amount of variation was eerie. Right now, it sounded like a person.

“Hello?” A voice called out from the entrance.

No, wait, it was a person.

Upon hearing the voice, both Adamas and Vivian stopped their work.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” The voice called out again. It was much closer this time.

“Yes, we are!” Vivian yelled back.

Adamas shot her a stern look. “Why’d you do that? We don’t know who he is.”

“Well, we can’t find out unless we talk to him, right?”

The elder Weaver looked like he wanted to argue, but didn’t voice a response as the silhouette of the stranger grew closer until he was illuminated by the fire Vivian had started.

It was the man with the blindfold who had disrupted the fight between Adamas and Kai. “Thank the gods you guys are here,” he said, taking several more steps forward.

“What are you doing here? You left with everyone else a day before us,” Adamas said. His tone was harsh and distrustful. It made the stranger stop moving.

“There was an accident,” the blindfolded man replied.

Adamas wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “What do you mean, accident?”

“Yesterday, there was a terrible storm,” the stranger elaborated. There was a clap of thunder outside, as if heralded by the man’s words. “Every cart was pushed off the trail. I think I’m the only one that survived.”