Marwan had been to the Abwaild only once before. Sort of a shameful thing to admit for an academic studying just about any other subject, that you'd only been to see the actual object of your inquiry in actual context the one time. He'd stayed for six weeks, and it had been expensive, hiring Praedhc Mire-scouts to keep him resupplied with food by ferrying it across the Siinlan. Expensive for his institution, anyway, he wasn't exactly a wealthy man himself.

The people he'd been studying had lived in a village a good week's hike from the river he'd use to cross over, fairly far removed from the Mire. No Praedhc group had, in his opinion, been studied anything like near enough, but those nearest the rivers and their attendant trading posts had gotten by far the most attention over the past two centuries and change, and Marwan wanted to cover entirely new ground to the extent it was possible. Still did, of course, why else was he here?

That had been more than seven years ago, and while it had prepared him to an extent for the strangeness, finally slogging his way out of the Mire still gave his senses a shock.

"My God," Chioma said. She stood knee-deep at the Mire's edge, staring out, right hand resting lightly on the pommel of the Akrafena sword hanging off her left hip, left hand half-raised as if to do...something she'd forgotten. Marwan knew the feeling.

"Someone's God, anyway," he muttered. He hadn't meant to, but he was tired down to his bone-marrow nerves. She turned slightly toward him, but didn't say anything.

It was the colors, really, the colors and the smell. You could catch just a whiff of it, here, snaking through the overwhelming char-and-iron scent of the Mire, just enough to tickle the edges of the mind. It wasn't strong, or unpleasant, the Abwaild was by no means a repulsive place—just very strange, and not just one strangeness either, a whole mélange of the lifelong unfamiliar to Fallen senses.

It was almost enough to distract from the colors, but not quite. First of all, there was the violet; the Abwaild was purple the way the Caustlands were green. Every leaf, practically every growing stalk, the high curling carpets of almost-grass, all some shade or other of vivid lavender. There were purple flowers in the Caustlands, of course, and purple paint, but nothing like this, nothing at all. And the earth, where it was exposed, was not brown or even the near-black of really rich Caustlands loam, but yellow verging-on-gold, sparkling where there was sunlight.

Of course a lot of it really was gold, scattered dust, small irregular nuggets, larger heavy lumps. You could find the near-useless metal in parts of the Caustlands too, but you had to dig a good ways down to find it. Here, it was all there on the surface. At least in this patch of the Abwaild; in other spots it was platinum, or rainbow-colored bismuth that studded and dusted the soil.

Xiansu's small weight shifted on his shoulder, and the slight rasp of the Cropr's voice sounded low and awed in Marwan's ear. "Every time, even after a half dozen times, every time it's a bit of a shock to see the Abwaild for the first time in a while."

"I don't doubt you," Marwan said, and made more noise than necessary in trudging through the final few steps from Mire to dry violet-carpeted land, in the hopes that it would stir Chioma from her reverie. It did.

"My God," she said again, and shook her head, and laughed. "I've seen pictures, echoframes even, and they just don't do it justice." She began trudging forward herself, shaking ash-sludge off her boots as they finally cleared the bog for good.

"Yeah, it's very pretty," Astrud said from up ahead, already standing out ahead on solid ground with her sling swaying back and forth, weighed down with a readied bullet while she scanned the hilly horizon.

"Oh, come on," Shu said, standing a few paces to Astrud's right with a throwing axe held loose in her left hand. "It's a lot more than just, 'yeah, pretty.' More and different I guess, because for me? Too strange at first to be called 'pretty.' Maybe once I've gotten used to it."

Xiansu laughed in Marwan's ear, caw caw caw, then flutter-hopped to Chioma's shoulder when she gestured him over. "You never really get used to it," he said. "Or at least I never did. But you do get over the strangeness enough to appreciate it. Or maybe it was different for me, I'd been studying it so long. It's true pictures don't do it justice, but that doesn't mean they're worthless. Learned a lot from pictures and echoframes before I actually flew over the Siinlan for the first time."

"We're all going to get plenty of time for getting acclimated," Chioma said. She'd pulled a large compass from a pouch on her belt, and was leaning over it along with Xiansu, concentrating. Marwan could feel the gentle tug-and-push in the Fathom as they shooed away the small semi-sentient bits of Fathom-consciousness people sometimes called "Fathom-djinn" or just "spirits." Xiansu was doing most of the work, which was no surprise, but Chioma was putting in a good effort; just as important, she was putting in a fairly competent effort.

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Still, though. Not for the first time, Marwan found himself wishing Chioma had more training, more facility with the Fathom, and also not for the first time he reminded himself that her wealth and connections and, yes, very impressive social skills were what made the expedition possible in the first place. A good bit of unfairness in it, but you didn't get anywhere without grappling with plenty of that.

Once the Fathom had been stilled long enough to allow the compass to operate properly, Xiansu stared at it a few moments before nodding his assent, and Chioma snapped the case shut with a flourish, though a very careful one. Almost as though she'd practiced. Almost as though she'd practiced when she could have been...but no, that was uncharitable, Marwan knew he had small useless vanities of his own.

Sabiqah trotted past him to plop herself on her haunches by Chioma's left knee. "Got your bearing? Show me."

Chioma pointed, and Sabiqah sat still, tail waving. Waited. Considered. "Yep," she said at last. "Looks good to me. Let's head on out, I don't like lingering on the edge of the Mire like this."

"Agreed," Chioma said, and the two Somonei converged into the lead with well-trained ease as the other four started walking. Well, other three, with Xiansu still on Chioma's shoulder.

The Caustland Crow didn't get to rest for long, though. Once they'd found a likely-seeming campsite within a clearing on the top of a quartzwood-copse hill, they sent him out scouting. He took off and made a widening spiral round the spot, and they all watched him with watchful apprehension. It was dangerous for a Fallen creature to be as visible as flying would inevitably make them, but a view from the air was also much too valuable to give up, so Xiansu kept low and watchful and they all breathed easier when he came back untouched and, so far as anyone could tell, unseen by anything or anyone that might matter.

"Seems like a good enough spot," he said, perched now on Marwan's forearm and held out so as to address the whole party. "No water source, but that would be too much to hope for this close to the Mire, yes? And you've all got plenty in your dewskins?"

They did, although the water that a dewskin condensed slowly into its bladder always tasted rather flat and, worse in certain situations, at least a little bit like whatever smell the air it came from had carried. Which meant a small taste of both Mire and Abwaild right before going to bed, which Marwan really wasn't looking forward to. They'd brought methods for water purification with them, of course; there might be nothing edible in the Abwaild for the Fallen, but the water wasn't any worse than the Caustlands, drinkable with a little care. So they wouldn't be relying on dewskins the whole expedition or, hopefully, even for most of it.

But tonight they'd all go to bed with strange fragrant tastes at the back of their throats and soaked into their gums and there was just nothing for it, still better by great leaping bounds than trying to sleep thirsty.

And he'd be too tired to care much, or at least that's what he told himself as the last few drops of the water he'd brought with him from the beginning soaked into the drier parts of his throat.

By the time he'd set up his little tent and Sabiqah had crawled in beside him and he started drinking the distilled water, he turned out to be half-right. He grimaced, yawned, offered some to the Pircaat. She took a few gulps, made a face, and then curled up to sleep. He followed suit. It was pretty bad, and would probably taste even worse when he woke after a whole night of marinating in his mouth tissues, but right then sleep mattered most.

The night passed dark and heavy with only the vaguest suggestions of dreams.

When he rose for last watch as he'd been assigned, Sabiqah was already sitting in the center of the camp waiting for him.

"I woke up a bit early, wasn't worth going back to sleep," she said. Her black fur blended into the night a fair bit, but her green eyes shone strangely bright in the flicker of the hedgeflame torch he carried. Behind her, he could see Chioma and Xiansu retreating to their own tent. The two Somonei slept out in the open, wrapped up in their sleeping-meditations to protect them from the elements and any small creatures that might want to approach or take a bite.

It looked very peaceful, if a little eerie, the small shimmer it put around them, the expression of mixed serenity and unconscious-trained concentration on their faces. He made sure not to look too long, especially at Shu.

God damn it, every god damn it, even the Praedhc ones, he hoped this inconvenient little crush passed soon.

Sabiqah was looking at him, and he wondered what she saw, but talking wasn't something you did on watch unless it was absolutely necessary, so he held his peace, held it until the sun began to rise over the Western horizon and the others started to stir again.

So. First day in the Abwaild. First morning. Time to eat breakfast and get moving.

He surveyed his thoughts and found they formed an endless line, only it wasn't a line because three or four always wanted his attention at once, so he breathed deep, started sorting them out, discarding the vast majority that just weren't any help right now.

"Ready for this?" Sabiqah said softly, the first words she'd spoken in their four-hour watch.

"No," he said. "I don't think any of us are. But we're going to do it anyway. Aren't we."

She mrowled out a warm, gentle laugh. "Yep. That's life if anything is."

He laughed too, and finished packing up his tent. "I suppose. And if nothing else, this promises to be a very interesting day. No Fallen's ever set foot in this particular part of the Abwaild before, and the farther away from the Siinlan we get..." He let his words trail off, because there was too much for him to say it all, and he knew she already understood.

"Yep," she said. "We're the first to step here and, God willing, we'll do it twice. I've resigned myself to the possibility of dying out here, but let's try not to do it, yes?"

"Absolutely," he said, and started in on his carefully rehydrated breakfast. "Not dying is almost always a good idea."