Laugavegur, A Hinterland Journey

Chapter 7 - Into the Highlands

Anja, Tokki, and Skari walked deeper into the volatile interior of the highlands above Fjallabak. They passed sulfurous springs that bubbled and burped, smelling distinctly of eggs too long in the coop. They passed cracks in the land where scalding air roared and stung the eyes. Outside these small oases of heat, the temperature began to drop as they climbed higher and higher. Snow fields grew more frequent as the moss became less so. The pale white of the snow played off the mosses in the valleys to create a vivid tapestry of interwoven color splashed across the ridge lines on either side of them. Skari set the pace, his long legs churning slowly as he wound his way up steep gullies and across snow-strewn flats. At the top of a rise, he stopped, leaning on his staff, his chest heaving with exertion. His body was responding to the increase in activity, but he cursed the last few sedentary years that made the climbs all the more difficult.

"It... gets... tougher every... time," he gasped.

"It was a steep climb," Tokki said patting Skari on his back sympathetically while munching on a dry biscuit.

Skari noticed the boy's breathing wasn't the slightest bit labored.

"Oh, to be young..." Skari breathed.

"Have you been to Ravendome before?" asked Anja.

"Several times," Skari replied, his wheezing diminishing somewhat. Anja pulled a waterskin off her pack and handed it to Skari who accepted it gratefully.

"Trade?" asked Anja setting her pack down for the moment. "That seems a strange, but potentially profitable employment for a seer."

Skari's eyes twinkled. "No. Though I have traveled a lot, commerce has played but a small role in those journeys."

"I could tell you weren't wealthy." Tokki said, naive to his impertinence.

"Oh?" asked Skari, his bushy eyebrows raised.

"You live in a cave," Tokki continued obliviously devouring his biscuit. "You don't have a lot of money, right?"

"Tokki!" Anja scolded, but Skari just laughed.

"Well, that is true," Skari allowed. "But only a fool measures wealth solely by the acquisition of money."

Tokki turned this thought over a few times in his mind. He gazed out at the thickening snow fields. Many of them were coated with soot and ash blown from the fires of the previous day. There was great value in his being at this spot, safe and with his sister, while so many others had perished in the fires. How had he overlooked it before? How much would Bresla have paid to be safe? What would it be worth to Arden to be here, safe with his Magdali? Tokki took a deep breath, imagining that he was taking in the air over one of the distant ridges. It filled him, the cool living bite in his lungs.

Anja bent down and picked up a piece of rock from the ground. It was black and vitreous, reflecting the sun's light like unblemished sea ice. Now that she had seen it up close, she noticed it everywhere. The ground was littered with glassy fragments. She ran a finger along the side of the piece, admiring the keen edge that it held. "Sharper than abbey wine," she mused.

"That is obsidian," Skari observed. "Glass that was forged when the mountain fires met the ice. It is a beautiful manifestation of Huldu philosophy. Perfect balance. What you are seeing here is the residue left from a great battle that took place long ago between the two great powers of the Folkland; Fire and Ice. As the two armies slammed together, their bodies were united and shattered. The obsidian was forged amid great cataclysm." Anja held up a particularly clear piece. The sun shone through it like a prism, scattering a colorful spectrum across the ground.

"Woah," Tokki sighed, moving his hand amid the colors.

"That's perlite. Stone of the Sun," said Skari. "There was a bit more ice than fire in the battle that forged that stone."

Anja rocked the piece back and forth, throwing rainbows across the ground. "It is incredible," she said, placing the piece of perlite delicately in her rucksack. Tokki grabbed a few dagger-shaped pieces of obsidian and wrapped them in a cloth before placing them in his pack. "In case we meet more golems."

"Golems are rather hard for stabbing," Skari observed. "Being rock and all."

"There may be other things... more stab-able things," Tokki justified.

"Come, we've several more miles to go before we reach Ravendome," Skari said, hefting his pack to his shoulder. "And any trip to Ravendome is all the better if you arrive in time for dinner!"

I like knowing, scientifically, how natural processes work; like how obsidian forms. However, I really love imagining how processes might work in a fantasy world, where different rules of nature apply. 

And of course the dwarves of Ravendome will throw a feast of welcome for our friends... right? Right??