Excerpt:

"...she watched the miles of woodland slip by, black tree trunks half-obscured by a mist that had risen up with the rain. The once brightly-colored leaves had been pelted by the rain into a dull brown carpet; on this particular part of the road, the thin trees grew right up to the edges of the stone, and the clatter of the hooves and the wagon wheels were finally muted, moving slowly over rain-slick leaves.

There was a chill in the air that seemed to cling to Bunny's cloak, no matter how tightly she pulled it around her. She glanced once again at the muscled back of Yuan, who wore nothing but a shortsleeved tunic, and marveled that he could feel his arms at all. Her breath clouded slightly in front of her face, an echo of the fog among the trees.

Every now and then something strange and non-linear faded in through the milky haze, and she would watch it as it passed, trying to guess what it was before it drifted out of sight along with that section of forest. She saw numerous fallen logs, and several mossy boulders; once she was sure she saw a flash of white, the raised tail of a deer as it fled.

But then there was a shape that did not change with the landscape; a strange, lumpy silhouette with a heavy upper part and a slender lower, almost like a parody of a man; a troll, rather, with a knobbly skull and broken knees, for what else would make it limp so?

It took a few minutes for Bunny's tired brain to register what her eyes had seen: The shape was moving? It was indeed, keeping pace with them barely three yards into the shelter of the wood. And whatever it was, it was not human, nor any beast she'd ever seen.

She caught a gleam of yellow eyes as it turned her way, and was startled into reality. This was no dream; there was something out there."