Sea of Songs
an excerpt

The sun is rising over the pale landscape ahead, changing what was monochromatic and somehow pure to add colour to all things.

Mountains, faint in the distance, hold a tinge of dark purple colouring, edges clear and dark against the ice-white sky, which begins to lighten. A grassy field, extending for miles before them, picks up a tint of faded green, slowly, and as the dawn breaks, burned areas can be distinguished against the dying green, where fragments of wood and metal lie in positions that can only have signified the presence of houses.

In this desolation of abandonment or death, huts and greater structures with fire and other possible causes for their destruction, can be told one from another by a watcher trained to do so.

But this girl is not. She breathes out, a sound not unlike a sigh, and slides thin arms around her knees, drawn up to her chest, leaning back against a tree at the top of the hill where she waits.

There is no life here, at least not that she can see. Despite her lack of any powers of observation that might be out of the ordinary, her eyes are as sharp as a hawk’s. The person for whom she waits has not yet appeared. Shivering, she pulls her ragged, dew-damp cloak more tightly about her shoulders against the elements – it is dry, and no longer as cold as it had been earlier, out of the copse and in the path of the biting wind, but it is still winter in this part of the world and as such, not the most pleasant weather in which to be away from shelter.

The sun is rising, and with it brings a little warmth to melt the ice of the cloudless sky. She is lucky. The assignation could have been made for midnight on a night with flurrying snow and the snowdrifts that come with it, but they have been lucky, and her visitor will soon be here.

Suddenly conscious of a movement far out in the field, she mentally shakes herself out of the reverie induced by cold and inaction, and straightens up slowly, carefully (though not a little stiffly), against the thick trunk of the tree, being sure to stay well in cover. There are times when her rail-thin, petite stature avails her well, and this may be one of those times. She is uncertain of the motives behind this meeting and its chosen schedule.

If it has to do with the things she has seen of late, she will not be especially surprised. But if it is not related to that, then what? Regardless, arranging to meet at a time barely after dawn in such a remote place is making her more than a little uncomfortable. She has heard stories…