Reaping Season
an excerpt

Beyond the western ridge that bordered Tol Maruhn, the forest grew to gnarled, dizzying breadth, rising above the Tol itself, spreading over the hills
like a lush carpet of deadly green. Even generations of settlements and forestry had not pushed back that primordial forest very far; the Valavanaed was
larger than men, it was said, and would continue long after men, and their ways, had come and gone. A thousand years of axe and fire had made only the
merest dent in the lush, unbridled expanse of that forest, and few of the settles built on the edge of that forest remained for long. Wolves and winter
drove them back, and whole families often disappeared on the brink of the brambled ruin, never found again, save sometimes for the bones, bleached white
by a humid summer, left bare in the wilderness for wanderers to find... and be warned.

Arani Maruhn walked in this wilderness now, with the curious sensation of being both confident and terrified. This was no wide, polite forest, sparsely
populated and easy to walk in -- not like the copses surrounding the Tol, which had been bred like pets into submission. Here the Valavanaed ran riot,
and Arani moved slowly, picking nearly every step, lest a careless move send her into the brush or down a gully, to break a leg and join the
unlucky bones of fireside legends.