room18/LightFire

21.1.2023  :  ROOM 18  :  Light The Fire

Fortunately the fire in the centre of the island has a stack of dry logs and tinder inside its stone ring. Using the fire-bow from your backpack you get it alight easily. The fire-bow is a pleasure to use, almost as if enchanted or perhaps because of the power of this place. Fire heat soothes you. As shadows flicker into the trees at the edge of the clearing you feel a wash of safety, a deep peace flow through the island. 

Your senses expand into the darkness of the evening, you feel your self awakening. All of your experiences so far in this strange world fall easily into place. You feel wholesome and energised, ready for whatever happens. The sensation that all this is supposed to be happening fulfils you. 

From the shadows surrounding you step pale blue-white, translucent figures. Ghosts! Hundreds of them encircle you. They are all watching. You feel compassion from them. They move slowly toward you, not at all threatening but patient and kind. They understand the situation and are here to help you. 

They keep walking toward you, their ranks closing as they draw closer, seeming to blend into each other. You accept there is nothing you can do apart from perhaps screaming in fear and running randomly into the forest. But you do not feel fear. Only understanding. The ghosts move closer and closer until they until they step into you! 

Then as one single entity they shoot up through you into the sky. For a briefest of moments you are taken up with them, high above the land, into the fog through which you can see as if it is a huge lens spreading from coast to coast. You have been showed a vision of the continent and where certain key features are in relation to each other. 

A vast forest stretching to the west, the central plains a long strip containing this patch of swamp, cobblestone roads crossing the lands,  so many empty villages and towns, hills rising to the east and ending abruptly atop a steep cliffside. To the south, fishing villages and the one intact town on the continent, the port where a variety of ships of different styles are docked. To the north of the meadow is a landscaped crater rising above the meadow containing buildings, agricultural farmland, many sorts of plants in rowed terraces. Not far north of that the plains break into an even more dry desert which crumbles into canyons and craggy pillars jutting up from a savage sea which smashes against them endlessly. There are coastal villages along the edges of the forest. 

This is as far as you can see. The ships promise that travel is possible to other continents, perhaps like this one or vastly different. Then as abruptly as you were showed this vision, you are once again in your body, gasping for air, discovering it has aches and pains you never were previously aware of. The ghosts are gone. The fire is burning. You sleep.

The next morning you make a decision which direction to go.

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