>"That's the plan."
>Kagerou chuckles a little uncomfortably, then looks up at the crescent of moonlight as it passes between a gap in the trees and takes a slow, measured breath.
>Hey, she volunteered for this gig. We'dve been a fool to turn her down.
>"I didn't come all this way to lose. I got too much to do when I get back home to die here."
>She nods. "Right."
>The two of you carry on like this for a while, Kagerou leading you over the uneven terrain and weaving purposefully between thick stands of elm and maple, the uncertainty in her frame slowing her pace only slightly. Every now and again you exchange a few words, though she keeps wide of the topic of your illness - deliberately, you have to assume. You're not fully sure if that's intended for your benefit or her own. She asks a little of Braston and your time on the skies, offering only a few words of her own quiet life; you feel this is as much because she believes there is little worth saying about it than any sense of privacy. She appears to lead a humble life in a humble corner of the world and, as best as you can tell, seems content with this. In other circumstances, you would probably be dismissive, perhaps even a little derisive; but as different as the two of you seem to be, it is hard to think ill of someone who is extending themselves so much on your behalf.
>She is not very much like how you might have imagined a werewolf to be - quiet, even gentle. The claws seem somehow unbecoming on her. Were it not for her nigh-instinctive knowledge of the terrain through which you're travelling, you'd probably even have assumed she had place on any serious expedition. Perhaps things are different when the moon is full?
>After a little while, the placid strains of slowly moving water reach your ears from the west, the Grau long silent behind you. It is the first real sign of progress in over an hour, if you're honest.
>"We're getting close to the grotto now," Kagerou says.
>The trees thin to broad patches of tangled scrub and the odd stunted tree clinging stubbornly to increasingly rocky soil as the water comes into view; the change in terrain is abrupt and almost jarring after so long trekking through the homogeneous forest behind you. It is more a small pond than a branch of the river, much wider and more placid than the Grau through still very much longer than it is broad. The opposite shore is framed by a sheer wall of rock, its surface smooth and angular, as though it had been hewn in haphazard fashion by some giant chisel. You cannot immediately spot the quartz formation Kagerou told you marked the grotto entrance, but you're virtually certain this is the place to look for it.
