Strange Remains
Part 10
Menzo resumed tracking though not without the occasional mental reminder to disregard the tricks his mind kept playing. For over an hour, he scoured the areas where the light shone down all around the eerie structure but he could not find a single hint that he could separate from the events he had witnessed that afternoon. Frustrated and exhausted, he trod back towards Yavan who, as it turned out, had been sketching the cairn in charcoal.
“I didn’t find anything that points to something other than what Joren and the beast probably caused,” he said as he stepped behind his mentor’s shoulder. “Nor any indication that Trina, the girl that went missing, was ever anywhere near here.”
“Hm. Let me just finish this.”
Annotations covered the page but having not learned to read well and feeling too tired to bother with deciphering the scrawl, he instead observed Yavan as the man worked. He was advanced enough in years to have graying hair that receded above his temples. Crow’s feet creased deeper when he squinted and his skin seemed leathery as if it had often seen the sun, which reminded the young man of his own father with whom he had spent most of his life outside.
The comparison made it such that being near the Vigil led to feeling calmer as, long ago, he had felt with his father on his first night out in the woods as a child. Something about the man’s steady demeanor felt very much like his father’s and that appeased him.
Finally, just as Menzo’s eyelids began to feel heavy, Yavan packed up his gear and tucked it away. At his request, Menzo quickly walked him through the dramatic events as he had seen them. Once that was done, they determined that it was no use trying to track Mirrhe’s movements at such a late hour and instead headed back to the village where, without further ado, both retreated for the night on the promise of an early meeting the next morning.
To Menzo, however, the night was to be very short indeed. Despite his weariness, he could not shake the foreboding sentiment that had come with Yavan’s earlier words. It felt as though much darker things lurked unseen and the village that had once felt generally safe was no longer a source of comfort. Exhaustion eventually won over but the archer’s dreams were fraught with unease.