Flashback Navigating the Sea

[Fallan Windchaser]

85 Spring, 508AV

Spring had come and now was almost gone which meant that the Windchaser family were moving into their Summer range and the last chance to sell stock before the Fall arrived and they would once more join the Run back down to the warmer climes above the deserts for the Winter.

Fallan had finished his period of watch upon the herd and now his time was his own, at least for a short time for their were duties which would await him on his return to the Pavilion. Even now, this time of his own had its own expectations for he intended if possible with something to add to the Pavilions store of food, firewood or anything else useful that he might be able to find.

The herd had vanished behind him and now he tracked ahead of their route, but going outside of that corridor which would be bounded by the path of Pavilion and herd for that area was likely to receive closer attention by those who rode to and fro as the two moved Northwards but rarely on exactly the same path as both had need of grazing though often enough the two were within earshot.

Nudging Stormdancers flank he headed her up a slight rise and paused at the top to get a feel for the land and to see if there was anything interesting to see. He was aware of the fact that he silhouetted himself by so doing but this day he felt reckless enough to do so. His Strider shifted under him as he turned his body to take in the view from one horizon to another. It would be easy to get lost here especially if he lost Stormdancer somehow and her connection to the web. His own webbing skills would likely be enough to summon help even if they could not actually manage to extricate him from the situation that he had put himself into.

On a day like this it should not really be possible for him to get lost, at least not badly and not so badly that a search party could not find him. That however would be very hard to live down afterwards and like enough he would never live long enough to hear the last of the tale.

Some things were simple guides to keeping direction, so long as attention was paid to them at least. The path that Syna and Leth took through the sky were predictable, especially for someone who lived outdoors and could track their progress every day. So long as he allowed for that movement he would always know roughly what direction that he travelled in at any time. With that information he could reverse his course and attempt to unpick it to the point that he came to a point he recognised. For that reason it was always important to keep an eye on the view backwards, the way he had come. Not only was it common sense from a safety point of view, it was also the case that things often looked different from behind than they did from the front and he would need to know that view if he were to retrace his steps.

[Fallan Windchaser]

The sight of Syna as she passes across the sky, too bright for mere mortals to look at, was not the only factor that could be used to know the path that she made across the sky. There were times when the sky was overcast or there was little visibility such as rain, snow or fog where she could not be seen but still her influence was felt on the ground below for the plants and landscape operated on very different timescales to people.

A Drykas needed to be able to cross the Sea of Grass regardless of the weather, no matter if Syna shone or the rain battered down in sheets. There were questions of survival that were above that but the fact remained that a Drykas needed the ability to move across a landscape that at times could appear featureless to the untrained eye. A trained eye however was able to pick out details that the untrained would not and to then draw conclusions based on that. Much of it was common sense, or so at least it appeared to Fallan but then as his father was wont to say, there was nothing common about common sense. It was indeed more the case that common sense was based on hindsight, and having made a mistake the causes of which could later be understood and avoided again, selective memory erased the failure.

Common sense then told of many things in relation to the path of Syna and of the prevailing winds in parts of the Sea. Flowers turned their heads towards her light, plants grew up to worship her, their leaves turned to catch her light. The plants that favoured Leth grew in the shade, and mosses could be found growing most vigorously on the sides where her light did not bake them. The wind too sculpted bushes which grew out in exposed areas. With experience even the sides of gullies cut by water and small valleys through the hills, all of these contained unique areas, all of them different and most of them telling the story of how much Syna blessed them with her light.

A Drykas with their eyes open, as Fallans eyes had been taught to be open did not fail to miss these signs and whilst they did not allow them to pinpoint their location, they did allow them to understand the directions. A common failing of travellers where visibility was restricted was to end up travelling in circles, but no experienced navigator should ever have this befall them in these plains.

As his eyes tracked across the landscape around him, noting the way that it folded into creases, for only marshlands tended to be perfectly flat, his experienced eye also noted the colours of plants; the shaded places where the plants were still behind and the sunny ones where the grasses reached up for their summer height. All were parts of a tapestry that to an experienced eye was far from being just a bland grassland.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With a shift in weight he set Stormdancer back into motion and as he did so he had chosen his path towards a small valley that looked promising. Valley was something of an exaggeration in this flat land, but he knew that by the time he had gotten to the bottom of the slope that he now descended it would be out of sight and he would have only his memory to guide him through the maze between him and his objective. He knew from bitter experience that left to his own devices he would fail to find the valley for once it was out of sight, so too it was hard to avoid being turned around, especially as now when he followed the flow of the ground, following first one small valley and then the next, the changes in direction subtle and misleading.

He could use the sun to assist him in keeping in the right direction but that was a very vague thing. Better was when there was something on the horizon that was more or less in the right direction so that every time he surfaced onto high ground he could correct his route. Rarely though was that an option out here, though it would start to happen as he nearly Sylira. Instead he needed to work in much shorter legs and to build a model in his head for where he was and where he had been. It also meant regaining height when needed to get a new view of the countryside and to do it often enough that it was still recognisable from the last view.

Landmarks such as they were out here were a key to travel and sometimes the cairns used by the webbers served the purpose well enough especially when they were built onto high points, though he resisted the temptation as yet to lay by one and to dive deep within, riding the channel to some far place.

Grassy knoll passed him by, another tick on his mental checklist, another feature on his mental map and he diverted to the right, following the lay of the land, in tune with it as far as he could be and wondering where this might lead and what he might find down it. Rarely was he disappointed for every valley held a secret of some sort even if it was only the revelation of something new, a place he had never been before, but then he was easily satisfied when it came to what the Sea of Grass had to offer.