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It was a calm, black night.

There were stars, of course, sparsely peeking out from behind cloudy veils. The winds were still, the weather balmy rather than cool. The moon formed a sleek crescent on the horizon, a beacon for some faraway traveler.

Its scant light reflected off the white bark of the Grandfather Tree, providing just enough illumination to travel by. This was no Homewood, alive with the nightglow of beetles. But there was no danger, either. There were always noulicorns at the foot of the tree, huddled together in small groups to stay warm. At night, they usually slept, save a Solar user or two whose gentle glow might provide illumination for a prayer or meditation.

But the tree's trunk was vast and wide, and it dwarfed any denizen of Vykeli who might want to come near. The lone noulicorn balanced atop a curling white root couldn't see anyone else.

Guitian couldn't sleep. He wasn't sure why: exhaustion had been tugging his limbs to a halt for days now. He wasn't built for long, hardy journeys into the rest of the Barrens. The trip out here was less burdensome than most: it was considered a pilgrimage, but eventually, almost every noul was lured here. But Guitian hadn't come from the Homewood, and though he'd encountered fellow pilgrims eventually, he'd been stumbling for far longer than he'd been walking, and the lack of preparations had sapped his spindly legs of their strength far earlier.

He'd thought when he'd arrived at the Tree - and even his family knew about the Tree, though they made their home at a little outpost in the dead foothills at the edge of the Barrens - that he'd first collapse, and then perhaps trade some navigational knowledge for a bit of sustenance foraged from the trees surroundings, and then attempt to commune with it. But there was some other knowledge buzzing at the edge of his senses, an unquiet awareness that he did not want to miss this.

He'd set out in this direction a little more than a week ago, and as he'd traveled he'd realized his planning had been poor. He knew generally which way to go, and he was familiar with enough of the Barrens which had made up his home for his whole life. But the farther from home he went, the less he understood what roots were nutritious, and what each rare bird's call meant. Perhaps he should have stopped by the Homewood first, though he'd have been intruding on a culture he barely understood. The noulicorns who lived there, though, knew how to make it to the Tree efficiently, and it would have made for a shorter journey, if he'd planned to rest there a few nights. Instead he'd thought it would make for a shorter journey, to head directly to his destination.

Well, wasn't every noul wrong once?

He opened his parched lips to let air in. It was dry out here, but breath came easier out here than it did on the slopes. Part of it was the tree, powerful and brimming with life. Another was the elevation: he was situated now on a plateau, looking out over cracked earth that seemed even more lonely at night, but it only felt high because all the other land was so desolately flat.

Night was familiar, though, black and constant, though no dusty mirror-pool magnified the moon's slow journey across the sky here.

The branches creaked, and Guitian felt his heart catch in his throat.

Could you blame him? He'd never seen a tree so large before - if the Grandfather Tree was felled, any noulicorn would be crushed in its wake.

Soon it didn't matter, though. He was plunged into a darker landscape - though he wasn't sure he could call it that. It looked like a cavern, actually, though it was cramped, compared to the one he called home. Its walls were clinically straight, the angles all perfectly perpendicular. Mostly, it stank.

That wasn't so unusual, in caverns. It was musty underground, and the wind never moved. But it was strong. Something more than bad air.

Guitian was careful with his hoofsteps, but the ground held sturdy beneath him. It was curiously flat, and it felt like it might slip out from underneath him at any moment. Where was he? Was this what the rest of Vykeli looked like?

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, though, he realized he could not have been so sorely mistaken. He and his family lived in seclusion, but the Others had been everywhere on Vykeli. He'd seen their lonely structures out in the barrens, tall, spindly, and unnervingly perfect. Nothing here was nearly so tall - though the height of the ceiling was generous, for a noulicorn - but that shiny quality was clear in the workmanship here. Everything had been polished to a fault, and the scant light here was well-reflected by these hard surfaces.

He hadn't really thought about it before, but the Others had been alive. Wasn't that strange? It was hard to think about them existing and living like noulicorns did when all Guitian saw was those looming structures strewn throughout the barrens, and the cracks they'd left behind. Here, he could see - if he reared up onto his hind legs - tools. Soft pieces of cloth with cheerfully regular patterns. An array of white stones with blue floral filigree making up the edges.

They seemed more real here, and not just because of the stench. Guitian breathed through his mouth as much as he could, though he realized after a few moments that it meant the stench entered his mouth and clung there instead. He discovered that he was noticing it less and less, though. There was too much to see here, and an unsettling amount of it was beautiful. The Others had made delicate things, too, apparently - he'd found a real book, with pages thinner than leaves and elegantly arranged images and text. Of course Guitian had no hope of understanding it, but it was here.

And when he finally approached the big gleaming thing standing on its own near one of this artificial cavern's walls, bracing his nose for a new hit of that thick funk...

It was not exactly an unfamiliar scent.

No, that didn't meant he knew it well. But decay smelled no matter what lay underneath. Guitian took a breath, bearing up a little to hook his horn into what he'd learned was a handle. Inside he was faced with...rows. Rows of little boxes and bags, and inside those bags, sustenance. Well - something that'd been sustenance, once. Guitian wasn't sure he could identify anything here now, though none of it was quite as rotted as he'd have expected, considering the Others had been gone for decades.

This...it wasn't, perhaps, as beautiful as some of the other things here (those stones awakened something that yearned in Guitian's heart), but they were far more approachable. That had to be a part of a plant, and that...had to be a part of a carcass. Just a small part of one.

Had the Others fed on Vykeli's life, or had they brought their own? His parents had told him that they'd brought dire rats and catbeasts with them. Were these plants Vykeli's past vegetation? What were they?

It was hard to tell. Everything was soft and mushy, once exposed to air, and things that looked like leaves crumbled into nothing on touch. He could find the cloying sweetness of what had to be fruits...

Perhaps it would be best to lay these out somewhere, for better study. Guitian didn't think - well, he'd always been told it was a nouicorn's job to heal Vykeli. But it was already impossible to make it look exactly like it had before. If some of this was nutritious, and easy to produce, especially in the Barrens...

Well, he wasn't sure whether he'd find seeds, or anyone with the ability to restore these. But he could take samples, at least. And for everything else...much of it was colorful. Beautiful.

Wouldn't it be fitting, to turn what the Others had forsaken into something lovely to admire?