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When her friend collapsed, Fabel's head cleared. There had been the illusion, if just for a few minutes, that every one was there for a purpose, that Vania knew what she was doing, that she might even lead them somewhere. Now that the semblance of leadership was gone, there was a vacuum to be filled. Sure, she was worn out and baffled just like every one else, but she realized that they could not just stay there like pet dogs waiting for their masters to come home.

Fabel stood up. "Whoever can stand, stand," she ordered, her voice accustomed to command. "And help those who cannot. We must leave. They will come back. We must go...South."

Now, most people in Feretris didn't know what lay south, unless perhaps they themselves had been captured from there. Although a good minority of slaves had been captured from the plains, many of them had been captured at a young age where memory is not so reliable. That, and the anti-information campaigns of Feretris had wriggled a worm of doubt into most minds while it infiltrated true stories of the plains with untruths. The plains were as far away as Tok; they may as well have to cross a mountain to get to it, what with the natural fatigue and the unnatural myths planted by Feretris hindering their way.

Fabel was not so socially aware that she realized all this. All she knew was that she didn't really want to go there, and she could bet that most of these people didn't want to either. But there was the slight chance that the plains were not full of monsters and vicious heathens, or at least that they would not run into them. Staying here was, in contrast, certain death.

As they reached the end of their first day of travel, bickering began to pierce the haphazard camp. Although precious few of them knew something about making camp, they were trained to do so in the woods, and not in this open grass. Every one was frightened, and not sure what was going on. Fabel didn't know either; they could run into any thing out there!

So far, the journey had been safe enough, but stopping for the night in the middle of nowhere brought up grumbling and complaints. Every one was stretched to their last nerve, either injured or taking care of the injured, and hungry, and frightened, with no hope for what might happen next.

Fabel was only concerned for her friend, and not so much these strangers, except that she might need them to help take care of them.

Fabel did not have many people hanging around her, but she did mysteriously have people come up to her to ask her questions. She found it nerve wracking, and felt like her responses slipped out like bubbling mud from deep in the earth. Many of her responses seemed to satisfy, although she couldn't rightly remember what all she said. When her answers didn't satisfy, the questioner would brood uncertainly and end up asking some one else. So, they were depending on her to some extent, but neither was she their only leader. In fact, part of her assumed leadership role was actually coming from the fact that she was seeing to Vania's care, for Vania they truly wondered about and admired.

Fabel would sit by Vania, wiping her forehead and wondering about when and how to feed her, until Vania would stir from her slumber. She found herself wondering why it was so that so many of her kind could hurt with their magic, but not heal. If she had known that they did, in fact, have a capacity to heal that had been ignored for generations, she would have burned with frustration and guilt.

((I'm sidetracking our characters so that we have something to post while we're waiting on Roka))

Sverrir's group had migrated to where Cain was, simply because Cain was at that moment on the fringe of the group, and they were having a private conversation. Fabel had noticed the divergence, and wandered in that direction herself to find out what was going on. They were currently camped, it being dusk, so nobody needed her to pretend she knew what direction they should be going in. Her friend, Vania, seemed to sleep peacefully now, and had managed to eat something.

Sverrir's group was idly discussing their experiences in Feretris, the life they had just left behind. The group was mostly men, with a one or two women who were excited to be out of what they considered a corrupt system, and they listened to the men in facination, finding out for the first time just how human they were. The conversation floated between past incidences, mostly incidences of injustice, to their current situation. Some of the men were unhappy to be traveling with women at all, though they disguised their distrust carefully as distrust of the current leadership. There were fewer of them than the women, and the subtext seemed to point towards a purposeful, but hopefully silent and peaceful, splitting of the group. Fabel had not arrived yet.

Fabel's arrival broke up the immediate conversation, which made her suspicious. She didn't hide her suspicion well, since she was used to treating men as dumb animals. Besides, she was mentally exhausted from the recent goings on, and actually could not imagine that the group would want to split up, as she saw that as being entirely unbeneficial for every one involved.

"Is every thing alright?" she demanded. "Any one hurt?"

Her second question was one that they could truthfully answer. One of the older men, well past middle age, spoke up; "Hurt, no. Many of us are hungry, and wondering what we might hunt with." Almost nobody had weapons because they had all been stripped during their capture. During the fight, some may have been picked up, but every one was too afraid to ask who was armed and who was not.

Fabel noted the age of the man, which in some ways comforted her. Although age in men was not generally respected back in Feretris, she felt her own youth out on this open field. This man might actually have some limited experience out in the wild. She took a chance. "Perhaps you could take an inventory of skills and a hunting trip could be organized. We are all hungry, but I'm afraid that I don't know how I could help hunt."

Fabel had set two guards, which were needed not only to aid Vania for when she did wake, but also to keep her from the curious hands that milled around the camp. She'd done a mysterious thing, and magic had a tendency to illicit both the best and worst in people. Fabel was paranoid that somehow her friend would be the target of a murderer, to the exclusion of all other possible conspiracies in camp.

When Vania woke, Fabel was finally asleep. She had practically collapsed after talking with the strange gathering of men near the edge of camp. She couldn't deal with everybody's problems right now, and had laid some of the burden on others.

One of the guards, a woman, chided Vania for trying to move, and offered her a precious drink of water from a skein.

"Every one is asleep right now," her guard offered. "How are you feeling? You fell out in the middle of chanting, it seemed. Was that magic? Is that why you fainted? We couldn't find any large injuries."

The guard could offer little information about the group's status, except that those who were seriously injured were, for the most part, stagnating and showed neither hope nor doom for their recovery. Supplies were already stretched, and they had yet to meet any one on the plains. She had heard that, although essentially a wilderness, that the plains were full of wild people. No one was quite sure whether they were lucky or unlucky not to have met any plains people, but the natives were probably purposefully avoiding them.

[ Ah. Sorry for not posting much. There just doesn't seem like a lot for me to do. ]

Cain's eyes flickered over to the other group of people on the outskirts, and shrugged. He would have ample oppurtunity to escape anytime. Shrugging, he returne to camp. Hopefully, there would be some food to revitalize himself.