<strong>Eshalu - in the wilds of Dra Sirdu, just after sunset</strong><br/><br/>Eshalu reclined on the damp, soft soil and saw the first stars begin to shed their silvery light through the trembling forest canopy. Reliyian's glowing stones cast a pleasant, reddish light, similar to the bioluminescent globules the druids set in the Lodge of Rangers, but with a deeper, more metallic glow. She used her cloak for a blanket, always watchful in her waking slumber of Aeryn curled up beside her.<br/><br/>The night was thick and menacing. It was the time of Moon Huntress, and She Who Stalks in Darkness, and the countless other patron spirits of her Lodge, but on this island, the night was inky, hiding the hideous and the unseen just beyond the range of Eshalu's keen gaze. Her rest was fitful, and she found herself waking from her reverie so often that wakefulness and sleep merged into one state of anxious half-consciousness.<br/><br/>She looked up again at the night sky and the thin fragments of milky light through the dark leaves. She saw clearly and though of how the stars were different on the island. In her homeland she could recognise the lie of the stars in the band of white light the lorekeepers called the River of Life. Now each constellation seemed skewed.<br/><br/>Though she was close to Aeryn, and felt kinship with Reliyian, the silence was troubling. She missed the familiar sound and scent of her Lodge-Sisters and she wondered where the others, sent like her on walkabout following their initiation, would be and whether they would all return. She rose, stretched and took a couple of steps to where Reliyian rested and then circled round the makeshift camp.<br/><br/><em>It's not the same - I'm too far from the Pure Lands and my Sisters.</em>