As they walked, the horse’s large, white feathered hooves kicked up a thick cloud of dust from the dry trail. Already Alessandra was dirty and tired, her throat burned from the dusty air, no matter how often she tried to flush it with water from her waterskin. Her eyes were drooping from lack of a good night’s sleep and her muscles were trembling with fatigue. They were strained from the long spans of time spent in one position or another combined with the tremendous energy her magic demanded. She longed to rest in the welcoming boughs of her family’s bower.

The trails the pair followed were all ones she knew by heart. This world, or at least this part of it, was hers. She had explored these paths as a child and now, thirty some years later, she knew them all. The trail they currently followed meandered near the river until it met a small source-fed creek. After that the river became a minefield of rapids before tumbling over a rocky ledge and cascading down in a turbulent set of waterfalls before plunging into a deep pool. At the creek the trail crossed to the other side and lead to a steep cliff-walk down to the pool. Another trail, this one forged by her people, followed the creek towards its source. Her tribe’s encampment was near the source of the creek.

Both the river and the creek bed were wider than the water that trickled through them. Even the source could not keep up with the dry conditions. The dry places on the edge of the creek were beginning to crack and the mud was drying. The scent of dead and rotting fish filled the place where the creek met the river and both seemed so much shallower than Alissandra remembered from her youth. The rain must come soon or it would be more than hunger from which her people suffered.

The pair turned to follow the creek when its nearly empty bed came up before them. The horse knew where he was going. A questioning whicker of sound from the horse brought Alissandra back to herself just as the signal fire flared up in the darkness as they rounded a curve in the creek’s path. Her eyes narrowed reflexively even as they sought to adjust to the light. She’d been walking in the dark for so long that the bright light of the fire stung her eyes. They began to water as she walked next to the horse, her back straight for the first time in hours. The pair stepped into the light where three warriors waited to welcome those who announced their presence properly; scattered in the darkness circling the encampment were more warriors to take care of those who didn’t.

“Welcome back Lissa,” greeted Hiridin; he was one of the warriors and her father’s friend. A surprised smile lit his face as he spotted the red chevron, now dry, on her left cheek. “Your return will be rejoiced.” As Hiridin stepped forward to see just what prey Alissandra had brought down the hollows under his cheek bones caught the light, casting his eyes in shadows and giving his face a frightful appearance.

“I have cleaned it already, I will take it to the cookfires immediately.” She said quietly as she drew back from Hiridin. His face looked startlingly like the masks the dead were laid to rest with.

Already the cook fires were lit and the gatherers brought out the fruits and nuts of their labor. There would be meat this day and her tribe kin already looked eager for the change. After letting the cooks have the carcass and setting her horse loose, Alissandra made her way through the center of the encampment towards a flight of stairs that curved around the trunk of a tree. The stairs lead to a platform circling the wide trunk just below the first layer of branches.

From there the girl crossed a rope and wood bridge to another and then another platform. The second flight of stairs lead her high into the branches of a tree. There she crossed another rope bridge to the final tree on her journey. The third flight of stairs lead to a door in the tree trunk. The mages of the past had built a dwelling that the tree would accept as part of itself and life for the tree continued. Though the growth only increased above and around the bower every year the rooms grew larger. Alissandra dropped her trophies in the center of the room she shared with her parents and stumbled towards her pallet. There she dropped to the floor and into sleep almost immediately.