01.18.2016
He and the Council sat down with their wagons and things, unsure of what to do next. The rest of the families and people made their way along the trail, on to Bansuth. But the trip would take multiple days. The path was hard and many large boulders broke the road’s surface. They had been too large to move when the road was built. And the path was quite steep in areas. Many grades up and down along the path.
The road wasn’t particularly well-traveled either. Bansuthians considered Harsenth and all the other small towns as derelict and stupid. Bansuth was indeed larger by many times, but the people living there were just as intelligent, hard-working, and driven to do something with their lives. The sixty thousand people of Bansuth dwarfed the three thousand who lived out on the Far Finger, but Bansuth still needed them.
Farming and logging were growing in demand, however begrudgingly the people of Bansuth would admit to their reliance on the Far Finger. The harsh terrain of the Finger kept most people away, but the ones living there were rugged and willing to put in the effort to take the land.
They marched along and made good progress during the warm day. Far off in the distance toward the range of mountains, the knuckles that separated the Finger from the rest of the continent. They never lost their snowy caps, and the crags stood out in the daylight as dark granite.
The sun fell past the knuckles and the land fell into twilight. Many families stopped for the evening. Fires lept up here and there, dotting the forest with light and smoke. They cooked their dinners and the fires were put out before nightfall. Some industrious folks packed up after dinner and marched onward. They didn’t intend to stop until they were even further from the wolf and the remains of Chustal and Foulal.
The rest made their beds where they could, and the kids fell to sleep after running around and playing before and after dinner. Parents stayed up and formed makeshift guard parties to keep an eye out for any rousings tonight. From the path, one could make out Harsenth in the distance. The lanterns people left on as they fled had not burned out yet. And the clearing in the trees that the homes had needed was a fingerprint of the city.
The night thickened, the towns lights blinked in the distance, some popping out of existence as their fuel ran out. A group had hauled a log out of the forest and sat it across the path so they would have something to sit on as they watched the peaceful night. Snoring floating through the trees and some talk and laughter as well. The group had been chatting but went silent as they saw Harsenth erupt in flames. The wolf had come.