27 Coloine
We came out of the forest mid-afternoon and turned north to follow the foothills. That was a shock. This part of Balaen is, or was, all forest—it doesn’t even have a name, just The Forest. But now there are low hills covered in scrub interspersed with the trees, and the weird thing is it doesn’t look torn up the way you’d expect if the worlds were mashed together. It looks as if the landscape has been this way forever, thick forest growing right up to where the hills begin, then clumps of trees here and there between the hills and none growing on them.
I’m starting to worry about my ability to recognize landmarks. I know there’s a town near here, right where the Royal Road enters the forest, but with the hills, I’m not sure exactly where it is anymore. I hope it wasn’t destroyed by the landscape changing, though Cederic did
Just writing his name struck me with the most awful heartsickness. It’s not like I want those dreams to persist—I’ve never had sex dreams before, and I feel so embarrassed to think Jeddan might see and know what’s happening—but they feel like a connection to him I don’t want to give up.
We’re traveling farther from Colosse every day, every step, and that breaks my heart more. If he knew where I was, he’d have come after me, done some kathana to bring me back, which means he doesn’t know where I am and is suffering as much as I am—more, because he has no reason not to believe the convergence kathana killed me. I wonder what he does to keep his mind off it. I at least have Jeddan to talk to and pouvrin to think about, and when we stop for the night I’m so weary I don’t have the energy to worry about Cederic. And then I dream.
No. I’m writing this down so I don’t fall into despair. Pouvrin. Today I tried to isolate the similarities between the walk-through-walls pouvra and the concealment pouvra. Though I’m not sure what good it will do. I need a third companion pouvra to those two for more points of comparison. Possibly it’s time to get Jeddan to teach me the see-inside pouvra. And I need to apply more logic to our studies. I’m used to learning from books, so this is new and uncertain, but I see no reason Jeddan and I can’t learn from each other.