After flying some miles away from the site where Lochinvar encountered the Abaddonian hog, he landed at a suitable campsite. The deformed child rescued from the tree was incoherent and apparently exhausted, falling asleep and waking several times during the flight. The child seems to be sleeping more easily now that they have landed, curled up inside the ranger's spare blanket.

Lochinvar sits leaning against a tree, mindful about watching and listening for any sign of the hog – or anything else – coming this way. It's also his first chance to really see who he rescued. "Vartan, yet not quite," he muses to himself. "I wonder… were you from my village?"

The child whimpers a little, turning on to his side and throwing one partly scaled wing over his head, though he doesn't seem to wake. Reddish light from the setting sun casts long shadows across the small clearing, forming stark lines of red and black.

The Vartan/Hekoye sighs a little to himself, glancing over at the sunset, hoping that this child will provide him with some answers. What happened to his village? Where did everyone go? What happened to his parents? For now, though, he lets the child sleep.

The next morning dawns through a light drizzle that mists every surface with a light sheen of water, but doesn't penetrate Lochinvar's sturdy traveling gear. The Hekoye is fixing breakfast when he hears the child stir. When he turns to look, he sees the deformed young being sitting upright, watching him intently through wide, round eyes.

The Ranger's ears hear the child stir, and turns to look to look at him, smiling a little. "Well, good morning," he says, and offers, "breakfast?"

The child's look is apprehensive, but his malformed beak/mouth twists in what might be an approximation of a Vartan smile. "Hi," he replies shyly, the single syllable distorted. "Yes. Please," he adds as an afterthought.

Lochinvar nods, and turns back to continue with his preparations. "So," he asks, "my name is Lochinvar. What's yours?"

"Selavars," the boy replies, then shakes his head. "Elavars," he repeats, a little more distinctly, an unhappy look on his face at the sound of his own voice. The name sounds familiar to Lochinvar.

"Elavars? That's a good name," Lochinvar replies, head tilting slightly while he tries to place the name. "Are you from around these parts, Elavars?"

The child nods, his gaze fixed on the food the Hekoye has been preparing. "Mmmhmm."

"Me too," says the Hekoye. "In fact, I used to live in the village a few miles back the way we came from. Then I moved away to Rephidim." He turns to look at Elavars again, and grins. "Don't worry, it's almost ready."

After searching his mind for some moments, the Hekoye places where he's seen the name before: in one of his mother's letters, she mentioned a child by that name; he had broken one of her shutters while playing a game, and been quite penitent about the incident.

"Me too," the boy says softly, looking a little more perky at the mention of food soon.

Lochinvar nods a little. "Ah, here we go," he says, taking a small rodentish creature that's on a stick off a flame, and offers it to the boy. "I hope you like marmoose?" At the same time, he looks over the boy's strange features again. He cannot remember anything in his mother's letters about these strange deformities.

The boy nods eagerly, seizing on the creature and tearing flesh from the cooked form ravenously, with no regard for manners or grace, not even noticing Lochinvar's scrutiny. His features are appallingly unattractive, with feathers flaking loose from his head and arms to be replaced by patches of similarly-colored scales. His beak/muzzle is especially grotesque – small teeth grow from the back of the lower right side, and on the upper left end, and much of the lower portion of the beak is now more like a lizard's muzzle. The halves of his mouth do not meet evenly except near the tip, where both ends have a beak-like appearance. Although Lochinvar hasn't had much opportunity to study the child previously, the scales seem even more dominant on his body and face than before, as if the patches of scaled skin are growing.

The coyote takes the other tree-rodent he was preparing from the flames, and goes over to crouch down in front of the boy. After taking a bite from the critter, he asks, "Elavars … I need to ask you a few things, and some of these things … may be difficult for you. Do you think you could do that?"

At first, the boy doesn't react to Lochinvar's question, still intent on the remainder of his meal. As he strips the marmoose down to the skeleton, and starts picking as the stray bits of meat on the bones, however, he pauses to look at the coyote. He tilts his head, then nods. "Okay," he says, solemn.

Lochinvar pauses for a moment, thinking on how to ask this. "I remember hearing your name, Elavars, from letters my mother wrote to me. But … what happened to you? You weren't always … as you are now, were you?"

The boy glances self-consciously down at his arms, then shakes his head, his expression both sad and fearful as he looks back at Lochinvar.

"Can you tell me what happened?" the Vartan/Hekoye asks. "To you? And the village?"

The boy sniffles. "Don't know. We left the village."

"Okay, you don't know what happened to the village … that's fine," says Lochinvar, trying to sound reassuring. "Why did you leave, though?"

"Mommy said bad things were coming, so we had to go." The child looks even more mournful. "She was right." He draws the blanket around his shoulders closer, shivering.

Lochinvar nods, smiling a little, and says, "You're safe from bad things with me, Elavars. Do you know where everybody went?"

"North," the boy mumbles. "I want my mommy!" he wails suddenly.

"I know," says the Hekoye, putting his hands gently on the boy's shoulders. "I know, and we will go and find her – find everyone – together. Okay?"

The boy sniffles and skootches closer to the Hekoye. "Kay," he mumbles. "They left me behind," he adds in a whisper.

"It's okay," Lochinvar reassures. "I have to ask … did … what happen to you – your appearance – happen to anyone else?"

"Don't know." The child trembles. "They left me behind, and then the dark thing came."

Lochinvar's head tilts slightly. "Dark thing?" he asks. "This 'thing' did this to you?"

A sad, shaky nod is his only answer.

"And where did this … thing … go next?" the coyote asks next.

Silent and shivering for a long moment, then the child curls a little closer to Lochinvar and whispers, "Don't know. It left me behind, too."

The Ranger nods slowly, and a worrying thought crosses his mind. What if it followed the people from the village? He looks Elavars in the eyes, asking, "You fit enough to travel?"

The boy rubs at the back of his neck. "It hurts. I want my mommy," he says, rather unhelpfully.

"I know you do, and we'll go find her," Lochinvar says. "Come on. I think that we should hurry now."

Elavars nods, and quietly helps Lochinvar as they gather up the things from the campsite. The child moves with some difficulty around the clearing, and it's quickly obvious to Lochinvar that, whether the boy wants to or not, he will not be able to keep up with the winged Hekoye on his own.

"Okay," the Ranger says, "this is how we'll do it. We can fly for a little until I get tired, and then we can walk for a bit. I'll carry you both ways. That sound good?"

The deformed Vartan makes no effort to hide his relief at Lochinvar's suggestion. "Okay!" he replies, almost cheerful.

Lochinvar smiles back, "Shall we, then?"

The boy holds out his arms, and with some assistance from the winged Hekoye, and a good deal of squirming to keep his body from interfering with Lochinvar's wings, manages to settle himself at the center of the adult's back, with his arms around Lochinvar's neck. Taking off proves to be the hardest part of flying with Elavars as a passenger. Once airborne, the extra weight on his back is difficult to accustom himself to, but not unmanageable. As they soar over the landscape, the boy even giggles. "Wheee!"

"Elavars, try not to rock around there," the winged-coyote urges. "Flying carrying a passenger is difficult enough."

"Sowwy," the boy mumbles, calming down and laying still against Lochinvar's back. Below, the freshly-carved trail the ranger has been following for the last several days remains clearly visible.

The Vartan/Hekoye flies on, northwards, continually scanning the trail for any more signs of the people from his village … or this "dark thing".

An hour or so goes by, uneventfully, and the Hekoye considers taking a break soon as the strain in his wings becomes ever-more evident. Then the boy on his back convulses. "It's here," he whispers.

Lochinvar, just about to descend, pauses and keeps his height. "What is?" he asks.

"The dark thing." For the first time since Lochy's early admonishment, the deformed child squirms in his place on the winged Hekoye's back, trembling.

"Where?" asks the Ranger, not quite sure how long he could stay airborne.

"Down there," comes the uninformative reply.

Lochinvar sinks a little lower, trying to see if he can see where this thing is. "Can you be more specific?" he asks.

The boy only whimpers in reply. However, the coyote's keen eyes, searching the ground below, spy a large dark splotch, half-beneath the cover of the trees along the trail. At first, it looks like a collection of shadows, but he realizes that the size and shape of it can't be accounted for by the surrounding objects. And it's moving.

Pointing down towards the shadows, Lochinvar asks Elavars, "That's it? What is it?"

"It's the dark thing," the shivering child answers. "It hurts." He tightens his arms around Lochinvar's throat, huddled against the coyote's back.

"Hold on tight to me," says the Vartan/Hekoye. "I need to go a little lower. I have to try and see what it is we're dealing with. Don't worry. I won't get anywhere near it."

The boy trembles but does nothing else as Lochinvar draws closer to the shadowy shape along the trail below. With his attention focused upon it, the coyote gradually concludes that details are difficult to make out becausethe … thing … has none. It appears to be a large, amorphous dark blob, 15 feet or more in diameter. It melts across the hilly country below, widening the trail even as it follows it by crushing undergrowth and saplings. The only "feature" it possesses is something glittery and circular that seems to shift along the top of its body.

Lochinvar strains his eyes a little to try and make out the glittery part on the creature. At the same time, he recalls the last time he saw a black-blob was on Arcadia.

A little more study leads him to the conclusion that the glittery object is some kind of crystal disk. It's hard to tell if it is part of the dark creature, or merely being carried by it.

The coyote tries and dips a little more, seeing if he can make out more of that disk, but also notices that it is going the same way as where the people from the village are meant to have gone. "Maybe we should try and get ahead of it. It's definitely following where our people went."

"It's coming for them," the young boy whimpers plaintively.

"Then we should definitely try and get to them first," Lochinvar replies, and concentrates on trying to get further ahead before he can't keep in the air any longer.

The muscles in his wings ache in protest as the Hekoye taxes them further, but fortunately the dark shape below moves little faster than a walking man, and the Hekoye's wing beats are able to carry them beyond it. But as he struggles to widen his lead, once attained, the ache in his wings grows into a burning pain from the strain of exertion.

"I'm going to have to land, Elavars," says Lochinvar. "Can't stay up in the air any longer. We'll still have to keep moving, though."

"But it's here!" the child protests, squirming fearfully. "You can't! It'll get us!"

Lochinvar tries to reassure the boy, "Don't worry. It moves pretty slow. We can stay ahead of it."

"It'll get us!" Elavars whimpers, not reassured by this.

"No it won't," replies the Hekoye, descending to land. "You're safe with me."

The child clutches at the Hekoye as he touches down on the trail. Here, where the shadowy creature has not yet come, the trail is narrower and has more foliage than the path Lochinvar walked earlier. A quick glance back determines that the dark being is out of sight behind them.

"Okay," says the Ranger, "I just need a few minutes to get my breath back, and we'll head forward on foot. We'll be okay, I promise."

As the winged Hekoye pauses, breathing deeply, Elavars only grows more agitated. "It's coming for us," he whispers plaintively, clutching at the ranger's shoulders. Every few seconds, he glances back down the trail. After only a minute, he wails, then scrambles suddenly off of Lochinvar's back and bolts away down the trail, little malformed legs working awkwardly as he runs.

Lochinvar sighs, then takes a deep breath, picks up his packs and starts down the trail after the boy.