A Time of Changes

23

The searchers are getting closer to me all the time. Yesterday, while on a long walk through this zone of the Burnt Lowlands, I found, well south of here, the fresh track of a groundcar impressed deep in the dry and fragile crust of the red sand. And this morning, idly strolling in the place where the hornfowl gather — drawn there by some suicidal impulse, maybe? — I heard a droning in the sky, and looked up to see a plane of the Sallan military passing overhead. One does not often see sky-vehicles here. It swooped and circled, hornfowl-fashion, but I huddled under a twisted erosion-knoll, and I think I went unnoticed.

I might be mistaken about these intrusions: the groundcar just some hunting party casually passing through the region, the plane merely out on a training flight. But I think not. If there are hunters here, it is I they hunt. The net will close about me. I must try to write more quickly, and be more concise; too much of what I need to say is yet untold, and I fear being interrupted before I am done. Stirron, let me be for just a few more weeks!