That First Step Today marks the first time I have been found to be worthy. I have been studying for the last twelve years and practicing for nine years after that. I will be worthy and I will meet The Mother. My studies have been fun, and I have enjoyed the people that I have been with. The others were never sure of someone of my caliber working with them, but I have changed their minds. I have worked every day to practice over thirty common languages and a few obscure ones too. I was expecting the master to tell me to wait this time, but he took me aside and had me go to another camp to meet the master there. She was beautiful for a human, and moved with grace and purpose. I practiced with Master Tapo and trained harder than I had ever thought I could. She almost broke me, she tried, she tried very hard. Her methods were rough and demand a healer nearby at all times. She is as graceful as she is deadly. Tapo instructed me on how to move for my size, how to snap kick and sharp punch. I feel like I could best any creature with my bear hands. But that is not what the training is about. The cave was interesting and longer than I thought it would be. Tapo walked with me and she told me there are very specific rules to this walk. You have to WALK, the entire way. I has been known to take some beings over two years to make the walk. There are temptations all along the way. Not everything out there wants to kill you, and not everything out there is nice. Beware of The Eclipse, it is a town of wrought and disdain for goodness. Fire roses are where the water is. There are animals that you will be able to kill, and there are some that will try and kill you. Now Rule #1. Go North, always north. Rule #2. Be aware of the sun. Walk at night and burrow to stay out of the sun. #3. Be smart. With all that said, I never expected it to be as hot as it was. The first day was a total bitch. I exited the cave and found the sand to be so fine that I sank ankle deep into it with every steep. This was going to take forever. The sands shifted so much that moving was damn near impossible. I had no clue how I was going to burrow when I could barely make a hole without it filling back up. I did as I had taught and wiggled my giant ass into the sand and slept pretty well. The fourth day brought a surprise; there was a group that was doing the same walk as I was. I introduced myself and found them all very interesting. The elf woman was from Asurestar, and I have studied there. Then I noticed, she was the war criminal Mirth. Then the feline man in the back kept his head down, but I knew Ashen when I saw him. I was with some of the most ruthless murders in the known galaxy. I have to admit now, that sleeping that first few nights was rough. Ashen was covered in blood and had bits of flesh on his shirt when we first meet, but they did have meet and offered me some too. I was half expecting them to just fatten me up so they could eat me when supplies got a little thin. It took a week or so, but the group was actually fun. Ashen was calm and relaxed all the time. You could see his jitter now and then and he would relax and stop shaking. Mirth said her real name is Bella or something like that. She carried four rifles with her and one was in a massive box that took up her entire back. Corvus seemed pretty nice (I wonder if he knows his name means Raven), but he didn’t say but two or three words the entire time. Now Northorn is a god sent. He has food stashed everywhere and spices for cooking. We can turn anything in a full meal with the stuff he has or knows about. He said his crew normally doesn’t care, but he was once a master chief many moons ago. The other elf guy is flashy and talks all the time but never says anything. It must have been pure torture for him when we were all just walking quietly and not talking. The nights are forty hours long and so are the days. It takes a lot out of you to walk this much, and you seem to need the time to heal and rest after the walk. Seth is a special one, they all listen to him and the smart human (Gill) seems downright afraid of him. Seth is a Dragon kin of some variety, I am still hoping he is an actual dragon and not just some lesser dragon. I have never meet one in person and he seems as chill as I have heard of them being. We woke up to ruckus coming towards us. There was an Orc riding in a sled that was being pulled by over a dozen goblins. They were friendly and all and I seemed to be the only one that understood them. They passed on and Ambella and I had the same thought. Cheaters never prosper, and that is a sad sight, on many levels. Many more days went on and then weeks. I was enjoying the surroundings more and the different plants and how they could be used. It had been a while, but Ashen pointed out that we were hardly leaving any tracks now, even me. I was proud of the fact that even in this very loose sand, I was not just able to keep up with this group, but I was able to explore a little. We came across a group of natives that Ambella identified as Olops, and that was when I remembered that Tapo had told me about them. They were very nice and very tall. I had a lot of fun talking with them and then we moved on. The group made a trade with them for a tent, and I think that even I will fit in it. We made our way as the Olops were moving at a much slower pace than we were. A few days later we came across their village and let them know the hunting party was a few days behind us. The group of us spent the day sleeping in comfort in the village and then headed out the next day. The sands were getting easier to move through and it was getting really easy to spot plants hiding just under the top of the sands. We had been waking for a bit a few days after we left the village when we all stopped dead in our tracks. There were four dinosaurs looking at us. Dinosaurs! Four of them! All I could think was ‘I am glad that I am with this group, they would be able to handle this group before they got half way to us.’ Northorn started speaking to them and they actually made a trade with them. Well, they gave us some weird coins and we gave them a large chunk of meat. That got us all on high alert and from that night on we started taking watch shifts during the day. I took one here and there and watched the Fire Blossom Trees bloom during the day. It was a sight to behold. The tree, if you could really call it that would move, grows so quickly it was almost as if we were watching a time laps. A vine would sprout out of the sand, quickly twisting and shooting towards the sky. About the point it would get to four or five feet tall, the vine would turn to wood and begin to branch out. The tree would sprout leaves and for a second, it was majestic. In the barren desert, covered in the finest sand ever, there was a tree. For just a second, then, then the leaves would burst out and away from the tree and burst into brilliant flames, just about then the rest of the tree would rush with flames and be gone in a breath. From start to flaming finish the entire process took about ten to twelve seconds. Life, here, gone, and then ash…. The ash didn’t even last that long, it would collect on the breeze and disappear in the desert and the sand would fill in the hole that was there. All trace of the tree gone in seconds., it was beautiful. As we walked for what was now more than two months, we noticed a tow ahead. I was a little startled and found that even at night the place was light up like a casino and could be seen from hundreds of miles away. We walked for two more nights before we got to the edge of the town and that is where I will end this entry. I pray that we all make it to The Mother with no issue, I have deep fears of this town and have been taught to trust my feelings.
