“It’s so far away,” Parivrit whispered, noticing the rivers, wide plains, and sprawls of forest between her current location and where she had to go.

“I will give you a guide,” the old man said firmly. “The rest will be up to you.”

She bent over, studying the map with all her might. As many details as possible impressed to memory could only be helpful in the long run. Looking at the distance she had apparently already crossed, and comparing it with the distance she had yet to cross, over unfamiliar terrain, she felt the beginnings of despair.

She had lost so much! She didn’t even know how much. Her name, surely, and though she felt a new sense of self, she didn’t know how much of that was true to whomever she had been – and surely she had been someone. Surely she had not appeared, new-born and tabula rasa, in the forest only that morning. Too many things continually bubbled to the surface of thought for that.

Knowledge and memory. How much of it defined /her/? Was she her name?

Vidatha slid a tangle of leather, string and crystal over the map. She picked it up and it resolved into a spiral of webbing enclosing a chunk of crystal, depending from a loop of brightly braided threads. “This is … ?”

“Your guide.”

Parivrit eyed it dubiously. It looked more like a child’s adornment than any kind of lodestar. Would it take her to the Sorceress’ house?

On the thought, a bright sparkle flashed in the crystal, and a white line wisped across her vision for a brief moment. She dropped it hastily. As soon as the thing left her hand, the lights faded, and it was as quiescent as before.

She looked up to see that Vidatha was rummaging among the scrolls again, and asked, “How does it work?”

“What? Oh,” he waved a hand vaguely in the air, “You just think about where you want to go, and it shows you the way. Quite simple, really.” A heap of scrolls tumbled to the floor with a papery slither. Parivrit jumped up, forgetting that her feet were numb to the knees, and crashed to the floor herself.

“My goodness, child, don’t do that!” Vidatha hurried over to Parivrit, sprawled on the wood planking, and bodily pulled her back onto the bench. “You just sit there quietly. Practise with the guide, or study the map, or something.”

Obediently, Parivrit bent her head back over the map, honey-dark curls falling around her face. The warmth, lack of pain, and food were combining to recreate the muzzy numbness of earlier in the night. Her eyelids drooped closed, and she slept.