Chapter 48: Rain & Sky
Bran waited until he could no longer feel Misha’s presence before heading out into the rain. It was cold and his clothes were wet but hugged his arms to his body and kept going,
He knew he wasn’t quite right, not quite all there, but there wasn’t enough of him working for him to tell exactly what was wrong. All he could parse in his fuzzy little brain at the moment was that Misha was important and what Misha wanted was what he should want too.
After a few metres, Bran stopped under a tree and closed his eyes. He breathed in, then out, and with his breath, he let his consciousness drift out among the roots and hyphae of the forest.
This was an old forest, a very old forest, and its denizens were rather cultured and took this mental interruption with grace and with hardly any surprise. They were used to monks and the like wandering their territory and probing that which could not be seen.
Can I eat you? Bran asked a mushroom.
Okay, that wasn’t quite what the forest was expecting.
Misha said he needs food, so I need to help him find food, explained Bran.
The forest knew that name to be the name of the dragon who had flown off not too long ago. Apparently it was coming back. Not a good omen.
So the forest consulted with itself on the best course of action. It wasn’t so much that dragons were ill omens, far from it, but more that this particular mountain range had eight mountains, eight ’dragons’ of its own, and the addition of a ninth had caused much tragedy many years ago.