Linjyn lay some 170 rounds behind us as we made our way towards the penultimate valley of Py's first circuit. We were nearing the end of a long, two-day trek across a low mountain range via a narrow road - more a trail than a road - that ran alongside the ever-younger Linjyn River. On either side of us towered the moss and rock walls of the river gorge. Twisted, weather-wrought mauve and green pine trees clung in the cracks and arched overhead, allowing only a cool, deep twilight light to filter in. The river plunged and danced over and around rocks in slow motion alongside us. On Daeri, where water flows slowly and reacts to impediments with exaggerated leaps and bounds, smoothed out by the water's surface tension, rivers look like sleek, but lumpy lakes. We could see its rock and gravel bed as if we were looking through pure ice. Only the occasional darting of a bright fish gave life to its depths. We stopped for a meal and a cup of tey in a little hollow created by a rivulet slowly tumbling from the heights. In the dimness of the narrow gorge, we didn't notice that it was growing ever darker above the arching trees and rocks.
When we emerged from the river gorge, we discovered a sky covered with racing, violet tinted clouds - not the usual rain clouds. These were too high, to be anything but the harbingers of a big storm.
'A serrata!' exclaimed KaRaya, adding as she bounded ahead to look down the valley, 'Can we reach the march and the nearest cottage?'
Looking down through the trees and down the road to the march valley below, it seemed that the nearest shelter - a tower - was some four or five kilometers away, unless the hill was hiding a cottage at its foot. From our heights, I could just make out the herd and herders pushing through the gates of the compound and tower. A close-run affair...
'Too close, I'd say. We'd best find shelter now - in the rocks,' said Py looking back at the mossy cliff and steep sides of the ridge we'd just cut through. 'Spread out - we haven't much time.'
The purple clouds were already noticeably lower, as I turned back and started to scramble up the steep, boulder strewn slope towards the cliffs, searching for shelter. Hissi was already loping ahead.
We fanned out amongst the fallen boulders looking for a cave or a crevasse between some large boulders. We'd no luck until Hissi barked from the shadows of the pine trees at the edge of the cliffs, now stirring uneasily in the strengthening wind.
'Hissi's found something,' I called out, waiting only to see that others had heard before bounding towards her barking.
It wasn't much of a shelter, two large flat boulders tumbled together, one half on top of the other, but there was a shallow space under them to huddle. We swung our backpacks off, pulled on our hooded ponchos and squeezed in, setting our packs in front of us for some protection from the wind, rain, and debris that would accompany the storm. Hissi, her tail around my neck, lay across our collective laps and back again. We'd barely settled in when the serrata struck - the trees groaned and cracked as their branches were snapped off and swept away in the first wall of wind. The winds shrieked and tore at us, trying to pull us out and fling us about. We dug our feet into the soft earth and held our packs before us as leaves, rocks and branches swirled around us. These first fierce moments lasted for what seemed like forever, but in reality, only for a minute or two before it settled down to a howling gale, and a driving rain collected from the rivers and lakes in its path that it had carried off. It didn't take more than five minutes before we were wet and cold, but guardedly optimistic that we'd live. Which was something.
We may've huddled together under that boulder long, timeless time, until the winds and rain settled down enough for us to emerge, stiff, cold, and wet to take to the road again. Along the way Py inquired at every cottage to see if everyone was safe and accounted for. The march natives take these serratas in stride, their low stone cottages built to weather them.
We reached the March Master's little town and tower, weary and hungry and were greeted with kind concern, but no ceremony. Everyone was engaged in assessing, and if possible putting to right, the damage the storm had wrought. We were given a meal, a fire to warm ourselves by, and assured that everything was fine - considering - and were shown to our rooms to sleep.