I get a little high every time I remember I'm back. The next instalment is not behaving so well, - something about the thousands of words I had now being useless due to a change in tone, - but I'm planning on beating it to submission.
Thanks to y'all that came back to this story! Enjoy!

Stargazer

16th verse - Viajar

Turns out, it is very different surviving on your own than it is travelling with new people – strangers – that had little to no common thing with you.

Different doesn't have to be necessarily bad. The racket of the cart that carried their instruments on the uneven road was irritating, as was the smell of the oxes that tugged it along and the fact that I couldn't freely practice my abilities with them around. I felt alienated and alone, and yet I couldn't help to have my spirits lifted whenever one of them broke into song or played something. They had an easy rapport with each other that was hard not to envy so far away from my own friends, but walking alongside them I realized just how off-kilter my time alone had left me and so I began to regain myself.

That night I took first watch alongside Landra, one of the normal people in this eclectic group. She made small talk and even taught me a few her lute strums to take my mind off every odd noise around. Still, even after that sleep was hard to come by and I didn't see tail nor hair of Learning or Desire – which obviously meant no sneaked practice in the Fade.

Galen walked next to me the next day, and I joined in trying to follow when it was him who broke into song. It brought me more joy than I thought I could muster when they asked me what kind of songs I knew, and suddenly it was me doing the singing – a soft ballad that could go well a capella, nothing fancy nor overly complex, at least not outside my head. The tones and the words of a piece of my culture were so comforting that I didn't realize I had raised my voice above my intended tone until it was almost the end, nor that I had hummed along with the solos or the instrumental parts. I cut myself abruptly, my face heating up with shame until the elf next to me exclaimed that it was good and his companions followed.

I didn't know if they were honest when they said that I should join them in their acts, but it felt good to be praised for something other than manipulating the fabric of the world by someone with an actual form to speak off. It was another reminder of home and it made the rest of the day much more bearable with all of us sharing music from wherever we came from – turns out Landra was from France and Audra, the leader of the company, was from a Spanish-speaking country, though her accent didn't help to narrow down which one.

So, of course, because everything had gone all fine and dandy, the day had to end on a grim note just to be safe.

Audra had a map of the area in which they held their usual activities – a place they called the Free Marches –, and she was kind enough to lend it to me that night. In the golden light of the fire unfamiliar shores and rivers revealed themselves, spread around the parchment. I couldn't remember any place like this in the US, and I didn't know if it was because of the weird artistic style in which it was drawn or because they were actually unearthly places, but none of the landmarks reminded me of any country or continent I knew to exists – and I completely and utterly refused to think that I was in any place that I didn't know to exist, that kind of things do not actually happen in real life anyway.

The cherry on top, the worst thing of them all that froze the blood in my veins, were the unfamiliar characters. The only thing I could understand, was the compass rose at the top-right of it, and I prayed to anything that was listening that the top actually pointed north and not some other direction like Dain's map or anything.

Of all the things I expected to end up when I woke up that morning, illiterate was never on the list. My heart sunk in my chest and I had to fight hard not to break down and cry or burn something. Getting back home safely seemed suddenly like an insurmountable task.

After composing myself I went to leave the map back in Audra's hands, and in a flash of inspiration asked her to tell me where were we. She pointed at an indistinct point 'south' of a large river that bisected the map horizontally and explained it to me that we were a couple of weeks away from Starkhaven on the west, our final destination. I expressed appropriate wonder at the thought of the city and left to stew in my own misery.

That night, during my watch, I used a stick to trace on the dirt a few characters just to be certain that I wasn't going mad. Latin characters, the Greek ones we used in math, Kanji from Japan and Cyrillic – heck, I even tried Norse runes and whatever I could remember from Tengwar. It all flowed, and I understood them all, and yet none of them could give me any inkling as to what it was that the map had been written with. It was frustrating.

My dreams that night where void – no magic, no Fade and definitively no Spirits, only my usual half-remembered, nebulous nightmares in which I killed or was killed or lost myself in a place so dark and empty that nothing mattered anymore.

Six days later we reached another village at the side of the Minanter, and at that time I had built a good rapport with the rest of the group.

Audra was probably the best companion and leader you could ask for when stuck on an eternal medieval fair: logical, kind and humorous all rolled into one. She didn't shy away from any questions or any challenge, though I was thankful that her exuberance was curbed at bit by Lucas, who looked at her as though she had hung the stars. Theodas, the 'dwarf' was nice and his voice could reduce anyone to goo with how deep and smooth it was, which I thought the strangest thing considering how bothersome his smoking was. None of them could compare to Galen and Landra though.

I was closest to Galen of them all, he had spoken to me first after all and his playful personality and devil-may-care attitude were like a balm to my frazzled nerves. I had a hard time conciliating his demeanour with his pointed ears, especially because he looked nothing like the elves I knew from the cinema. Once you got past his aesthetic decisions and jokes he was a surprisingly patient teacher, having been recruited by Landra to teach me to play the lute while she focused on coaching my voice and teaching me to use daggers of all things. She was wonderful though, full of stories and tales of magic and wonders that would have been far more enjoyable if I couldn't shoot fire out of my fingertips myself.

Learning and Desire had made an act of presence as well, a couple of nights ago. They proved helpful enough without offering any devilish deal, with Learning promising to find a way to teach me properly and Desire being encouraging and supportive. It would have been nice if they hadn't turned into drill sergeants afterwards, for I had to make up for the lost practice in the Waking by overexerting myself in the Fade. The next morning my whole body ached even more than usual, and I could barely string two notes together. Which, of fucking course, was why that was the day in which something had to break and put my abilities as a fixer to the test.

At least the constant activity kept my mind away from dangerous thoughts, and the exhaustion on the nights I slept and stayed away from the Fade made me unable to have – or at least remember – the nightmares.

Still, back to the village. There was nothing of notice here to distinguish it from where I had met the company, but for the fact that there was the second place, I found that didn't have a phone. It was getting maddening to be sure.

That night we sang on the local tavern and I was included in the lineup. I had the strangest thought as I followed Landra on her notes that had I been alone when I found out I couldn't read anymore, I wouldn't be anywhere near as composed as I was.

I enjoyed the night and the feel of civilization deeply, as much as the joy and the warmth of companionship and food, better than we were able to put together on the road. A man asked to speak to Audra and she informed us he had contracted our group to play in his daughter's wedding in a couple of days. I didn't fancy the idea of a party right about now, but there were no Templars in this chappel and I had no real reason to be against the idea – perhaps I would overhear something that would help me get back home.

What could go wrong anyway?