I looked up at the gray cloth sky and I felt the soft cloth pad beneath my prone and tense form. The silver one called this unnatural place a tent, and he said I would get used to sleeping in it. I did not think so. The fabric was worse for seeing sneakers than even the dense murky fog of night. I could not even see the faded glow of the moon above me. The silver one had asked me how old I was. I said I was one hundred and fifty-two moon-cycles fog-born. He deciphered my odd notation with a twist of his wrinkled brow, then he told me I was twelve years and eight months old.
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because the stifling heat of tent-morning woke me. I felt like I was drowning in leaves and I thrashed my way out, panicked. The silver Lord had taken his things and packed them on a frame. He swung over and lashed the loaded frame to my back. I ate a little of the hard, dried meat he gave me, and then he began to walk toward the rest of his tribe. I followed, struggling under the heavy and uncomfortable pack-frame. It already dug into the skin of my hips and was beginning to rub my shoulders raw and bloody.
The elves sang and talked merrily ahead of me, but even had I been asked to try and understand the strange chatterings they made, I could not have answered for panting and sweat.
In the mist and greenery my life consisted of, I had never been as far as we went that day. The silver ones made their "camp" with tents and beds of canvas to keep out the wet, and the chests on the horses full of what ever they were carrying guarded by half-orcs armed to the teeth.
My Lord made a fire, and told me to put my pack in the tent. I did, and I came and sat by the warm glow of the flames leaping for the moon. They burned away the fog, and left in its place a stinging smoke that concealed bits of spark and ash. It followed me ceaselessly, cloaking me in its cruel and acrid scent so my eyes hurt and ran.
I slept deeply even in the confines of the tent and covered in the smoke-smell. When I awoke, my body screamed at me not to abuse it any further, but my Lord was already up and had his things packed. I moved against the will of my poor muscles and raw flesh. I have done nothing harder than when I put the back-frame on that second day. It rubbed salty sweat into the open wounds it had opened the day before, and my hips and shoulders burned like fire.
Tears ran down my gray cheeks as I gnawed at the trail rations I was given for breakfast. One thing the Cloudforest teaches is that there is no use in complaining. You are the only one that will hear you, and you already know your own pain and troubles. What use can be moans if only the unhearing fog can take heed? I would help myself, because there were no gods to intervene.
This second day, I learned the second agony of travel. With my body on fire with pain already, I did not see the trees and the moss change. But oh did my knees! The joint that held my body above the wet and unfeeling mud screamed in protest at a descent I only now noticed.
Stop! Stop! cried my body as my mind pushed forward with each punishing step. We reached a stream and I collapsed beside it, drinking deeply as the stern mist swirled the laughter of the silver ones around my spinning head.
My mind called forth images of the derisive laughter of the pierced noses of the tribes. Their eyes danced a dance of scorn as their spears dug into my flesh. I stood again, and blind with the exhaustion of at last having something worthwhile in my life, I followed the trail down again.
I have never slept so well. I have never eaten so much in my life as the kind elves gave me that night. Their eyes danced with pride at an insurmountable challenge surmounted. The youngest elf, one with spring eyes and moon-white teeth, reached into my pack and pulled out the lead weights he had placed there that morning.
In the dawn of the day the mist let me go, I sat with the other silver ones, and I learned their names. My Lord did not tell me his, but the one that had put the lead rocks in my pack was Nym. He was the youngest of the elven party sent to bring the dwarven gold-wares back to the king of the moon elves.
Nym was beside me as we walked out of the Cloudforest and into the broad, grassy slopes of the mountain at large. I was one of them now, and the mist swirled in my past, the void of its absence well filled by the music of my new home.