Thank you, Reviewers. Hearing from you gives me such encouragement. Too bad I can't glomp over the internet. Ah well. Next installment! Oh, and just a reminder. It ain't over till it's over.

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Thirtieth Waking.

I am sorry I have not written for so long. But you can't tell the difference, can you? But I have so much to tell you!

We are tired and cold and wet! Rain! We have seen rain! Water from the sky! It's run down our faces and in our hair and clothes. And we are both freezing. And I am so very happy to finally be out of it. It makes everything worse. Except that we have water now.

But we made a terrible mistake. We only took the two waterskins from Porter's alcove. We should have taken more. We could have collected more water from the rain, and carried it with us. But we only have two full waterskins. And a little that we managed to catch in the tarp with some careful folding and tying. The meat we used to keep there is nearly gone. Two waterskins and a tarp of water. There is nothing else for it. But the rain was good. Cold as it was, the water was good. Water is always good.

No not always--I couldn't write. I did not dare unwrap my journal from its nest in the middle of my rucksack. I couldn't shelter it in the rain; the ink would have run. But the log-lust plagued me. It always plagues me. And I didn't know how long the rain would last. So I just counted the wakings. I used Dhalan's cutlass to notch the sidemost plank of my sleeping-board. One notch for each waking that I could not write. I started the waking after my last entry, and there are six notches, including this waking. Six wakings. Has it been that long? That long and that short? Six seems such a small number, but such a long time to go. It seems great and small at the same time. But rocks!

Forgive my scattering mind. There are rocks! There is rock! Rock under our feet. Real, solid ground like the ports. The ground is still slanted, and most of it is more like pack-dirt, but there are washes of pebbles and gravel, and big tumbles of shale and big boulders, and very occasionally a great bald sheet of unbroken stone. Rocks! Rocks like you would throw off into the sky or skip across a pond! Real, and hard. When we were climbing--No, but I can't start there.

I feel... excited! --for lack of a better word. And that is something I have not felt in so long and it is making me... drunk. I am drunk on rocks. Who else in all the world can say that he has been drunk on rocks?

I must be mad.

I am calming down. Let me start at the start. Begin at the beginning.

I have made it my ritual to write just before I sleep. But I did not get a chance to at the end of the twenty-fifth waking because of the rain. I had been very worried. As we hiked that waking, the darkness grew thicker with every hour, and we could not see very far in front of us. And near the end, a little before we stopped, we realized it was because we were hiking into the clouds. The moisture became very heavy in the air, and then it drizzled on us.

The ripping black canopy we had seen above us waking after waking. Now we were entering into it. Do you remember? Back in the mud, there were only three things: the mud, the sky, and the horizon. But now we are in the clouds, and there is only the ground and the sky, they seem to blend together. Nothing that can really be called a horizon. Or sometimes only a very faint one. It's a strange world to be inside of. I was afraid my world would shrink? Well it has; its width is only a stone's cast. I know, because now we have stones, and I have cast them, and I cannot see where they land. Only to the top of the arc, and then they vanish in the dark.

But the rain was worse! It made the world even smaller. Smaller than a stone's cast in width. But it was also good, because we were very thirsty. We drank and collected it. It ran down our faces. The first rain since our underworld-marooning.

Have you ever sipped the rain from your lip when it runs into your mouth? I think everyone does that. With rain or tears. I did it with the rain. But at first it tasted filthy. Greys stared at me strangely. Then I knew why, because the same thing was happening to his face. We had become so dirty, our skin so caked and dark. But the rain washed the mud off our faces. Greys looked very pale.

I wonder if it is because he is not in good health. I don't think either of us are in good health. But perhaps he looked pale because our faces had become so dark that we did not remember how bright they were before. Maybe I look as pale to him as he does to me. Maybe we both look like ghosts.

So that was why the water tasted dirty off my lip. We were dirty. But once our immediate need for drink was satisfied, we simply stood and rubbed out our hands and faces in the rain. I do not know how so much mud seemed to have gotten into my hair. It felt refreshing to get it out. As if I had been smothering all along and could now breathe again. Through my scalp. How strange.

After this drinking and showering, we tried to go on a little farther, and found that it was very difficult to move. Because the rain made it horrible.

But at least the ground was slanted. The puddles that threatened to form always spilled away downslope. But the mud was still horrible. It was still mud.

But now we have rocks!

My mind moves faster than my hand can speak.

The mud was horrible. Very wet. The sleds did not work like they had down in our abyss with the Zephyrus. Here the mud sucked and pulled us down harder. So we stopped. But I did not write. I did not want the ink to smudge or run. I wrapped up my journal in a shirt in my rucksack, and marked one notch in my sleeping-board instead.

It was hard to settle down for the night. The boards threatened to slide down. We could fit everything on only one supply-board by then, so we took the other supply-board apart and lashed it differently, to make something of an anchor. It looked like big teeth, or part of a fence. We lashed the sleeping-boards and the remaining supply-board to it, and then stuck it as deep into the mud as we could. I think that it worked out all right; we did not move during the night--or the sleeping, sorry.

I rhymed. Is it strange?

But the mud. Even though the top was slimy and slippery, when we anchored us down, the texture seemed firmer, grainier underneath. And as far as we could tell, we did not slip downslope while we slept. When we wrenched out the anchor-spikes the next waking, the holes stayed fairly solid. But it was still raining, and they filled with water, and we moved on.

But that was hard too. To get going and move. Even though we had not slipped downslope, the mud was still too soft. When we woke up, our sleeping-boards were deeper in the mud than they had ever been. It was so hard to get them out. Greys' board we had to pry out with one of the leftover planks.

Walking became more difficult. You had to lash your foot to a position further back on the sled, or the front end would get stuck too easily. But we kept going.

It was so hard. It kept raining, and it felt like we weren't going anywhere. I slipped a lot. Greys did too. And in the rain our tracks did not show. We couldn't see them when we shone the lantern back behind us.

I missed seeing our tracks. At the end of each waking, it had made me feel like I had done something. Accomplishment. But in the rain it felt as if I had nothing to show for my effort. Had we gone anywhere? Just slick mud, in the rain, and an odd gait up the slope.

It was hardest when I was towing the supply-board. We took turns towing the boards. One of us would tow the supply-board, and one would tow the two sleeping-boards.

We just kept going and going, and it just kept raining and raining. Wake up, eat cold meat, pry out, lash up, hike. Stop, unlash, anchor down, mark a notch, sleep. Again and again. It seemed like it was more than just six.

But then, was it last waking? Or the waking before? Greys was in front of me, and he said, "Mr. Reyes, come up here." And I could hear a smile shaping his words. He kept going, and I followed, and my sleds scuffed on hard rock.

And I said, "Rock!"

And he said, "Yes."

I stopped to look at it and feel it with my hands, but he said, "Let's keep moving."

So we did. There wasn't much to see anyway. A lot of mud was still on top.

There was more mud, but--I remember now, it was two wakings ago, that would be on the twenty-eighth waking then. There was more mud, and we only encountered one more spot of rock that waking, and then we slept.

Then on the twenty-ninth waking, we saw more and more bald places of rock peeking out of the mud. And the rain thinned a little. It did not stop, but it lightened just enough for the world to grow a few more paces. But it was still too wet for me to take out my journal.

And we saw more rock. And more and more. And when we woke up this waking, our boards did not need prying. And also this waking, miracle and wonder, our sledding was easier than ever. Maybe soon we will not need to use our sleds, and we will be able to shed the extra weight. We will see.

I think that I am... happy, for the rock. The pack-dirt and rock.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

Alexandro