Chapter 25: On the Road
The land south of the farmstead was a series of low, rolling hills covered with tall green grass and various kinds of small undergrowth, with the occasional tree and rock outcropping here and there breaking up the smooth planes of the earth. The four of them followed a beaten earthen path that wove up and down and around the hills, taking occasional breaks in the shade of one of the trees or stones. The sun had risen to midday by this point, and the day had become had enough that Jack and the girls were sweating ever so slightly, even in spite of their leisurely pace and light clothing. At one point later in the day, they came to their first river crossing.
The river stretched about 150 feet in width, but didn't appear to be flowing with much force, and from the looks of it from the water's edge, wasn't very deep, either. As if to confirm Jack's suspicions, Rose led the way into the water, lifting Madeleine up to sit on her shoulders as she crossed. She motioned for Jack and Eleanor to follow. Eleanor came immediately after, choosing to hike up her dress up around her shoulders to avoid it getting wet, causing Jack's face to turn beet red when he saw she had nothing on underneath it. She glanced back over her shoulder with a knowing smirk as she stepped into the water, and he quickly averted his eyes as he followed her into the stream. While not looking, he could still hear the hiss of steaming water with her every movement, and the resulting fog in her wake made whatever part of him that wasn't in the water damp anyways.
The water was freezing cold, seemingly unaffected by the warmth of the sunshine at all. When he remarked on how unbelievably cold it was, Madeleine replied boredly with "It's icemelt from the mountains up north", as if that should have been obvious to him from the start.
After crossing the river, the four of them took a few moments to dry off. The three girls, with their natively high body temperatures dried in a few moments naturally. Jack, for his part, tried out a water control spell, and found that with a little effort and concentration, he could draw the moisture out of his clothes and hair into a floating ball of water, which he then sprayed in the direction of the three girls. This led to Eleanor casting a counterspell that dissipated the spray, only to have it reverse direction and catch Jack square in the face before he could react. For the first time since he'd met her, Madeleine laughed, a pleasant, bell-like giggle that made him feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, despite his wet and freezing exterior.
Towards nightfall, shortly after sunset, they crested a final hill and saw a large, flat valley spread out below them, dotted with clumps of trees. In the center, several dozen lights shone brightly in the dimming evening, denoting a small village nestled in between two smaller clumps of trees and flanked on one side by a smaller river.
"That's Arrowmeade. There are a couple inns here we can stay in for the night, if you'd prefer not to camp off the side of the road." Rose said, pointing in the direction of the small village.
"Sounds good with me." Jack said.
"I want real food." Madeleine said simply, and Eleanor agreed.
As they began their way down the hill, however, they heard a loud scream carried faintly across the wind from the village. And then another.
And they watched in horror as one of the buildings in the center of the village burst into flames.
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