The Grey Marsh  -  Day 1

 

There are some words spinning in my mind as I descend the boggy slopes to the swamp.

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Just like all the others.

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Which others? Other Wardens, seeking the secrets of the Marsh? Who else has come here, who else has walked the path I have walked. Ieya had told me to meet her here, had she come this way? There are so many questions. I have lived my whole life believing Ieya to be dead. I had to believe that she had been killed by the goblins. How could I have lived on believing that she was still down there in the dark, living in the Gloom? I don't know if I should regret my life without her, wandering like a vagabond across the land, or if I should be angry that she kept her life secret from me.

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I have no idea who I am really going to meet. She cannot possibly be the woman I left behind in the monster's den. Twenty years have passed. I am not the same person who left her behind. I don't quite know who I am now.

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The Marsh, however, is so beautiful that my confusion and doubt must rest while I use the last pages of my notebook to sketch some of the life here. This is not a rotting bog, teeming with noxious insects, nor is it a barren, damp wasteland. It is, as I think it must have always been - a secret, sacred land, replete with birds, fish, flowering trees and swaying grasses. My first day here has been magnificently challenging. I have fallen into ponds and mud puddles so many times that I am soaked through, keeping my notebooks and pencils dry in their waxed leather satchel, strapped high on my shoulders. I have made camp beneath an overhanging rock, my bed is made of soft moss, and my campfire burns with a delicious floral scent. Despite the wet conditions, there is plenty of dry wood to burn and I have been able to dry my clothes out completely before turning in to sleep beneath my old travelling cloak.