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Judging day and night by the rising and setting of the sun, seven days have passed since our battle with the phoenix...

The healer, Mira, turned out to be not-so-aptly-titled. Something like "miracle worker", for instance, seems more accurate. There were no casualties or permanent injuries, something I largely attribute to her skill. According to Rin, the energy left behind by the reaper's attacks is detrimental to the healing process and, in some cases, even may lead to death. Even minor wounds can cause death if they are inflicted by a strong enough Shadow or Reaper. I began to wonder just how high the death toll climbed before she, or whoever taught her, came along.

The healer's job here seems to have added level of difficulty I have yet to encounter. Despite all of the injuries that they've endured during the battle, and all of the energy that they must have absorbed, they were still alive. None of us had a very good sense of direction, so we had entirely lost the location of our camp, though the camp was hastily constructed and none of us considered it as a significant loss.

All in all, it meant that we were going to have to find a new place to live, if Rin said so, at least. Since I'm not really familiar with the place in which we are living, it occurs to me that a lot of the decisions that we make are going to be hers, so I resign myself to whatever she believes is the best course of action.

Rin said that many of the Wardens weren't present during the battle. She also clarified that the current Wardens, despite being Wardens, don't actually battle very often. Given the conflicting information about the Wardens, I have to conclude that they aren't a single race, as I had initially thought. It seems that a select group of people came here at one point, when these shadows and reapers were in charge, and then started taking control of the land and repurposing it for their own means.

Although I haven't seen very much wildlife, Rin has claimed to me that this place, above all else, is meant to preserve it. I don't sense that she was lying, so I guess I'll have to find out about that later. Though not all of the Wardens fight the reapers on a regular basis, Rin claim that,in order to gain their status as Wardens, they, initially, had to defeat the reapers and shadows. Currently, what I estimate to be over half of them don't fight, which means that the ones who do are a small minority.

Though it was hard for me to imagine, Rin has told me that many places exist within this forest. She said that, in the center, or, at least, what they consider to be the center, there is a giant lake. At the center of that lake are several pillars that rise into the air--I imagine that there are at least a dozen of them. Those that reach the top, or near it, of the giant pillar in the center, find themselves isolated from the world while there. She claims that a reaper has never been seen there, so they often use this place when they need to think over a moral dilemma, or something else equally as significant.

Then, in another part of the forest, is, apparently, a huge mountain, guarded by a pair of dragons. Inside this mountain is at least one cave that contains an entire library of information on all sorts of subjects. I found this fairly incredible in both senses of the word. She called it the Atheneum. The strangest thing about this place, though, was the fact that the Atheneum itself was started by another Warden. His name is Aidan, and he rarely comes out of the library. She claimed that he was far stronger than even the combined power of both dragons, and I jokingly remarked that the dragons were in fact guarding the reapers from him. She was going to tell me about the other Wardens, but the conversation came to an unfortunate end at that point, and we never brought it up again.

I decided to tell Rin that I definitely intended on staying here, at least, if it was okay with the Wardens. She laughed a bit in that strange way of hers, as if I had been missing something terribly obvious when I said that, but I decided to shrug it off. She's the one who actually brought up the housing situation, and that brings us to where we are now:

"Well, you see," she started, "Yes, even in the forest, we are perfectly accustomed to living in houses of some form. For us, I personally recommend a cave or underground dwelling of some sort, in light of that fact. But you seem to be very attached to the people who came with us."

That she was indeed correct on her observation was the first thing that came to mind, though it also dawned on me... "I see; you were entertaining the thought of settling down someplace together, just you and me, is that it?" I observed, beaming at her with confidence.

"Mhm..." she replied, as if envisioning this scenario in her mind, seeming none too displeased at the thought. I gave her a moment to continue her fantasies, chuckling inwardly. She certainly was quite an amusing person.

After her moment was up, I told her, "I do indeed want the four or five of us staying together in a single place, depending on if Vincent will be joining us." I gave it a moment before continuing. "Though we could have our own private room together, if you really want." I wagged my tail at her in a flirtatious manner.

"In that case," Rin began, "we have a few different choices. While I would personally prefer a cave, or something similarly underground... taking into account the median characteristics of the group, we might want to construct something that's above ground--preferably in a small clearing, with direct sunlight and few obstructions. We'll need to see Vincent about constructing it, but I do know of such a place... Do you think that Mazurek could help him gather supplies to build it?"

"Well..." I thought about it for a moment, and replied, "Yeah, he'd probably be great for it, as long as Vincent is competent when it comes to communicating with slightly less-sentient creatures." The last part came out a bit awkwardly; it seemed to show that I was almost too concerned with saying something offensive, though whether Rin picked up on that fact, I'm not entirely sure.

"Rin, where are we going, exactly?" I suddenly blurted out. It had dawned on me at this point that I had no idea where we were actually going. I had been so caught up in talking to her that I hadn't actually considered where we were going, and I found the realization to be quite embarrassing. Now, though, I found myself actively wondering where our destination actually was.

"To see Vincent, of course," Rin told me, quite matter-of-factly.

"But we only just decided to see Vincent. How could we have been walking to see him the whole time, if we only just decided to see him?" I asked rather incredulously.

"No, you only just decided that we needed to see Vincent. I had known that we needed to see him for quite a while. I mean, how else do you think we'll be able to build a place to live?" she asked, again quite simply and almost condescendingly.

"I don't know... With like... hammers and nails and... things? Wait a minute, do you guys even use tools, or is it all just magic, or...?"

"Of course we use tools. At least, I think we do..." she said, as if she wasn't entirely sure, and had never before considered the question. I stopped at this and just stared at her in open-mouthed shock. The concept of these creatures having lived here for so long, and her, one of the first, not even sure if they used tools... I was about to speak when she interrupted me. "Yes, of course we use tools here, though as I'm not entirely sure where your travels have taken you, I can't exactly be sure if you'd recognize them or even know how to use them, or if you ever even used a tool for anything constructive in your life." she said the last part as a jab, almost as if assuming that I had never been anything but a fighter.

Things grew quiet for a moment and, I suppose, to match that, I grew rather introspective. Up until now, I had never really taken much time to drink in the scenery. I guess that I'd been to so many different places that the novelty of being able to travel between planes had become lost on me. Because each place that I had visited was new, at least to an extent, "new" eventually became old to me. The differences between planes began to blend together and, eventually, because it was always something different, it all began to look the same to me.

But now, this forest was to become my home, at least for the foreseeable future. I suppose the concept of developing a routine--waking up in the same place every morning, living with the same people, having a place that I could continually call "home," and people that I could continue to call family--though there have been times in my life when I've experienced that, they were mostly towards the beginning of it; as such, they have long since been forgotten.

I realize that, in essence, I now craved what most would consider to be a mundane routine. I think that, in a way, Rin and Vincent and the Forest might have been fated to help me re-experience these things. I realized, though, that I still crave adventure. Thus, I feel a strong sense of gratitude towards them. After all, if anything or anybody could fulfill this desire for me, it would be a place like this Forest--at least from what I've heard about it so far.

What an odd place I'd found myself in...