Further away from this umbrella canopy wilderness stood a mountain, and atop it was a distinct glow and an exotic shape of a shrine.
The climb began before the light could pretend to be morning.
Not that it ever truly changed. The grey-gold sky hung the same as always, but the group had learned to make their own mornings now, rising when the lamplight in the leaves had burned low and the air off the waterfall had gone cool and thin. They ate a quick meal of roasted fish and sweet forest fruit on the high walkways, packed what little they needed, and set out from the umbrella trees toward the one mountain that rose higher than all the rest.
It stood at the far edge of their hollow, taller and stranger than its neighbors, its slopes too smooth and its peak lost in a faint haze that did not move with the wind, because there was no wind. They had seen the shape of a Shrine near its summit on a clear day, a pale knot of stone set into the high rock like a seed pressed into clay.
