“Of course not!” answered Aetos. Every time I heard a bird land on the rock ledge above us, I thought that it would somehow cause a rockslide. As we continued on the mountain path, it slowly grew ever wider as we reached the end. We now found ourselves walking along a dirt path through a grassy, slightly forested dale between a very tall mountain to the right, and a rather short mountain to the left. Suddenly, a gust of wind rushed through the dale as we veered off our trail to head towards the smaller mountain. Dabble and I braced ourselves against each other, as we were both on the small side of the size scale, to avoid being blown away. The wind stopped as quickly as it had come. As we ventured farther into the small patch of trees at the base of the smaller mountain, the wind continued in little spurts. As we came closer to the mountain, the wind spurts grew closer together until Dabble, Aetos and I we all enveloped in a cold, howling gale, but we trekked on. Luckily, Aetos had been leading us to a cave at the mountain’s foot. As we plodded on through the seemingly never-ending cave. After walking for a while, along with a bit of jogging ahead to see if there was anything even to see, we saw a faint purplish, pinkish, and bluish glow coming from a little farther on. As we drew closer, the light became much brighter. I thought about what it might be, a magical fire, a wizard staff’s magic glow, and a good many other things that either included wizards or magic. None of my curious guesses were correct. The strange glow came from a portal. “Don’t be afraid, Dabble, dear,” assured Aetos. Then, Aetos stepped into the spinning light of the portal, and disappeared. “Would you like to go together?” I asked, trying to sound unwearied by the dangers of not knowing where a portal will take you. Trying to sound not afraid when you are terrified is something that I do not recommend in the least! With a nod of my companion’s head, we linked fingers, closed our eyed, and jumped into the light. Opening my eyes only about two seconds later, I could see the portal closing above us in a pink sky with nuances of gray and orange as a bright, bulging sun set in the horizon behind us. Dabble, who was lying on the ground with her eyes closed and her body curled into a tight ball, didn’t move until Aetos and I shook her for what felt to be the hundredth time. “Where are we?” questioned Dabble, getting up from the soft, green grass that covered vast hills as far as we could see in the fading light. “This is Gregoria. If you turn around, you will see the mountains that would have taken us weeks to cross without the use of that very rare portal. I will not go into much depth of why, but I will inform you that this particular portal only opens and closes on a specific time of day and on only one day a year,” replied Aetos. As soon as Dabble regained her wits, we made way for a small patch of trees a little way away. It was growing ever darker, as the sun fell down behind the mountains to our rear until the moon and the stars were out only light. We came upon the trees and quickly went to work finding fallen pine pieces, moss, and anything that could be used as makeshift beds. That night, Aetos kept watch as Dabble and I slept. Actually, as you will see, he does this every night he is with us, if we are not traveling of course. I do not suppose that wizards need to sleep much as they are controllers of magic, but I don’t know.
