Sick of all this running. We don’t stop for any more than a few minutes during the day, and it’s never enough to give the laptop battery a good boost. It’s constantly running down and I can’t keep a proper eye on Maya like this. She hasn’t changed. And I’m beginning to wonder if she ever will and that her life force was simply scattered on the wind the way it might scatter the ashes of a corpse. Poor, poor Maya. Does she know what’s going on now? A part of me hopes she doesn’t while another, more selfish, part does because I need her to use all her energies to make things right.
We stayed moving all through the night and most of today. I finally convinced Sara and Kanar that I needed time to rest and spent an hour looking in on Maya. That alone gave me the strength to keep going. I also managed to charge the battery to 30%. It should be enough to keep it going until we get out of this place. The atmosphere is unbearable now. It’s hot and stuffy and hard to breathe properly at times—especially in mid-afternoon. And it’s all happening so sterilely it’s hard to believe it’s happening at all and that we’re just blundering through some hostile jungle. There are no smells here. Even our body odours (which are quite bad now) seem empty and old, like the smell of old bones. All the colours are fading fast, too. The greens, browns, and yellows that marked out the trees and vegetation, are slipping away like oils from a canvas leaving nothing behind except grey outlines that makes me imagine I’m wandering through a ghost landscape.
When we stopped earlier I took the opportunity to ask Sara if the Maymen (or anyone for that matter) could transport Armbranch and I to an area close to the gateway envelop. A funny look crossed her face when I mentioned going home. And I don’t think it had anything to do with her wanting to know more about where I come from. It wasn’t an inquisitive look she gave me. No. It looked more like a brief flash of pity. When she told me we could discuss all that once we were safe, I didn’t push it. Right now I’ve enough on my mind without trying to analyse what that look meant.