Dexter
The sand here was warm and sun-baked. The rainclouds somehow ended cleanly just before Luthien’s beaches, though the waves were rough and white-tipped. Dexter soaked up the heat of the sand and shivered in the late autumn breeze. Quinn panted beside him, and though he hadn’t left Macabre’s side during their swim, he was still afraid to check if she was still with him. If he turned around and she had disappeared, Dexter didn’t know what he would do.
The trees ahead of him looked bright and warm, but he knew the air would be cool in their shadows. Most of the leaves had passed their color-bursting stage and had either fallen or were preparing to, but Dexter found the place quite beautiful. For every four or five shedding or already-shed trees, there was one still aflame with red and orange leaves, and Dexter found his eyes seeking them out through the mostly-naked branches.
Quinn, too, seemed entranced by this new place. His eyes, one blue and one hazel, seemed to be soaking up the forest before them. The trees here were much bigger than the trees of the Crossing, much warmer than the trees of Tinuvel, and no doubt much neater than the trees of Atlantis (which Dexter pictured as just tall tangled trunks, green and fuzzy with vines and other plants). It smelled different here as well, and the ground was not so packed down as the well-traversed floor of the Common. Dexter drank in the unfamiliar scents as he took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and looked behind him at Macabre, or perhaps the sand where Macabre had just been, depending on whether or not she had chosen to stay with him.
