Winter had come and gone and with it, Ontari had entered her third year. The achievement had been, much to Ontari's disatisfaction, eclipsed by the great flooding that had welcomed spring at the same time. Iromar, for the most part, had been left unscathed, but Ontari had watched as the rivers surrounding them swelled, and how her precious Crags and Grotto were swallowed up by dark water. Where was she supposed to go to think? And had that girl, Sorath, been swallowed up by the water too?
It was that question that lingered in the forefront of her mind as she slowly trekked across Iromar towards the Crags. The moor became a much more dangerous place the closer it got to the rocky labyrinth. Even though Ontari had been born and raised in Iromar, even she found it difficult to navigate the muddy water and boggy soil that innundated the area around the Crags. Though she'd left at sunrise, it took her several hours to create a path through to her destination. By the time she got to where the moors became stony pillars and walls, she was covered in mud up to her chest and appeared more than just a little agitated. Ontari practically bristled with frustration as she hoisted herself up several large boulders to overlook the water below.
What she saw surprised her, and it took her several minutes of staring just to register that she was indeed looking at something real. Water had swallowed up nearly all of the Crags' structures, leaving little more than a few errant pillars stabbing out of the water. Below her, the water stagnated somewhat, and she reached down cautiously to pull out a branch that bobbed against the stone she stood on. It was waterlogged and she screwed her nose up as the earthy smell hit her, but she reclaimed it from the water nonetheless.
With her prize, she settled down a bit cautiously a few feet from the edge of the rock. Slowly, she laid down and placed the branch across her legs. Carefully, she examined it. Though it had been in the water for a while, her brows shot up when she sniffed over it. "This is from Taviora?" Though she wasn't asking anybody in particular, she couldn't help but exlaim her discovery out for the world to hear. It was truly shocking, wasn't it?! From Taviora! Taviora was so far away, or so Ontari had thought, and yet the water had brought down debris from the forest pack all the way to Iromar... Just how bad was the flooding? Ontari's eyes tried to follow the water upstream, but it never seemed to end.
ontari.