(During the leveling up 2 weeks)
The recent loss everyone has felt has effected Ethelred quite profoundly. The loss of the spyglass the object itself is noticeable. The spot he kept it in his pack, now empty. The replacement lens must find a new purpose.
But the sense that the true loss is that of gaining knowledge. The joy of going aloft into the treetops and peering deeply beyond ones eyesight. Forever that exact feeling is nothing but a memory.
But there are many paths to the same result. The path of the spyglass is closed. The path to have such knowledge is not.
Part of each day is spent in a tree, peering with his own eyes into the beyond. Up here there is little but endless shades of green, the occasional rocky outcropping, of course the mountain and birds. Many birds.
During the second week Red takes to feeding the local birds, meat, seeds, bugs. Whatever he can find. It is amusing to see them flutter around, weary but eager for the meal.
Ethelred takes a new interest in Gustav and Sally Crow. Watching the kinship. The sense Red gets is that Gustav and Sally can work together in a way non of us can.
“Gustav, what can you tell me about your relationship with Crow? I have taken less interest in her than others. But I see now, maybe for the first time really, that you and her have a… sense of each other?”
“What does that feel like?”
“What can you sense?”
Gus was sitting crouched over a fire and moves upright to look at Ethelred. “I am sorry you have lost the ability to use a spyglass. At least you never got the fancy one from Sutheron so you don’t know what you were missing. It would be like me being no longer able to track. Very frustrating.
Yes, the crow is connected to me. Annoying me is its main pastime. But it does follow some basic instructions now. Like staying on my shoulder, or staying 50 feet away from me. I have also been training her to do small tasks like go get me an object like a rock from like 10 feet away. I sometimes get flashes of feelings or sights the crow feels or sees. But I don’t yet have the ability to see for a long time what the crow sees. Will need more training for that. It is more like when it is worried, it lets me know in my head. It can alarm me in my head of danger.
Why what are you thinking? Getting your own crow? Not sure how you would do that. Not even sure how I was connected to the crow beyond magic I didn’t trigger. And it would take a long time to train. Maybe you could learn a spell in one of those scrolls that would let you see far away without a crow…”