Keto stretched as she stood and stared out around them.

“It’s so gorgeous out.”

In the deluge of the previous day they had made their camp on the top of a small butte.  In such a storm, as she had struggled to pitch her tent amongst the gusts and even the old Landian had struggled and then given up on lighting a fire, she hadn’t even taken a moment to consider the view the small hill would offer.  Waking now with nothing but the rising sun and a blue sky that seemed to tower above them, the scenery was breath taking.

“You knew about this didn’t you?” she called back.  The Landian was poking at whatever he was half cooking, half burning over the fire.  He looked up to the Bard and then gave a look around their scenery.

“I knew it commanded a view, and would drain the water well.  I don’t think I’ve ever been here with the weather so nice.”  Standing, one of his knees giving a pop to join the low cackle of the campfire, Quartes joined Keto at the hill’s rim.  She had smelled the salt of the coast as she rose this morning, but now she could see the sparkle of the far off Eastern Ocean, the white of their peaks and breaks scattered amongst the deep blue at intervals.  Turning left, she squinted, holding a hand to shade against the growing light.

“Is that the tip of…?”

“Mount Migin, yes,” he answered.  His pupil-less eyes were squinted against the light and Keto marveled as the just the hint of a snow capped peak that she could see.  Between them and there were rolling green fields, shifting from nearly yellow to a deep verdigris as winds swept over them, creating waves not all that different from the ocean.  Near the horizon she caught the blue strip of a river, a downward loop of the Upper Icerun by her best guess.

“I’m shocked there isn’t a town here,” Keto whispered nearly to herself, hushed by the scenery about her.

“There was, in the last Cycle the Aenesi Empire kept a watchtower here.  Built to watch the Silver road heading south to the Sanctuary Lake.  I saw it in that time, know there was a small village about it but I never visited…shades.”

Keto started out of the reverie, worried for a moment that the Landian had spotted something.  Instead she caught the smell of burning and laughed to herself as she turned to see the Landian, knife in one hand, progressive burnt fingertips doing the best on their own, as he pried the burning biscuits off the heated stone of their campfire.  As she approached to help a glint to the southwest caught her eye and she stepped past the struggling Landian to the other side of the hill.

“Wait, that can’t be…the towers of Verken?”

Biscuits salvaged as best he could, Quartes’ pale gaze looked up.  He squinted and after a moment gave his own smile.  “I would not have thought those would be visible from here but you are correct.”  Keto stared off at the glint of the bronze top of one of the towers.  To see signs of two of the four cities of the Heroes stunned her.  This spot, an old ruin, screamed for so much more than its recent history.  The Bard let her gaze sweep out across the rest of the view.  The shimmering fields, a few dark splotches of forest, the hazy purple of the far off Hendark mountains to the west.

She was smiling as something roiled inside her, hints of music and song coming together.

“Can we,” she begun and then looked back to Quartes, “Can we stay her for the day?”

The Landian smiled, “We have nowhere specific to be.”  Her smile blossomed, radiant in the sun, and Keto moved towards her tent.  To the scrolls and harp inside and a day finding words to capture the wonder of this spot.