What this rabbitlike deerkind starchild of occasional omniscience also finds the room within himself to take delight in is the weight he feels above in the sway of his strawhat covered head. Beside his abnormally pale appearance and beside each pale rabbitish ear, Winn's most prominant feature that he is most proud to call his own is his set of barklike gnarled umber antlers that branched from his scalp in triumph. These mahogany limbs had seemed a further impossible fantasy to Winn before everything that had now brought him to this cursed, cobbled stone driven into the crudely divided landscape. Though his rabbitlike legs had well carried his leaps straight and true for many journeys great and small, they were as such often on long flat stretches of level land. Irrespective of his current state of frailishness, he was built for traversal other than tallwalking on inclines. If the frigid wind had not necessitated in his wearing of so many constricting layers he might have stayed down on all fours to downwalk for the rest of this mountainous pass.
Winn had discovered as a youngbun, as people of all kinds do, what an interesting challenge that downwalking becomes when one is strapped with luggage less than entirely secure. Most of the time it is simply too annoying for one to bother downwalking while transporting more than a tightfit daybag. The close quarters of the university's halls by all measurement made tallwalking the only means of navigating those crowded corridors and chambers. Downwalking in the city is in general an uncommon behavior for those lacking in the habit of being on either side of a pursuit.
Winn recalls one particular pursuit in which everything he had spontaniously became everything he owned. He holds within his mind the gratitude that at least in this excursion he is free from the burden of having to carry everything he owned now strapped to his body. All his personal and academic effects are on a supplying vessel navigating the access channel flowing into and out of this hazard moated fortress housing his fixation and destination: the blessed valley nestled town of Taleford. And it is also this town's alluring cultural bounties that Winn has to thank for why he is taking the long way into town instead of in the cushioned cab of the supply vessel bearing his belongings. For any person to reside and to even sleep in Taleford for one night, they must pass through the Gate at the end of the trial of the Path painstakingly carved out from the monstrous terrain by those in antiquity that first set out to settle in Mother's favored valley hideaway. It is they who are known and talked of without name or title, they who are most strongly revered by the orthodox elderkind, and they who Winn is of particular desperation to write of and understand for himself as much as Mother will provide.
As is the case for all of his 3rd year academic peers, Winn is on his grueling way to live for an undetermined amount of time in the subject of his semester research trip. His general studies classroom had been selected in rotation for the southern province destinations populated by their choice of extremities in elevation and climate. His purpose in Taleford is to investigate and document the particularly unique religious history and unusually wide range of ritual practice and whatever else gets his mind singing in unison. There is no price he would not pay at this point to continue his pursuit of knowledge, but there drifting through his mindclouds, Winn very briefly wishes that Mother would provide for Her most wimpy of soldiers perhaps less than Her most difficult challenges.
At least he would soon take the last of his furgrowth pills and wait for his fur to shorten on its own. There are of course tablets to shorten fur but Winn is trying to avoid anymore unnecessary pharmaceutical experiences in this Life. Anyway he has heard that it is fairly normal for the people here to wear scarcely more than a few accessories thanks to their often organically thick fur coats coupled with the warm underground current carrying Mother's Blessing from an underground magma pocket. This miracle of geology did not transport the whole village into a tropical climate, but its gentle love keeps at bay the sickening winters that have been gathering in preparation for their anticipatory act.
Ah, it has just been revealed to me that Winn has in truth been traveling with another, a more nimble and agile one who keeps winding up so far ahead of him that Winn did not have it in mind as he woke up that he is traveling with anyone else, and thus what I am able to know about him. Winn remains examining the ground as the younger mossgreen foxish deerkind student in a straight brown coat and strawhat approaches him with a friendly grin and reaches out an unseen hand. Remember now Winn, his name is Theon.
