Aza sets about packing. "Do you want it to be just the two of us?"

"- Who else would want to come?" 

"I was thinking of asking Skan but I know you're not friends really."

"He could be pretty helpful to have around! And it'd be safer if he could fly us in - although maybe he can't carry both of us... My clan would be terrified of him, if they're still around, but I guess he could hang back for that. Do you think he'd want to come, if you asked him?" 

"I bet he'd be into it but I don't know if he has a scheduling conflict."

"Well, you might as well ask him!" 

:Hey Skan, do you want to come on the Predain trip?:

:- What? Yes, I'd love to - is Ma'ar okay with it?: 

:Yeah, I asked him first. He might recommend you hang back at some points lest you scare people though:

:Of course, that makes sense - they might not even have heard of gryphons over there! ...When would we be leaving? What do I need to pack?: 

:First thing tomorrow and I packed, uh, clothes and notebooks and magic items and food, which you probably do not need to bring - I guess you could bring food if you want to carry some emergency jerky but meat's difficult enough that it might make more sense for you to hunt rabbits there:

Skan is vibrating gently at the prospect of getting to HUNT for his own FOOD for real. :I can do that. How long a trip? I need to tell my parents: 

:We're planning on about a week, maybe longer, but one of us can Gate you back early if it turns out to be hard to find food for you. Just bring enough that even if there's no game to be had you're okay for the time it takes us to recover from Gating, so we can time it:

:I can do that!: 

And the next morning Skan is ready bright and early, with his parents' permission to be gone up to a week, wearing a harness and pack with enough jerky to minimally feed a gryphon for two days, albeit very tediously. He's hoping the Plains have lots of those big fat jackrabbits, and maybe even wild - not deer, they're forest animals not plains animals, but something big and fun to chase. 

And Ma'ar has food and clothes and his artifacts and his map. 

"Ready?" he says to Azabel. 

Her backpack is full of notebooks and a spare outfit and a blanket and a water bottle and camping dishes and various artifacts and some sandwiches to eat for the first day and nuts and raisins and rice and lentils and fudge to eat later and, also, several paper packets of spice blends, a lemon, and a bulb of garlic her mother insisted on to give the rice and lentils more variety. It's heavy. Probably she can convince Skan to carry it if she gets too tired. "Ready!"

Ma'ar fixes his eyes on the archway he picked for the threshold on this end - a big stone decorative one in the courtyard, plenty of space for Skan - and stares at it. 

"Is your mother worried about you going so far away?" he asks Azabel, absently. 

"No, I told her I'd be able to Gate back if anything got to be too much for me and promised I'd do it if it did." She did also make Aza endure the sex talk again even though Aza told her like seven times that she is not in fact going to sleep with Ma'ar who, might she remind any nosy maternal influences who might be about, has a physical contact history with her limited to "one hug leading to a weird fight".

"Mmm." 

Ma'ar is distracted now, building the threshold of his Gate. The big archway starts to glow. 

Skan oohs and aaahs appropriately. He's seen Gates before, of course, he does live in Urtho's Tower; his family even went on a trip once through one of the big permanent termini; but he's never seen one of his FRIENDS cast an actual Gate that he was going to go through in order to join them on an ADVENTURE. 

Ma'ar, he thinks, isn't as cool as Azabel, who is the SMARTEST, but he's pretty cool. 

And then it's up! The other end is built on the big doorway of an outlying barn behind one of the farms he remembers passing; hopefully they won't startle anyone coming through, and if they do at least he knows the local language and can reassure them. 

Ma'ar hefts his pack and steps through into...very tall grass, it looks like it hasn't been cut in months or maybe years. Huh. 

Azabel swishes across as quick as she dares so he won't need to hold the gate long. "Wow. The cows are not doing their jobs," she remarks.

"I - think maybe the farm has a problem." He's glancing around. 

"Yeah... at least the barn is still standing, but it doesn't look like anybody's using the land."

"I wonder what happened?" Ma'ar peers around a bit. "- Can't feel anyone nearby. Huh. I...guess the land here is pretty marginal for farming, soil's too rocky. So maybe they got driven out by bandits and no one's bothered reclaiming the fields yet." Shrug. "It's only been two years! I - don't like it. But I guess it's not our problem right now."