The Shore

If nothing else, the sand should help clear some of the muck off her toes.

With another agitated glance behind her, Morgause hurries forward, making for the path that leads down to the shore. The twined charms around her wrists rattle as she goes, and she clutches the tiny animal bones with a murmured plea to The Dark Mothers.

“Show me that my path is true, let the right way shine with blue.”

The faintest trail wisps ahead of her, an ethereal firefly bobbing forth, as she makes her way out of the village, and down to the coast.

The sand is cold and brittle underfoot, but it makes a pleasing enough change after the damp terrain behind her.

She turns over a lump of driftwood with her toe, making out the fading remains of a ship’s name board, The Drun-

“The Drunken Something or other.” She remarks aloud, “Hardly the most auspicious name.”

Or the most auspicious omen for her search.

Her guiding light shakes before her, almost impatiently, and she turns to watch as it zips along the beach, heading for - as she predicted - the yawning mouth of a cave, its entrance partly submerged by the creeping tide.

Hiking her up skirts, Morg makes her way over, but finds the water only ankle-high as she treads carefully into the shadow of the cave.

She touches the charms at her wrist again, dismissing the guidance spell with a quiet word of thanks, then calling upon the Lady of the Hunt to bless her eyes, as she peers into the gloom.

“Gisela, let me see beyond the shroud, let mine eyes suffer no cloud.”

Quite why the First Coven in their infinite wisdom decided that all incantations of the craft needed to rhyme, she will never understand. But the spell does the trick, amplifying her already keen Half-Elven eyesight, as she moves further into the darkened cave, slender legs swishing through the gently lapping water.