Cheal and the wanderer in a brown overcoat gazed together at the forests that surrounded the city Cleaving.
Slowly they descended atop the slope they were at, their gaze never leaving the forest cover. Each had their own questions regarding the forests.
None were revealed.
The smoke from the wild fires was intermixing into the cool sea breeze. Taking the smoke to meet the clouds.
Daylight shone once in a while on the wanderer in the brown overcoat, but Cheal was always missed. This was another note the wanderer in the brown overcoat had taken.
Cheal quipped maybe to himself, "the light is a bit amusing here, isn't it?" His words were a whisper to himself.
The wanderer remained unresponsive. A doubt surfaced above into his mind, 'how are these forests possible in an open area?'
Cheal exhaled.
The wanderer in the brown overcoat and Cheal had already reached the end of the slope. The seashore was still over half a league down from where they were standing.
The wanderer picked out some metal shaped shoes from his overcoat's hidden pockets, filling them with a bit of rocks from nearby.
"Um, do you happen to have a rope too in that coat of yours?" Cheal asked.
The wanderer in the overcoat looked at him, "didn't I use one before in front of you?"
Cheal nodded in a bit of hesitation. "Then you know that rope is not meant for climbing up or down", the wanderer's eyes were at his shoes fitting them in the metal shoes with the pebbles.
The wanderer tested their fittings, satisfied with them. He looked down the slope, there was no clear landing.
Bushes, scrubs, overgrown plants, uprooted roots, that's all he saw down there. Not a beach or some sand. Yet, he could see the sea in his peripheral.
"Meet you again after Cleaving doesn't cleave you", the wanderer jumped down from the slope.
Cheal looked over a bit shaken, his face showed his tiredness.
The wanderer in the brown overcoat however, had retreated himself to a fetal position. Cheal realized it as a cannonball.
The wanderer however didn't have his feet pointing down, he tried as best as he could to have the soles of his feet pointing upwards.
This time he used the action of fire, the very same one that was responsible for the wild fires. The one the monarch of Riga advised to use on the streams. The wanderer used them on his steel boots.
First try, only normal flames came out. He did the action of water on the sides of his boots. The fire doused itself.
Second try, twisting tornadoes of fire. Again doused by the repeated action of water.
Third try, he tapped thrice downwards with two fingers on the surface of his soles, while his soles pointed upwards. The flaming jets of half his size with force originated from the tapped surface area.
The wanderer in the brown overcoat quickly pointed his feet down, his overcoat getting assailed meanwhile saving him from the flames.
From a far, it looked like a log aflame at the falling end was falling down vertically. But the log was slowing down slowly, a bit by bit.
After half of a half league, the log-like thing was falling very gracefully. The landing zone learned what a flame actually felt like when the wanderer did reach it.
He was safe, the landing area not so much. Everything was charred, ashes flying around. But the flames mysteriously just died moments before the wanderer landed.
The wanderer did accelerate a bit during last twice the length of his height. But the flames at the end of his metal shoes were gone, so were the fire caused by them in the undergrowth.
A forest of greenery. Weird greenery was awaiting his curiosity.
Cheal, in the meanwhile, climbed down slowly. One holding, one crevice in the side of the slope, at a time. It took him the entire day and a couple hours into the night that he reached the same burned undergrowth as the wanderer whom he accompanied.
"Crazy lunatic."
The wanderer wasn't there to hear Cheal's compliment. He had already crossed the forest and Cleaving's outskirts.
Main wall of Cleaving that divided it from outskirts and it's planned city parts, was made of long trimmed logs. They were thick and repeated, not just side by side in a circle but four concentric circles. No spaces between these wood circles.
Guards absence at the gate should have alerted the wanderer to be wary. Albeit, he felt this was mostly expected, he didn't remember which memory fueled that expectation. But he knew there was one, there had to be.
As he wandered into the city, he twisted into several streets. Each being different a slight bit from the last or the next.
Some city-folk told him to follow along the Tide Breaker wall, others told him just find the Pioneer Port Hall.
A vast majority called that place Pioneer Ramshackle, rather than Pioneer Port Hall. But it was clear, the hall was closer to the sea than other structures of the city, except the ends of the Tide Breaker wood wall.
He reached the seashore within the city as the white dots in the night sky were just beginning to light up. The wanderer felt a bit relieved that he may be able to find this Pioneer Port Hall within the same day.
Cleaving's strangeness creeped into his instincts. It made him wary.
He passed by a few buildings on the port's Eighth street, as was the name of the street. He had already been to the Fourth, Ninth, and Second street. Spotting Cheal on the second street, he didn't approach him.
The wanderer in the overcoat was just done with this street when he felt that one of the buildings he passed earlier was truly a ramshackle.
He turned back. Finding that ramshackle wasn't hard, but calling it one was an over exaggeration.
The ramshackle was three storied, wooden structure with each story having been added later clearly evidenced by it's construction style.
He looked up at the board, trying to read it's name. Starlight seemed to choose to help this brown overcoat wearing wanderer to read the name on it's board. The reflected starlight lit the board, the name shining subtly 'Pioneer Ramshackle; Previously named Pioneer Port Hall'.