The sun was almost gone.
A last thin line of orange sat on the horizon and the sky above it had already gone dark, the stars coming out one at a time in a sky that was very wide and very empty. No city glow anywhere. No torchlight or artificial lightening of human establishmeny.
Just the wasteland and the dark.
The grass, through which Ishiki and Sael were moving was three meters tall, maybe more in some places.
Dense and dry and the colour of old straw, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could not see because the eye could not see past the first meter of it. The wind moved through the tops of it constantly, a low continuous rustle that swallowed smaller sounds and made the whole place feel like it was breathing.
The ground was the real problem though, it was soft in patches — not visibly, or differently coloured. You just suddenly get a wrong underfoot, a subtle give that became a rapid sink if you committed your weight to it.
