Just outside of the city and a few paces off the main road I stumbled across a beautiful bloom of wildflowers, they were many colored and slightly angular. They grew in connected patches away from the shade. I thought I knew all the plant life in and around this city and did not expect to discover something new so soon into the journey. I plucked a handful and stored them into a leather pouch that hung from my belt.

Dermond called them something. It was a folk word for them, not a properly scientific name. I must remember to ask him when we break for the evening.

Later now. Dermond looked surprised when I showed him the flowers. Elder Flowers he calls them, or flowers of the old ones. In his guarded voice he told me that his own mother had wreathed these flowers together into her hair on her wedding day for good fortune. As he spoke he carefully wove the stems together, making links of a bracelet. He did it absentmindedly; his practiced fingers needing no urging to do the task. When asked why they were lucky, Dermond only responded that anything that could live so long in this world had to have its own special luck, before tossing the flower bracelet into the fire.