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Description
The forest was tall and dense, and at this time of night, rather clammy.  Even after the third moon rose, not much light got through the branches.  On a late summer night like this, it was common to hear many sounds of life – night birds, insects, peeping frogs, the scuffling of one small creature hunting or fleeing another.  But tonight, certain sounds emerging from under the canopy of branches were not so usual.

Crash, crunch, slosh – “Yeeow!”

Rayman groaned, not for the first time, and scrabbled his way back up the steep river bed where he had missed his footing and skidded down several vertical feet of muddy bank into the shallow stream.  He was shivering in the uncomfortably fresh night air – its chill amplified by even fresher mud and very cold water.

Why didn’t he wait till morning?  He was completely unfamiliar with these woods, and he was travelling in black night over pathless terrain all tangled with roots and fallen branches and half a foot deep in slippery dead leaves, mulch and mud after the previous three days of torrential rains.  Which he had also travelled through.  The mud was so thoroughly battered into him by this time that he felt as though, if he did survive long enough to take a hot shower some day, he might well dissolve entirely down the drain.

He sat down for a few minutes on the sodden verge of the stream.  Then, sighing, he got back to his feet, and continued to pick his way gingerly along.  He knew he was heading more or less in the right direction, his deep-ingrained woods instincts told him that much, even on this foreign planet; but the only way he could be certain to end up in the right place would be stay close to the river, however muddy.  And no matter how many times he sighed and told himself to be sensible, stop right now and just bed down in the mud, sleep off those few more hours till sunup, his feet kept right on feeling for the next semisolid toehold.

It was just after sunrise when he emerged from the forest into the green, gold and brown patchwork of fields, meadows, and hedgerows that filled the space between the woods and the castle walls.  It was his first clear view of the castle.  About a quarter-mile off, it looked immense, ancient.  It was an assortment of five tremendous, irregular, weathered stone towers linked together by a sprawling jumble of various sized smaller buildings with low roofs shingled in red and grey, all surrounded by a sturdy wall.

Dawn light was breathing a faint rosiness into the grey stone.  Rayman paused at the edge of the forest, looking for a while at the scene.  Then, suddenly, as though the dawn had struck him too, he smiled.  He moved forward into the fields, toward the castle.

Description
The forest was tall and dense, and at this time of night, rather clammy.  Even after the third moon rose, not much light got through the branches.  On a late summer night like this, it was common to hear many sounds of life – night birds, insects, peeping frogs, the scuffling of one small creature hunting or fleeing another.  But tonight, certain sounds emerging from under the canopy of branches were not so usual.

Crash, crunch, slosh – “Yeeow!”

Rayman groaned, not for the first time, and scrabbled his way back up the steep river bed where he had missed his footing and skidded down several vertical feet of muddy bank into the shallow stream.  He was shivering in the uncomfortably fresh night air – its chill amplified by even fresher mud and very cold water.

Why didn’t he wait till morning?  He was completely unfamiliar with these woods, and he was travelling in black night over pathless terrain all tangled with roots and fallen branches and half a foot deep in slippery dead leaves, mulch and mud after the previous three days of torrential rains.  Which he had also travelled through.  The mud was so thoroughly battered into him by this time that he felt as though, if he did survive long enough to take a hot shower some day, he might well dissolve entirely down the drain.

He sat down for a few minutes on the sodden verge of the stream.  Then, sighing, he got back to his feet, and continued to pick his way gingerly along.  He knew he was heading more or less in the right direction, his deep-ingrained woods instincts told him that much, even on this foreign planet; but the only way he could be certain to end up in the right place would be stay close to the river, however muddy.  And no matter how many times he sighed and told himself to be sensible, stop right now and just bed down in the mud, sleep off those few more hours till sunup, his feet kept right on feeling for the next semisolid toehold.

It was just after sunrise when he emerged from the forest into the green, gold and brown patchwork of fields, meadows, and hedgerows that filled the space between the woods and the castle walls.  It was his first clear view of the castle.  About a quarter-mile off, it looked immense, ancient.  It was an assortment of five tremendous, irregular, weathered stone towers linked together by a sprawling jumble of various sized smaller buildings with low roofs shingled in red and grey, all surrounded by a sturdy wall.

Dawn light was breathing a faint rosiness into the grey stone.  Rayman paused at the edge of the forest, looking for a while at the scene.  Then, suddenly, as though the dawn had struck him too, he smiled.  He moved forward into the fields, toward the castle.