A wide ground covering of white-streaked, blue morning glory flowers interlaced throughout with green leaves, adorned the banks of the ravine, trumpeting silent praises to God. Their little green vines, with their countless green stepping-stone leaves were outstretched like a living carpet that extended away from her in an uneven boundary restricted to the shade in a series of wide, irregular patterns, patches, and grassy missed sections.
Farther from the ravine, tall sawtooth grass clumps fountained perpetual white floral sprays into the air from shooting star sticks in their centers. The clumps were surrounded by field grass interspersed with bare sand and gravel patches. The field stretched away from the banks of the crooked watercourse, in which the morning glories kept mostly to the sheltering canopy of overhanging tree boughs.
If his body had slid or rolled just a little farther beyond where it now lay, it would have gone down the side of the more steeply banked inner run of the ravine and continued into the bottom, which ditched down much more sharply into a pronounced drop-off.
The center of the ditch contained a profusion of spiked briars and berry brambles of a size such as to give pause to the most determined invader, and was undoubtedly rife with scorpions, spiders, flying stinging insects, huge venomous vipers, and other unguessable horrors, from which depths it would have been plainly hopeless for her to venture the recovery of the foot soldier's body again.
But to her good fortune, the body had not gone too far, and the impromptu pall-bearers -his former comrades-at-arms- had not bothered to make a better effort of their thankless task.
Si'Wren knelt down beside an exposed rock, placing her little stone lamp upon it. Pouring carefully from a small oilskin pouch, she filled it with oil, taking care not to spill any. Then she took the flint out of a pouch, together with a little bit of punk, or fine, dried grass, and placed it beside the oil lamp, whereupon she contrived with several deft strikes of the flint and a series of expertly aimed sparks to start the punk to glowing with a single precious spark enmeshed deep within its crushed dry bosom, and blow gently upon it, and soon had a flame. With this in turn she lighted the oil lamp's pour spout.
Successful at last in doing this, she paused and somberly studied the lighted lamp with it's pale flame wavering a little in the still morning air.
Abruptly she heard a noise, and looked behind her in alarm to see that the pack of hyenas she had passed while riding in, had already cut off her escape route and was preparing to close in on her. The stallion still stood his ground, but was already becoming spooked and would not be manageable for too much longer. A few of the hyenas were already trying to work up their nerve to make the initial charge.
Protectively, Si'Wren picked up the oil lamp and stepped forward between the pack of hyenas and her nervously neighing horse.
The black continued stamping his hooves and neighing loudly, rearing animatedly several times to show his readiness to defend himself from all comers. It appeared that he might decide either to attack or break and run at any moment if they continued to provoke him much longer. That must not happen, for to Si'Wren the stallion represented survival itself in a land like this.