The Brae Wood is a beautiful place to walk, if I wasn’t determined to make my way to Eldran by tomorrow I would love to stay here and explore more!

I felt surer of the path than I expected, the bear stayed with me and I got the feeling he wasn’t going to let me get lost. he wasn’t guiding me in the traditional sense of the word but I got the feeling that the paths beneath my feet were never going to be the wrong ones today!

As I walked I mulled over the situation with the new skein fibres and the strange wildlife patterns, I don’t see how it can be connected but it seems like a very odd coincidence. I am hoping that the Alignment Office can shed some light on things, and maybe send some of the new things out to Bern so we can stay connected.

There is something about the new Skein-tech though, it felt prickly and one or two of the broken pathway marker relays have been resistant to my normal cord-wright techniques and tools. It somehow seems more noticeable in this forest, there are natural resonance webs and fibres growing through the trees and everything feels smoother and more connected than when I was in Lethran.

Most of the day was taken up with walking and looking around, watching the fox and hoop- weasel who decided to join my expedition for a little while. As I neared the edge of the wood however, there was a change, the bear slowed and turned off the path, this time not just walking alongside but watching and wanting me to follow.

Of course I followed him! We made our way to a clearing in the forest, and the moment I stepped in it felt instantly more right than I had ever felt but overlaid with an wrongness and the same strange sensations I felt in around the new fibres.

The clearing contains what look like the ruins of a natural skein relay station but the form of the nodes and joins is like nothing I have ever seen, they are interwoven and beautiful, but they are also dying! The structures that support them are broken and the fibres and webs look sad and like old ropes and string in a sad grey not a vibrant pale blue!

The age and wonder of the place was breathtaking, but the overlay of wrongness felt like pins and needles.

I studied the joins to see if there was anything to be done when I discovered something that I don’t understand, something that worries me. In one or two places the skein webs were cut. Completed severed and it looked deliberate, it didn’t look like natural wear and tear. What’s more, in one area it looked like someone had tried to splice in a mesh of the new fibres, that area felt the most uncomfortable of the whole glade!

I do not like this one bit! I noted down all I could but now I need to get to Eldran even more urgently!

The bear led me to this place, it is my job now to work out what to do about it. Or at the very least find someone who knows!!

Just before I left the forest, the bear waited on the path for me to catch up, he was closer than ever. I bent to look him in the face, and he nodded once before padding off along the tree line.