Leiland waited, and waited and waited, till she couldn’t wait any more. Something had happened. Though she was too little to understand what it was, she knew she wasn‘t supposed to be alone. Crying, she decided to go to the field. Maybe, she hoped, mommy and daddy were waiting there for her.

        Had she but left earlier, all would have been different, but by the time she left for the fields her father, Roran, clearing rocks from the fields had long since strayed to the very edge of the farm. As he wandered along the foot of the Blue Mountains, his foot slipped near the brink of a terribly slippery slope and he fell, tumbling and rolling to the bottom.

        In fact it was only moments before Leiland awoke, that stepping onto the porch, Delith shouted out to her husband, “Roran honey, you need to come inside and eat something, it is too hot to stay in the fields all day.” Only to be answered by silence. Chuckling to herself at her husband’s wanderlust and child-like curiosity, a trait he shared with his daughter, Delith went upstairs to check on her young child. Still curled up in her cot, Leiland murmured quietly in her sleep. Deciding not to disturb her, Delith quietly slipped out of the room and went in search of her husband. As the door to the house closed behind her, the gentle slam of the door echoed through the house and Leiland began to stir.

        Walking steadily further from the house, Delith made her way towards the mountains following the trail of trampled grass that Roran had left in his wake. Too late did she realize how precisely she had been following her husband, for as she approached the slope where Roran had fallen, her eyes searching wildly ahead for him, she too pitched over the edge of that horrible slope and slid to the bottom where Roran’s unconscious body laid bruised and beaten.