A journey that had taken us...an amount of timer longer than I had spent sulking on the floor to complete. Once we had exited the ocean, that was not it, nor was it even close. The lands were only something that were rumored about in the lost city, and to see them for the first time in such a state after made what should've been a marvelous revalation to my adventurious soul into a foggy blur, and remembering more conversation than landscape. The travelling stranger and I shared stories, memories, but only for a few sentences at a time, otherwise remaining silent. He sounded young, with a scissor taken to a vocal cord to attune a voice that sounded sour and rotten. The people I were about to meet were not the nicest, and I'm sure if we were not about to return to them, this stranger would say much more about the annoyances he had with them. As for myself, I only spoke about the city. It was all I had in my head, a walking encyclopedia of a place that didn't exist.

Forests, swamps, a village or two of other cookies. Noticing differences between the lands and the waters, and the lands and myself. Much like with the stranger, I was taller than everybody I saw, every marketplace vender staring at what they must've thought was some sulking monster. I do not fault them. I am a monster on first sight.

The swamp's colors turned from a lime green in the leaves, to the bushes a deep emerald, to a small patch where it seemed to mix into both, a patch of red and purple flowers surrounding us. Close. No, this was it. We had finally stopped the voyage, and I had never asked for this stranger's name, and presumably, it would no longer be a stranger in due time. That is what I did, and I was given a disturbed look in return.