Kak Dilla’s New Home

I’ve mentioned before that I have a Big Freaking Malay Family in my entry, Aidil Adha gathering.

Here comes the encore; Blessing Kak Dilla’s New Home. The rules of conduct are the same; bring family, bring food, bring gossip.

Craaaaaaaaap. But it’s still my favorite kind of crap.

Kak Dilla is my mother’s eldest brother’s second daughter; for short, she’s my first cousin. One of the eldest cousins to get married in Clan Jailani (shame-shame on my still unmarried brother, *Arsenal, the oldest of the 3rd generation), she, her husband, their 2.3 kids and their kitchen sink had been living in this small apartment next to the noisy NKVE (New Klang Valley Expressway for you foreign readers).

Now they have a real home; a small one-storey semi-detached house next to a noisy ironworks factory. If it weren’t for the driving distance and the good-sized plot of land, it’s not much difference from their old home. Literally.

As usual, there's never enough hallways to stuff people in.

Back to the new house. Kak Dilla’s husband’s family also joined in the fray but it’s not as a huge turn-out as the Aidil Adha gathering; but it’s still big enough to loose a baby in.

Namely, this baby.

At nine months old, the youngest and newest addition in Clan Jailani (until May 2008, when my sister’s second baby’s due), Kak Dilla’s baby, BigEyes, is very quiet, observant, tends to crawl everywhere on his own and does weird habits like laughing loudly every time someone flushes the toilet.


Mohd. Soleh, dubbed BigEyes. Oh, and that’s my brother, Genius, in the background, looking for his socks amidst 143 shoes.

There was a panicked 30 seconds when every responsible adult had assumed the other responsible adult was watching the baby. It turns out BigEyes was, yes, in the bathroom, laughing every time his two cousins flushes the toilet.

After the noon ritual prayers, every body takes position and a holy book. The idea was the fill the new house with the reading of the Al-Quran, so that the white walls echoed. You don’t need an imam to bless someone’s house, just a group reading aloud from the book and a leader to direct the prayers.

There’s no need to read aloud all 114 chapters (that’s the job of the accorded household living in the house for the next so-and-so years), just as much of the book and the time you have as you can get a large group of people to do it. The After-Haji party.


Each able-bodied family member grabs a chapter of the Al-Quran and reads aloud, so the house gets blessed.

And it gives the excuse for the older family members to check on which responsible young adult had been reading the Al-Quran diligently... and nag them.
“Hey, tak betul bacaan tu! Tengok tajwid, jangan leka!”
Good grief.

So after the long-winded reading and the continued blessing and the procedural bru-ha-ha-whatever, then comes the next event.

FOOD!!


As Clan Jailani’s from Johor, what else but to serve Laksa Johor? Yum, look at the long line.

Okay personally, I’m not into Laksa Johor. Or any other kind of laksa. Put me in the Laksa Shack and I’ll starve to death. It’s a genetic disorder (my uncle and one other aunt couldn’t stand laksa either and they’re from Johor). Luckily for my plate, there are fruits, cakes, sandwiches and a healthy order of hot meehoon soup.



Clan Jailani in all our eating habits glory.

Once everybody had been stuffed, stinking of laksa breath and baby BigEyes secured in his priso-, I mean playpen, then comes the family discussion. PakSu was supposed to bring his high-tech projector and laptop and show it off on Kak Dilla’s nice blank wall but he forgo the equipment (must be because the risk of the ‘little people’ stampeding everywhere) in exchange for nice printed documents.

The children of Allahyarham Haji Jailani, aka Yayi Board Members (yayi is grandfather in Javanese), brought out all the usual things they didn’t get to discuss on Aidil Adha gathering, along with several new updates.

From her Johor trip, Mak reported that Bibik (Yayi’s youngest sister) is doing fine with her son’s family, though her eyesight is really, really failing and that she tires more easily (she must be about mid 80s at least).

But she still insist on serving her special tea herself every time the KL family comes so Mak remembers to NOT CALL before arriving (surprise!), lest Bibik tries to turn on the stove and serve the glass cups with her bad eyes and bad back.

Beyond that, the usual. Money from the pineapple farm goes into the Jailani Fund, Bibik’s grandson is doing well in Colorado, USA and Cik Jah (my aunt with Down-syndrome) is sticking around Pontian, Johor for a while longer to renew cousinly ties.

All and all, the usual family discussion. Although I wasn’t really needed to be in the discussion, I try to keep up-to-date with the family’s, er, gossip. Mak’s siblings are an army of grandparents or soon-to-be grandparents. Just in case anything happens, I feel like I want to make sure I know how the connection goes and who to turn to in any emergency.

That sort of thing. It’s really a feeling of responsibility. . Nobody is in prison, nobody is in drugs, nobody is physically disabled and nobody had a major life-altering road accident. The Clan Jailani has grown and prospered and maintained a beautiful network, a very far cry from Yayi’s own history in the Japanese-Occupied past

For myself, the big family thing sucks. Sure it’s large and dandy and whatever-fancy, but we got lost between Sungai Buluh and Meru while on the way and found ourselves stuck in construction-induced traffic jam for an hour.

Everybody’s so freaking busybody (“Okay, okay! I’ll fix my tajwid. I promise to read the Al-Quran more often too.”) and always want to know if anybody found a new girlfriend or boyfriend yet. Seriously, my Aunt No. 5 actually declared this aloud to a comfortably chatting group, making it sound like it’s a life or death situation.

Also when not going Dutch, the main food is always Laksa Johor (which I hate) and nobody can keep a real proper eye on anybody’s baby (I think BigEye’s a budding mad genius... or a plumber) and so they al blame ME because I wasn’t occupied doing anything (and also that I’m in my twenties and unmarried; aunts trying to scare me of my future).

Next family’s gathering coming up anytime now. Maybe sooner than later.
Craaaaaaaaap.

But it’s still my favorite kind of crap.

Boxing Day-Trippin’

Boxing Day also known world-wide and in Penang as ‘the day you give gifts to non-family members because you forgot to buy them gifts on Christmas’. Riding the flow of holiday spirit (and super-malls traffic) is Mak, suddenly out of the blue asking me and my brother, *Genius, if we’d like to watch the National Treasure: Book of Secrets movie.

Woah.
Mak? A movie?

Mak hadn’t been to a movie since... since... uh, that Jackie Chan’s big flop-office, Around the World in 80 Days. Since then, she’s been studiously sticking to StarMovies Astro channel and the Old-Ladies High Teas. Ooo, especially the latter.

Believe me, when a group of old ladies get together and drink tea, they turn pretty ‘high’. Maybe the tea got some weed that affects only menopausal women.

Back to the maternal unit field trip, the Just-Us-Three turned out pretty swell. The movie was great, reminded me of a half-finished Seven Wonders of the Modern World tour (White House, Mount Rushmore, Paris, England’s Buckingham Palace... dang Da Vinci Code for starting this tourism disease...).

Though Nicholas Cage isn’t getting any more handsome than the time his head was on fire, his on-screen woman had been reduced to status of ‘hot kisser’ (just not with him) and his failure to commit to relationship is apparently a genetic disorder (witness Mom n’ Pop’s 32-year-old ego battle).

And the nerd character is still a nerd, which just goes to show the mantra of all action movies must follow:
1. A hero.
2. A bad guy.
3. A high-tech computer nerd (stereotyped as a young, socially-awkward kid because there is no such thing as a senior-citizen or high society computer nerd) in which nobody respects and no girl will ever date and will likely die a virgin even though they are the back-bone of the team.
4. A really, really, REALLY cool vehicle that gets banged-up in one spectacular way or another.

C’mon, look back on it. The Italian Job, The Core, Ocean’s Trilogy movie, even Transformers... Well, I’m not giving a review here so my opinion doesn’t count.

There was nasi ayam for lunch. We ate that instead of generic fast-food because Mak needs to neutralize all that soda, popcorn and Twisties in her system.

Then later that day Mak has to go for her yearly medical check-up while I get to sit in the SahabatPPUM’s office and play MP3s on the office’s no-internet-connection PC. Their Windows Media Player’s playlist have an overload of Sudirman songs, god only knows why hospital aid volunteers are listening to a dead man...


Enter SahabatPPUM’s office. It’s only about as boring as its front door.


Heeeeey, it’s that souvenir my school gave to SahabatPPUM, ages and ages ago.

I’m working on their website but the secretary aka info-man in charge hadn’t been giving me the pictures and data goods recently. Hell, on the stuff I got, it looks like I’ll have to install Adobe Pagemaker to read *.pmd files.

Seeing that I can't open the files and thus copy the bulletins, which my SPPUM site an empty website, thus making my work look stupid. I may not care much what my Supervisor grades my project but this system is going to be public property, dammit. I can stand being a nerd but rather not an idiot nerd if you get my drift.

If you haven’t got my drift, it’s a commission to, oh gee, maybe secretly turn into a high-tech computer nerd in which nobody respects and no guy will ever date and will likely die a virgin even though they are the back-bone of the team.

Bring on the New Year for 2008.

I’m bac-... wait a minute, no I’m not!

It’s not the end of the Hibernation, yet. I’m giving this blog a New Years’ Day Spring Cleaning.

...

There. Done!

...

Hey it’s not much when your blog’s only a month old. I got a new Image of the Month set-up, as voted by you guys. Both of you guys (you know who you are... switching workstation PCs here and there...).

This month’s January’s Journey continues the story of Ireulun, the traveling historian. As written in December’s Dream, Ireulun woke up from her dream in a forest prison and felt compelled to seek the actual forest. Why? Because she’s a student of history, that’s why.

Pieces of Ireulun’s own history will show up as the stories progress. I’m planning on putting her as the main character of Image of the Month’s stories, in the same plot-style as the anime series, Kino’s Journey or Cartoon Network’s Samurai Jack.

January’s Journey: Copyright Raphael Lacoste (3DArtists.com).

This has always been one of my most favorite pictures. In fact, Raphael Lacoste has always been one of my favourite 3D artists (he’s the same guy who did on visually stimulating works such as Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed).

So what is the connection between this image, a traveling historian and the fantasy theme ‘Journey’? Heh, just wait for it. I don’t upload the image story in a timely manner. Once I get a full, two-three-pages worth of an idea, I’ll post it here.

In the meantime, you can voice for the theme of next month’s image, February’s Flight.

Well, other than that, blog update for January 2008. The rest of the year’s going to be doozy, fuzzy, i-dunno-Idon’t-care kind of. I’m looking forward to my thesis project v2.0, I still haven’t made any new sprite edits and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan’s People Party has been assassinated barely two weeks before Pakistan’s first truly democratic election in years (her 19-year-old Oxford student son will continue the bloody Bhutto dynasty, holy sh**).

Oh and I’ve made only one New Year’s Resolution this time.

“I will not make any New Year’s Resolution.”

...

There. Done!

Internet Connection Hibernation ... I mean, Merry Christmas!

Poopy Blog Entry!!

No I haven't been De-Evolutionized. But there will be a blogging stall for some time.

It's that time I've been getting ready for; my abstinece from the Internet. Unlike most lucky (rich, obsessive, society-deprived) people, I'm on a tight budget, thus can't afford to have an internet connection.

In fact, I have yet to pay for the previous rent from *MySis, back when I had an internet connection. MySis is great. She's practically supporting my Celcom's service and still lets me use her router at her house when she and her husband is out at work.

Not that I call or SMS'd a lot of people on a regular basis, mind you. Most of my pals communicate in online forums and are across oceans anyway.

We're decorating a Christmas tree desktop by putting random pictures on a Christmas tree background with no particular graphic rule except the theme has to be Christmas. It's still not finished though but I've made my contribution.

This is the actual desktop image for GW's Christmas tree, at the current stage of decorating. I'll post a new image when we finally get it done on Christmas Day, if ever (bah, humbug!).


Mine's the kid in the rocking horse and his two aunts helping him learn how to use it.

As you can see, we're a bunch of cheap art-character spriters having no sense of proper art. Just having the stupid fun of it all.

So just as I had forewarned you guys, I'm going offline for a while; reducing my blogging to Mondays or Sundays. So I won't be around for any Christmas Specials.

But hey! In the spirit of gift-giving and gift-getting (and all that multi-cultural-thingy our goverment had been trumpetting about), if you guys want a present from me, I got something in my Santa's sack that might appeal to all.

You know when you download a game's full version from Yahoo! or Big Fish Games but you can't play the full game itself unless you pay money? There's a couple of software tricks around that with no aversions to your PC and I got the download in my Mediafire service provider.

I should know because I'm still using the damn, awesome (strictly illegal) thing. Just put your name here and I'll have a reason to steal cyber cafe money for Tuesday morning.

With that said, enjoy your Malaysian Christmas!

There’s an Ant, a Maggot and a Bee in my Bonnet.

It’s 0710 hours, barely an hour after I returned from slumberland (no connection to the mattress company, just so you know) that a disgusting myriad of tasks is out to get me. Namely, 3 species of infestation has decided to make my morning miserable.

Not including my father and my younger brother, mind you. They decided to be helpful by escaping to the mamak restaurant for breakfast, Horlicks-panas and male bonding. Which is good and all and so this way, I can do an impression of Desperate Housewife in private.

Well there’s no point for my inner brat to stomp. The Head Housewife, aka Mak, had already left yesterday morning for that Pontian trip with other non-household family members. She had already planned the impromptu Journey-to-Johor during the Aidil Adha gathering.

Forgiven, but the damned woman could have warned me. So what else is there to do? I tied my guts and started to work.

Antz.
Let’s start with the easiest problem, the colony on the floor.

Oh gee, if only I had a broom...

Due to the sickly sinful stench from the kitchen rubbish bin (and we all know that kitchen rubbish holds the best stuff), a ... swarm? Group? Pack? Er, whatever. English grammar fixing later.

Anyway, a lot of ants had taken over a section of the kitchen, right under the kitchen rubbish bin. Apparently, the liquid fermentation of Chemistry 101 in the bin was irresistible to these tiny, black, itchy dots.

My plan of attack was a page right out of Ant Bully movie. I flooded their project with a bucket of water and mopped them all up with floor cleaner. Yucks, but it cleans the floor too.

The most pressing task is the kitchen rubbish bin itself. Now that stinks!

Maggots.
Maggot (mag’eot), noun. 1. a soft-bodied, legless larva of certain dipterous insects.

That’s what my Webster dictionary says. I can describe it better.

OH F**KING CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP...!

You see, when you don’t take out the trash every other day of the week, regardless of trash volume, yuck-yuck-yucky maggots start to spawn in your rubbish. Apparently, the men in my family did not take into account that I was STUDYING for my exam at the same time that my mother bailed out of the house, thus leaving kitchen rubbish bin to turn into White-Worm Condominium.

I care not to photograph the actual state of my kitchen rubbish bin, one part is that I care not to remember how it looked like every time I return to this blog and another part is that, at the time, my hands are too dirty to contaminate my very clean Sony Ericsson.

But as God has given us maggots and imagination, use your noodles on what lies on and within this blue plastic wrap.


Itty, bitty white stuff are doing the belly-flop-walk on the surface of this bag.

And this brings us to my third morning friend...

Bees.
In a page from Harry Potter’s Chamber of Secrets, the phrase ‘bee in your bonnet’ probably meant something that’s bothering a person. I suppose it’s a reminiscent of the days out of the classic Pride and Prejudice movie, when women wear these straw hats while taking garden walks.

I don’t have a bonnet, but I do have bees. About a colony the size of your fist and growing. And they had chosen an ingenious place to make their new home.


This. Is. My. Trash Box!

I was taking my Big Blue Bag of Smelly Stuff (bare-handed, by the way, I didn’t care to waste time looking for gloves) and opened the trash box when the trash box started to talk back at me. More of a groan-groan-hum, the kind of sound that 2 year old brats make when they don’t want to eat their veggies.

At first, either an invisible stray cat was dying in my trash box or the trash box itself had mutated to attempt to dirty-talk at me, did I notice a corner of the box and I had to shut it quickly. It’s not that I hate bees; it’s just that I didn’t expect to get up close, face-to-face, at 7 in the morning.

So I just left it like that, duct-taped my trash box against innocent curious bystanders. Really, I can handle ants and maggots but BEES are out of my level of experience. I’ve yet to inform the missing males of my family of our new guests.

All and all, I didn’t plan on starting my 3 weeks holiday with a starring role in an episode of Dirty Jobs (Discovery Channel, good show actually). But I should have expected it, really; I mean, who else but a housewife’s daughter get to lead such exciting life?

Aaah, screw it. When my little brother gets home, I’m going to shove the kitchen sink and the washing machine at him, then take a hot shower and go back to slumberland (no connection to the mattress company, just to remind you).

PS: Malay culture says that it’s good luck when a bee comes to your house but no really, does anybody know how to get rid of a small bee hive? I don’t plan on disturbing, say, the fire brigade, until somebody gets stung.

December's Dream Image Story: Follow the Mouse

COPYRIGHT CGSOCIETY


It was a mouse.

A small one, not a house rat but more of a woodland variety. Ireulun was not surprised. She was, after all, lost in a forest. But there were a few strange things about her current situation.

The most pressing one was that she did not, could not, remember how she found herself in the forest. There was a blank, a dark space, in between her last memory and the moment when she spotted the mouse. What has happened?

The other strange thing she felt concerned about was the forest itself. It was common enough; tall trees full of green leaves at the height of late summer. Trees as far as her eyes could see. There was nothing distinctive about the trees; Ireulun was never much a student of botany.

But despite the forest’s obvious largeness and health, there were no animals. No birds chirping in the canopy, no squirrels amongst the branches, no lizards basking in patches of sunlight on the forest floor. No animals in the silent, suspended stillness.

Except that small brown mouse.

Somehow, the sight of the only other living creature in the woods prompted Ireulun to approach it. The way it sat on the ground, so still and watching her, gave Ireulun the impression that it was... waiting. For her? To do what?

But when she approached the mouse, it retreated quickly. Darting through the underbrush and disappearing into the shadows. Ireulun gave a sigh of disgruntlement. So much for that. She supposed that she should had been looking for a way out of the forest.

“Hello?” she called out.
There was no answer. Ireulun tried again.
“Hello-ooo?”

But only her echo returned her call. Ireulun suddenly had the distinct impression that she was the only person around. Alone. Angels and ashes, how did she get here?

As she raked through her memories, a chrip called to her. More a squeak than a chirp but it was loud and clear. The mouse? Where is it? Ireulun turned towards the sound.

A few moments later, she saw it, the mouse. It was sitting under a straight light shaft, its brown fur tinged with the sun’s glow. It was... doing nothing. But then it chirped again, loud and clear as before.

Then suddenly, it bolted again into the ferns and tall grasses, disappearing from Ireulun’s sight. She blinked and frowned. Then the mouse’s chirped cried out though the forest’s gloom.

It was calling to her was the thought that came to Ireulun’s mind. Why? Her next thought was the mouse was a spirit of the forest, not unusual perhaps, for a forest this strange. Ireulun may not be a student of botany, but she was an observant student of history.

She looked closely at a tree trunk, studying its bark and leaves. The trees looked like something from a place she was once been as a child, a Region very far away where people lived in vine covered homes built on giant trees.

Ireulun touched gingerly at the leaves. Her finger traced the lines of the tree’s bark and deducted that the species of tree was very much like those tree-houses of that far-away Region. But such spindly vine-trees do not grow straight from the earth; they grow on other trees.

The sound of the chirp repeated, this time with a somewhat irritated nuance. Ireulun no longer felt curious. She felt cautious. Nonetheless, she followed the sound, followed the mouse.

With every step she took and every sight she glimpsed of the mouse flitting through the patches of sunlight, she spotted other things. Broken things. Man-made things. There was no question about it.

A long thin object she at first took for a twig jutting awkwardly out of the ground turned out to be a dirty old wizard’s staff. The intricate designs carved on the handle were recognizable to Ireulun as from the northern tribe in the grasslands of her home Region.

A few meters away were another long object, this time a rusty sword. Ireulun crouch down low to examine it. The blade was dark with rust, pitted with holes in certain places. It did not look as if it had been used or discarded in a fight. It looked as if it had been abandoned there, ignored and forgotten.

Like the wizard’s staff, the sword had a unique deign which Ireulun recognized. The swirly patterns on the hilt suggested a knight of a high order, from a war-torn nation that was also in her home Region.

Ireulun discarded the sword and for a moment, she strained her eyes to look though the darkness of her surroundings. Between two trees, she spotted what looked to be a large, open trunk-box. Beside a rather large rock were several pieces of glittery that, at a second look, turned out to be expensive jewelry. And close to her feet, not far from the rusty sword, were broken pieces of glass vials.

And there was more, misshapen, often broken, but indefinitely man-made objects all scattered around her, intersecting between shadows and brushwood. All of then had a neglected, abandoned, forgotten feel. Suddenly, a chill grew in Ireulun spine.

The atmosphere felt like that of a graveyard.

A now familiar chirp-squeak cuts through her reverie. The mouse. It was still ahead of her, still calling out to her from the deeper parts of the woods. Ireulun debated whether she should continue following the creature. What if it was leading her into a trap?

Almost against her will, her feet dragged her forwards, and onwards. Her curiosity, coloured by a slight sense of fear, made her cautious. As much as she wanted to leave the forest, she wanted to discover its secrets. Her instincts were telling her that the mouse may be a key to the mystery.

Ireulun pressed on, careful not to disturb the objects in her path. Eventually, the air seemed lighter, less oppressive. The gloom of the woods faded as the forest canopy was higher and less thick. Through the shafts of sunlight Ireulun could see further ahead and noticed that there were more open spaces between the trees.

The underbrush was thinner as well and for the first time in a while, she could see the little brown mouse clearly. It ran quickly, darting over fallen trees and large boulders but it was never too far from her sight.

Then, just out of the way of the trees, Ireulun came to a wide clearing. It was a larger empty space, larger than any of the forest clearing she had been through. She could see high above the canopy, the tree branches. To her eyes, the tall trees and its branches intersect in an unusual way, giving the illusion of narrow windows flying buttresses. Just like in cathedrals.

No sooner had that thought entered her mind, she felt a familiar chill, only more welcoming than before. She felt as if she was in a sanctuary, a holy place. Looking on the ground around her, there was none of those pieces of neglected objects she had seen before.

And then there was the mouse. It sat in a shaft of light, a brighter sunbeam than any in the forest. It watched her, its small eyes stared at her with an almost expectant fixation. On impulse, Ireulun crept closer to it, so close, bending so low until she could touch it.

But then the mouse bolted into a tiny hole she did not notice before, a nest-like entrance made of dried grass. A mouse home, perhaps. Ireulun felt dejected. The mouse had done nothing more than just trying to get away from her.

So much for the mysteries of the strange forest.

But then, bending over the nest, she felt cool flat stone underneath her hand. Ireulun brushed away the fallen leaves and dried tufts of grass. What she uncovered was indeed a stone tablet, flat and large, like a tombstone that had fallen over. She traced the engraved words.

The alphabet was recognizable but the language was old. Ireulun looked through her mind, trying to remember her learning. She reads the words and translated them in her mind.

The Forest of Silence

If you can read this, it means that you are now a prisoner in the Forest of Silence. Here you shall stay in permanent solitary confinement for the rest of your living days, or until the Psychic Order reinstate a review of your criminal case, whichever comes first.

The trees will bear fruit, the roots can be eaten and the spring waters are clean and plentiful. But take the rest of your time and make your peace with the angels.

As she read, Ireulun’s hand shook with anxiety. At the bottom of the tablet was some additional writing, in the current language used that she recognized instantly. Unlike the rest of the message, the additional words were crudely craved, as if by a pointed stone rather than a chisel.

Angels knows I am innocent.

Ireulun felt a deep void grew within her. The forest she was in was actually a prison. An old prison for people to be forgotten. To be ignored. To be lost.

But how did she got here?

“Forest of Silence...” she whispered.

Suddenly she felt light-headed and dizzy. She struggled to remain conscious but the beam of light of which she was in began to grow brighter and hotter. Her hands shook, her body was paralyzed in the rising heat, though the stone tablet under her hands remained cool. Ireulun shook her head hard, her hands grabbing handfuls of soft dirt and grass.

But then the bright light waned. And slowly disappeared.

She opened her eyes slowly. Ireulun was in her familiar bedroom, in her familiar bed. Her hands were clutching the folds of her bedding. Light was growing through the windows as dawn approached and brought her to wakefulness.

As her breathing slowed to normal, Ireulun brushed the sweat off her feverish forehead. It was a dream. The forest, the mouse, the stone tablet had been a dream.

Hadn’t it?

She turned to the desk beside her bed. On the desk were all her history and geography books, some lay open on its spine. An unfinished graph, a map of Ireulun’s home Region, lay open, waiting for her to continue drawing its mountainous ranges and coastlines.

As a student of history, she had been working on mapping the south-east corner of her home Region, an distant and unknown territory known for centuries as ‘impassable, dense woodlands’.

Ireulun now knows what she has to do.

She has to go to the Forest of Silence.

Next: January's Journey (2008)