Cry for the Wolf, Chapter 7. by Richard Walker

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By feel alone he had unbraided the feathers and beads in its mane and burned the trappings of its service to him to free it's spirit, his eyes burning and blinded by the flow of hot, silent tears that had washed his cheeks.).
The terrain had grown more and more lush as he descended from the mountains, but the air chillier for the dampness it held, for more damp and uncomfortable than his native plains, and cloudier. There had been rain, from the north and miserably cold, but the clouds threatened far more than they delivered. Had they rained all that they threatened, Garad was sure the land would have simply been washed into the seas. It was a marvel. Storms on the plains blew up fast, rained down violently in the spring and autumn, with the great winds, but were gone just as quickly, azure sky and glorious sun belying their ever having been. Here the clouds hung overhead, dirty gray, or steely, washing the sun's light out until it was reduced to a mere ghost of itself, a second moon. He longed for a glimpse of the sky, tired of only being able to see the sun for a short while in the mornings and evenings, even if the sunrises and settings were made more spectacular for giving the sun a canvas on which to paint its many colors. He longed for his homeland, but with dogged determination not to shame his father or his tribe he attended to his duty, giving it all the more of his heart.
Garad knew the road for what it was when it joined the river at last, but preferred to stick to the grassy margin beside the bank itself. He knew it was childish, and never could have been convinced to reveal it to anyone, but he had never outgrown his love for the feel of the earth, still very moist from the rains, as it gave underfoot and squished up around his toes. It lightened his spirits tremendously. He observed those who used it before he determined to join their company. They, in turn, surely eyed him as warily as he did them, towering over them as he did. But the road was paved smooth and much easier going, no surprises to bite at the feet as hid among the grass, nothing on which to stub his toes, nor holes over which to trip or twist an ankle. He got used to the strangers, they to him. It took Garad another full day of travel to pass through the hills, the outer estates, the fields and farmsteads surrounding the city, and then the outer villages belonging to the city itself. He found much of beauty and delight in the scattered estates of the nobles, marveled that they had so befriended the earth and water spirits to produce such fanciful and beautiful shapes in shrub and fountain, and all so orderly. Though the buildings and the dress of the folk he saw were strange to him, the farmsteads and estates he encountered before he actually realized that he approached what must surely be the "city" he sought surprised him only in their extent. As far as he could see, and he prized his sharp sight, the hills rolled into the gray shadowed distance on all sides carven with the plow where they weren't shadowed with forestland, even on the far side of the river.