A week and three days passed over Hell's Paradise Island beneath skies far too beautiful for the mood festering inside several of its oldest families.
That morning arrived bright and almost offensively pleasant:
Sunlight spilled over the mountains with the easy tenderness as its rays and light wandered across the Endless Forest pouring gold over an ocean of ancient green until the treetops shimmered without visible end to Hell's Paradise Lake and scattered across its impossible breadth in millions of trembling sparks.
The lake stretched so far beneath the cloudless blue heaven that distance eventually surrendered, water and sky seeming to meet somewhere beyond sight, while the great river feeding from it wound through like a bright silver ribbon with no hurry to reach anywhere at all.
