[breathes. that's fine. he knows where he wants to go here, actually, even with the veneer of unfamiliar scenery laid over it.

he closes his eyes, orients himself along his memory of the Wen encampment layout - ah, yes, that would have been the path he followed to get here those times, southeast of here - and starts climbing the hill to the northeast, where a scrappy if stunted excuse for a forest had settled in back in his own memories. he deliberately doesn't look at these healthier versions of the trees until he gets to the biggest of them, set a little apart from the others.

his eyes try to trick him and tell him it's whole, but he focuses on it firmly enough that it relents and shows him its lightning-split hollow face instead. he starts digging a short way down the slope, in its lee.]