There was a throbbing in his left knee and a stiffness in both his ankles, and the chill wind cut through his fur as though he had none at all. His eyes were swollen and pasty from the glaring sunlight. There was no hiding from that great angry blare of light. It filled the sky and reverberated from every rock, every patch of ground. This was a hard business for a man of nearly fifty, to give up the comforts of the cocoon and march through so strange and bleak a countryside. But it was that very strangeness that would keep him going, hour after hour, day after day. For all his studies in the chronicles he had never imagined that such colors existed in the world, such smells, such shapes. The land here was harsh and almost empty, a broad barren plain. Its deadness was a disheartening thing. He saw frightened faces all about him. Fear was general among the People. There was a terrible nakedness in having gone out from the cocoon, in being this far from that friendly sheltering place that had housed them all their lives.
