The day remained gray and depressing. Puddles had begun to fill in the low spots where no grass grew, where livestock and humans had pressed the grass and weeds out of life into packed dirt. For now, wet ground was an inconvenience but within a matter of days the surface would soak up so much water that no more could be assimilated, and the top layer would become slop running with rain. The only choice was to build a boardwalk, as Jorda suggested, unless people wished to fight the bog-like mud every time they attempted to go anywhere. With the young grove destroyed, the grandfather grove now offered the only exterior shelter for the karavaners against the rain. Tent-folk were already under cover, save for those few whose tents had fallen during the latest incursion of Alisanos’s birth pangs; all worked in haste to get in and escape the rain. Wagons were scattered throughout the grove, parked under thick-bolled, wide-canopied trees. The karavaners had begun to set up awnings from the sides of their wagons, tying the oiled canvas to wagon ribbing, then stretching it out to full length.
