The problem was the Selani.

Every time he passed a campfire, he was invariably picked up by some Selani stranger and carted off to the fire. He had miscalculated when he thought that he could slip through them unnoticed, because it seemed that cats like him were unknown in the desert. Because he was unique, it made the Selani stop what they were doing and pick him up, then take a good look at him. They actually tried to spoil him, offering him cuts of roasted meat at every fire and petting him at almost all times. They were trying to lure him into staying at their fire, he realized after about the fifth time, luring him with offers of food and attention. That caught him off guard, and what was worse, it slowed him down significantly on his journey towards the spire. But he couldn't bring himself to be nasty to the Selani, who, after all, were only trying to be nice. The Cat in him liked the attention, and it very much liked the food. It wasn't above a bit of mewling to get what it wanted. It began to get distracted from the mission, and the human in him had to remind it that they were on a schedule.

It was a simple schedule. He had to climb the spire, but he had no idea how high it was. So it was best in his eyes to start in the darkness before sunrise and be a good distance up before the light of day gave him away to the Selani. He also didn't want to be caught on the spire after dark once he got up into the cloud, because the cloud would make it dark enough for even his eyes to struggle to see. He had no idea how long it would take to get through the cloud, so he could take no chances.

The problem was convincing the Selani to leave him alone.

"This is starting to get annoying," Tarrin fumed to Sarraya as he was rather firmly held on an adolescent girl's lap, held down gently and petted while a child tried to feed him what was roasting over their fire. "Why all this interest?"

"I think they've never seen anything like you before," Sarraya told him, but he already knew that. She didn't realize that he was asking a rhetorical question. "I've seen some pretty big cats out in the desert, but nothing as small and cute-looking as you."

"Well, I'm getting tired of it," he grunted. "I mean, all the attention is a bit flattering, but this is too much of a good thing. And if I eat one more bite, I'm going to explode."

"They don't realize you came from another fire," Sarraya said in reply, stifling making any audible noise.

Tarrin was about to reply, but the Selani girl managed to find his submission spot, scratching him just behind the ears. That was his favorite place to be scratched, and he became very compliant very quickly, closing his eyes and pushing his head up against her fingers.

"Looks like she has your number," Sarraya teased.

"Shut up."

He lingered there a little longer than he should have, but eventually managed to get free of the girl with the pleasing fingers and get back on the path.

After that, he was much more careful. Sarraya led him around the fringes of each Selani fire where they had staked their tents, letting him move at a zigzagging route that kept him outside the grasp of most of the Selani. Many tried to pick him up, but in the generally unpopulated areas between the fires, he had too much room to maneuver, too many tents to hide behind, and he could see them coming. But fortunately for him, the night was moving on, and more and more of the Selani were taking to their tents. With fewer Selani to avoid, he was able to move more and more straightly.

The Cloud Spire had seemed rather close when he had first seen it from the ridge, but that was scaled to his humanoid form. For his cat form, it was like trying to travel twenty longspans. More than within his ability, but a distance that would take time to traverse. He moved on through the night with the sounds of the hauntingly beautiful Selani singing and the crackling of fires to keep him company as he made his way to his objective.

He stopped to rest near a rather large tent, made of a curious material that smelled like plants, laying down on his belly by the edge of it and keeping his senses open as he took a break.

"What troubles you, my heart?" a voice from inside the tent asked. A male voice.

"He is close," a female voice replied. "I can sense it."

"That dream again?"

"It hasn't gone away, my husband. The Holy Mother sings to me in my dreams. Have you told our people to show him kindness?"

"Of course I have, my heart," he replied. "If he appears, he will be shown kindness." There was a pause. "Before we took to our tent, a runner from another clan told me that a tailed stranger was seen south of Gathering at sunset. Could he be related to him?"

"Has anyone else seen this stranger?"

"Not that I was told."

Tarrin was a bit startled. Were they talking about him? How did they know about him?

The Holy Mother. Of course. She knew he was in the desert. It seemed that she was taking steps on his behalf. From the sound of it, the woman was shaman, one of Fara'Nae's priests. It seemed a bit weird that she would be telling her children to be nice to him, but it made sense. She probably didn't want any friction between him and them. The best way to go about that was to make themselves as inoffensive as possible.

Tarrin moved on before anything else came to light. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more.

It took him half the night to reach the Cloud Spire. He found that the area immediately around it was devoid of Selani occupation, almost as if they were giving the rock pinnacle a wide berth. But this close to it, it seemed less a rock spire and more a solid wall that stretched into the heavens. It was rough-hewn by the wind, with many ridges and irregularities, but unlike the rock of the desert, this rock was black, like obsidian. He shifted into his humanoid form and sniffed at the rock, and he realized that it was basalt, where most of the desert was soft sandstone. This was volcanic rock, a rarity out here in the desert.

That meant that the climb wasn't going to be easy. His claws could dig into sandstone. Basalt would only grind them down.

"Oh well," he grunted. He shifted back into cat form and skulked around the base, until he found a large rock pushed up against the pillar, forming a small hollow. He entered it and killed the rock snake that had been taking up residence, which was sleeping through the cold night, then settled down for a little nap. It was too early yet to try the climb, and he wanted to be fully rested before making the attempt.

Fueled by a breakfast of rock snake, Tarrin was on his way.

The idea of what he was doing still seemed just a little bit insane, but he couldn't see any other way to go about it. He absolutely had to find that object, to identify it as either the Firestaff or not, and since it was very high above him, he had to climb. He wasn't afraid of heights, and he was confident in his abilities as a climber. Cats were natural climbers, and those instincts would serve him well as he scaled the dizzying expanse of the rock spire, trying to get to the top before the next sunset.

Tarrin saw the sunrise well before the Selani, because he was at least half a longspan up the rock face by the time the sun reached him. He had started about three hours before dawn, and the going had been relatively easy. He had begun his ascent on the east face of the spire, so the sun would shine on his back and never have the chance to get in his eyes until after it ascended past the cloud. The rock was riddled with creases, holes, pits, lines, and vertical gulleys, and that gave him an abundance of handholds. That meant that he moved very quickly up the rock face, nearly as fast as a human could walk on flat ground, but his progress was slowed significantly because he stopped every so often to check his claws for damage, survey the rock above, and look down to gauge his progress to that point. He spent as much time moving laterally as he did verically, lining himself up to take advantage of features in the rock that would make his ascent easier. Speed wasn't his concern, his main concern was making this as easy as possible. He had no fear of heights, but he fully understood that he was so high up that a mistake could kill him. So he made very sure that his planned path was generally seeded with suitable paw and footholds. Fortunately, he realized, the spire was made of basalt, for soft sandstone had a frightening tendancy to break off when too much weight was placed on a spur or hold. The rugged basalt was much stronger, and a tiny spur of rock could support his entire weight if necessary. Sarraya rode on his head, burrowed into his hair so his moving head didn't dislodge her, and she remained quiet while he climbed. She didn't want to distract him in any way, because of the great danger in which they were now placed.