For a journey of no return, Donghae hied off to the grocer's to equip himself. He made a beeline for the food section and randomly grabbed items like juice, jamppong, jam, juicer, junk food. Convinced he bought enough to last him for days, he went to the counter to pay for the stuff.

"Whoa Donghae! This is a first," Jang-nim, the kind grocer, exclaimed. "This is the first time you bought this much. Are we throwing a party at home?"

"I'm going to the Far Reach, Jang-nim, so I need to pack a lot of things."

That gave Jang-nim pause. He had known Donghae since he was a baby and while Donghae is known around town as kind of simple, he never expected Donghae to be this naive. But in this jaded corner of the town, Donghae is known to be a breath of fresh air because of that inherent innocence.

The grocer just sighed. "Donghae, you do realize going into the Far Reach will take you to towns similar to this one? You don't need to buy everything from here."

Donghae just went goggle-eyed on him. "I didn't know that!" Then his face crumpled, wrinkling his nose. "But I might not like what I can buy there."

Well, there's that, too, the grocer amended - food from home is still the best. Grocer rung up the bill. "That'll be..." he had started to say to Donghae but stopped, seeing the gold coin already being handed out to him.

"Will this be enough to cover all these, and our credit, too?"

Instead of answering, Jang-nim just blurted out, "Where did you get that?!" A gold coin is rare in these parts.

Donghae just shrugged. "Dad's home, and he just gave this to Mum for expenses." He beamed, placing the coin onto the counter and gathering stuff up. "You can keep the change, Jang-nim." And Donghae was out of the store.

Jang-nim didn't manage to tell Donghae the gold coin was too much payment for the grocery and credit combined. So he just shrugged, gingerly taking the coin off the counter and biting at it to see if it was genuine. Yup, genuine stuff alright. He decided to put the balance on the family's credit. Before the mister came home from long years working the mines abroad, goodness knows how the family struggled to make ends meet.

------------------

Donghae wanted to laugh, finally having proof of the Far Reach being the god of unworthy ambitions - to reach or aim for a place so high as to lose oneself in it.

Which is not worth it in the end?

But it is, he argued with himself. I had to try.

The voice inside his head scoffed. Really?

Donghae closed his eyes, resigned to his fate, waiting with terrifying certainty for that eventual crash to the icy ground. He hopes to die instantly, than to suffer. He didn't realize he has started crying.

---------------------

"Son, must you really do this?" Leeteuk asked as he watched his son doggedly make preparations for the travel to Far Reach, overcoming challenge after challenge the past few weeks. It was near time for him to be starting on his way, where his preparations would continue to enable him to get over the guarding mountains around Far Reach and into Far Reach itself. He had just come home after long years of service in the mines in another country and his son decides it was time to go on an adventure his own. No, erase that... what Donghae plans to do is a mission, not an adventure. The adventure part is only because he'd be doing it in a forbidding place.

Donghae stopped what he was doing, turning his attention to his dad. "Truthfully, Dad, it isn't so much as something I must do, but as something compelling me to do. There's this niggling feeling at the back of my mind that's been getting stronger every day, that I have to go and seek help from the god-race. Our litanies came from them, perhaps they know of something that can erase this blight plague. The land is becoming barren, and right now, it's the only way I could think of that might help."

He may not be adept at the land litanies but he hears what Mum and Donghwa-hyung talk about whenever they recount their day in the farmland. Of chucking and burning sections of planted fields just because the blight has spread. Of weak and diminished produce. If they could not harvest a sizeable portion of what was sowed, storing for the winter season will be difficult, and setting aside foodstuff for the food bank will be impossible.

The clock was ticking on them all.

Because it wasn't just their farm affected - it was everywhere. Donghae heard of stories from lands south of Mahan which have succumbed already to the blight, the land turning barren. It had put a strain on still fertile countries to increase production with the increase in demand offshore. Donghae remembers how two years ago they had to use a portion of the food bank to help fill in an order from an equatorial country which could no longer produce its own food. But with the blight spreading, it was also making it hard to increase production.

The blight reached Mahan last year, and all the surrounding farmsteads have held off the rapid spread by the vigilance of its farmers. Where once they would just plant the crops and leave it through the growing season with minimal checks, the farmers now do the checking daily.

Maybe part of Donghae's compulsion is the sight of Mum and hyung's tired faces. Farming is already backbreaking work, but one his Mum is good at, considering she inherited the land and studied the litanies from Grampa Kangin. It was good that Donghwa-hyung inherited her ability, so she now had help around the farm.

Donghae wished he also could help, but his abilities lay with mechanics, and that was why he apprenticed with the mechanics and stone-shapers since he was ten. He had helped, by building different contraptions his Mum and hyung could use in the farm. But that would soon be useless, if they do not find a way to totally stop the blight.

---------------

His eyes flew open at the point where he knew he would be hitting the ground. And his stomach heaved at the knowledge that he was falling still, but somewhere he knew isn't the Far Reach.

Everything around him were swirls of color that looked almost white at the speed in which he was still falling. He panicked, trying to flail around, but his body unable to do so in what it still perceived to be mid-air nor could he do so - he definitely could not counter a fall.

Donghae had been falling such a long time his stomach finally stopped trying to heave by itself. In fact, he even managed to observe his surroundings, and while still anticipating an actual fall where he'd reach hard ground. A useless thought invaded his head, something along the lines of what he'd do if this fall just went on forever. He tried to finally twist himself around and still to no avail - he stayed irresolutely falling.

Which is why he was rather caught unawares when he felt himself suddenly start tripping and in a knee-jerk reaction, reached behind himself to stop his fall, surprised that he could now direct his limbs. He still fell, but thankfully onto something feeling cushioned, but his body twist made him skid across the cushion, feeling the hard ground beneath it. That and the whiplash making him bang his head on the ground, an ache forming since the cushion wasn't really that soft in the first place.

He vaguely heard a strange bell tolling, running feet, and a soft voice saying something he couldn't understand. From what he could see from the ground, he was somewhere indoors, noting how the ceiling looked plastered, same as it was back home, though it was white rather than gray. And since he fell back, he could see an actual arch over a darkness similar to what he saw in the Far Reach. But wasn't it white moments before?

All these ran in his head in the time between when he was struggling to get up and the running feet reached him. Donghae struggled all the more when the hand placed on his chest insisted he stay lying down. He looked up to glare at the man - he could see by the rough hewn bony knuckles that it could only belong to a man, forgetting he was here to meet the Ginu.

He looked up at the stranger keeping him down. Then froze as his brains caught up to him and told him he was looking at a Ginu.

And man, this particular Ginu is beautiful - Donghae stupidly thinks the Ginu couldn't be neither male or female.

Then his stomach caught up to him and promptly expelled the bile that had never stopped climbing up his throat during his fall. He puked right at the beautiful creature before him.

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