In which Slade leaves his mother’s tent and follows the trail the day brings him.

This is one of my very favourite of the Liaden short stories. It never fails to give me, as the young people say these days, All The Feels.

Unfortunately, as I think we’ve established by now, I am not very eloquent when it comes to The Feels.

Reading a Liaden short story is sometimes like being a courier, the way it’s described in Mouse and Dragon, getting to see a slice of a person’s life and never after learning how things turned out for them. If I were ever to settle on a definitive Top 5 Liaden Universe Characters Whose Fates I Want to Know, several spaces on the list would be filled with names from this story.

Though the story itself does not carry a date, The Updated But Partial Liaden Universe Timeline sets it in SY 1177, around 50 years after “Naratha’s Shadow”, and around 150 years before the birth of Daav yos’Phelium, who will one day walk this world in his turn.