Etched on a tall stone slab were rows and rows of hatched lines and triangular depressions, winding their way from top to bottom. It was completely incomprehensible. All at once he was aware of the distance he had walked on tired, bruised feet, from his lonely yurt on the endless steppes, from the sea of grass and scrub. The gnarled, looming trees that encroached on his path choked his vision and thickened his blood. The cries of creatures from this other world screeched and bellowed from within the tangle of skeletal boughs, keeping close at his heels. Ishqa could feel the cold breath of the wind and the dark on the back of his neck.
He had never been in the midst of so much. And he had never been so alone.

Three moons glowed in the distance, illuminating a long forgotten road. Ishqa strode down the nearly invisible path, his ears alert as they detected the forlorn cries of creatures hidden in the dark woods besieging him on all sides. Soon enough, the thickening woods began to close in on him; the wild cries grew louder and stranger. Ishqa buried himself deeper into his shawl, the howling wind forcing him back--when he looked up and saw a sign.  

Ishqa faced the biting northern wind.
He wrapped his shawl tightly around his arms, his chest, his neck. The wind tore futilely at the coarse wool with a crude savageness. It always tried to pry it from him, to break him, and it would always fail. Ishqa could feel his own blood warming his body, gently overtaking the bitter cold.
He turned his back to the quickly fading twilight and set off into the night, into the waste.