Travel Log Perelline

Perelline, Day 1 - Blast those endless lectures at the Arcane Academy! Eight solid years of dissecting musty tomes, measuring ley‑line vectors, and reciting conjuration theory until my tongue felt frayed as rope - and for what? I can already weave a tidy illusion faster than Professor Risquage can locate his monocle. The senior council insists another term will "round off my formal education". Round off my patience, more like. I have slipped the gates, diploma half‑inked, and I shan’t look back until I’ve trodden every dusty road on the map.   Perelline’s harbour bustles below my window this afternoon: gulls shriek, tar stings the breeze, and stevedores chant a salt‑rough shanty while craning casks onto the Silver Heron. That stout brigantine is my passage east. Land's End - the Empire’s little toe dipped in uncharted waters - waits beyond three weeks of churning sea. They say the outpost perches on a basalt cliff, its lantern tower forever fog‑wreathed. Perfect. A place so far from the Academy that even Dean Eaglestare's scowl cannot follow.   I’ve packed light: ink, spare quills, a coil of spell‑thread, and a dozen empty notebooks begging for adventure. (Plus the new boots Margo swore were "practically indestructible". We shall see.) The harbour‑master’s bell has tolled twice already; one more stroke and the boardwalk will heave with passengers clambering aboard. My heart kicks like a colt at the thought - finally, a horizon not framed by lecture‑hall windows!   If the winds favour us, I’ll pen my next entry with seabirds wheeling overhead and the Academy nothing more than a smudge on memory’s edge. Until then, dear journal, hold my restlessness. The tide turns, and so do I.   -- G. Smallbottom, A wild one on the loose