Still in rewrites but getting closerto the end . . .
Thought this bit worked pretty well:
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The rain kept Eleanor company for the best part of three days. Water soaked through everything, clothes, flesh, bone, until it seemed that she was a creature of water — holding a solid shape only in sheer defiance of nature. The air, breathed in, breathed out, was mostly water. Every ditch became a torrent, every hollow a lake. Despite the wind hurling from the west, endless storm clouds overshadowed the land. Only a skulking, furtive light distinguished between day and night, except for the sudden lighting leaving jagged runes glowing in her eyes. The hissing rain submerged all sounds, except for the pounding thunder.
The path that Eleanor followed turned a little more to the south every day, and on the third day she paused in her head-bent plodding, lifting the edge of the hood. The buffet of the rain changed in tone, softer now, even if only a little. Eleanor raised her face, letting the heavy drops roll down her cheeks to drip off of her chin. She wiped her face with her hands, and dropped the uselessly-sodden hood back over her eyes. With a shrug Eleanor resumed the slow wading to the south.
But the storm slowed, lightened, and gradually—as if it resented releasing its grip—the ragged edge of the clouds drifted across the sky. A pale, cold yellow light fell from the sun, low and weak in the western sky. Eleanor shrugged out of her cloak, and rolled and squeezed out a stream of water, glancing at the pastel landscape.
The hills here knelt lower and stretched longer until they were mere meadows. Not far from where she stood a line of dark trees sprang up, branches bending from the weight of the water yet to be shaken free by the wind. Eleanor took a few steps, but stopped in the loud calm of the afterstorm. There was something, a sound, a whispering, hissing sound as if the now-gone rain were come back. It was coming from ahead, from the south beyond the line of trees.
Eleanor had never seen an ocean before — and now that she saw it, she did not believe it. Beyond the trees, the land crumbled into the sea, nothing at all to rival the cliff at the bottom of the valley of waterfalls, but the water, the water! It was greater than all the breadth and beauty of the unknown lands. She stood looking over the southern seas, hardly daring to breath, the sound of the waves washing through her, as night crept through the trees. Finally, she gathered wood and raised a fire with her thoughts. That night she slept between the flame and the sea.
In the morning the sun fought, red and glum, to break through a haze of dirty brown cloud. The clouds had returned, but without storm for the moment. Eleanor woke to the wonderful, sensuous sound of the ocean calling to her. Come. Come. Come, daughter. She moved quickly, following the coast, slipping between the trees until she pushed through a thicket and emerged in a wide field of thick, tall grass. Ahead a great stone tower loomed above a ragged copse of pine trees, tapering to a small, round platform in the sky. An open stair wound upward in a spiral around the outside of the tower.
She was close.
