The whole business was most dangerous.
He came out, feeling clean and invigorated. For a time he walked up and down the sands, drying himself in the hot sunshine and looking around him. He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring at him. The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful, body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he had just escaped - to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller to oppose, from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to avoid being utterly destroyed? ... Then he smiled to himself. "I've already been here two days, and still I survive. Ihave luck - and with that one can balance the universe. But what is luck - a verbal expression, or a thing?"As he was putting on his skin, which was now dry, the answer came to him, and this time he was grave. "Surtur brought me here, and Surtur is watching over me. That is my 'luck.' .. . But what is Surtur in this world? ... How is he able to protect me against the blind and ungovernable forces of nature? Is he stronger than Nature? .. ."Hungry as he was for food, he was hungrier still for human society, for he wished to inquire about all these things. He asked himself which way he should turn his steps. There were only two ways; along the shore, either east or west. The nearest creek lay to the east, cutting the sands about a mile away. He walked toward it.