They stayed the night.
It wasn't a decision so much as an inevitability — the valley had a quality to it that made departure feel premature, like leaving mid-sentence, and by the time the afternoon light began its slow descent down the pale stone walls everyone had simply stopped moving toward the exit and started moving toward the fire instead.
Edran took a perimeter position outside the passage without being asked. This was, Aria was beginning to understand, simply how Edran operated — he identified the most useful place to be and occupied it quietly and didn't require acknowledgment. She made a note to remedy the acknowledgment part when they returned.
Inside the stone structure, her mother made food from what the garden provided and what she kept stored in clay jars along the back w
