We don’t use roads people can point to on a map.
Elowen calls them “named paths,” like the moment something has a label it becomes a liability. Like the land itself starts gossiping once you give it directions.
So we move through the ribs of the world instead—maintenance cuts, forgotten logging lanes, old war runnels that never got paved because no one wanted to admit they existed. The kind of places where the trees grow too close, the branches knit overhead, and the sky turns into a low, bruised ceiling.
Places that don’t welcome travelers.
Places that don’t remember faces.
Places that swallow scent the way deep water swallows sound.
The vehicle is unmarked, but it isn’t ordinary. I can feel it in the way the air inside sits heavier than it should, like something is layered through
