Tyla’s POV
I used to think peace would feel like silence.
Not the good kind—the kind that rings, that presses against the ears, that waits for something to break it. I imagined peace as an empty room after a storm, furniture pushed back into place, damage assessed, everything too neat to be trusted.
I was wrong.
Peace is movement without urgency.
It is sound without demand.
It is waking up somewhere unfamiliar and realizing the unfamiliar no longer alarms you.
The road carries us east for days, then south, then nowhere in particular. We walk until our legs ache and then until they don’t. We stop in villages that don’t know our names. We trade small work for meals—Arthur mending tools, me helping with ledgers, stories exchanged without weight or reverence.
No one asks us to stay.
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