For a long time, nothing happened.
Not the kind of nothing that waits to become something else just the steady continuation of days. Morning light. Shared meals. Roads that curved without intention. Aurelia discovered that this kind of living required a different courage than survival ever had.
No urgency meant no excuse.
She woke before dawn out of habit, then stayed awake because she wanted to watch the sky change. Colors bled softly into one another, unclaimed by prophecy or omen. She learned the names of small towns and forgot them again. She learned which silences were comfortable and which carried weight.
Kane noticed first.
“You don’t scan the horizon anymore,” he said one morning as they packed up near a riverbank.
“I still see it,” Aurelia replied. “I just don’t interrogate
