Chapter 9: Homecoming
By day six on the road, I’ve stopped believing Ash’s home even exists.
I’m also not entirely sure clean clothes and food that didn’t start the day fuzzy and breathing aren’t a figment of my imagination. In particular, I would very much rather not have had a front row seat to where Ash was sourcing dinner, but then it turns out travel is mostly a chain of unpleasantness spaced unevenly between where you started and where you intended to finish.
And then our poor, battered, sporadically powered bike grinds up one last hill and dies, and this time it doesn’t matter because a glittering mirage rises in the distance. Only it turns out to be real. Our journey is at an end.
“Welcome to Nine Peaks.” Ash twists to watch me, probably hoping for a spark of recognition.
I tr
