(Alash Vortex POV)
The last days were short ones, and I hardly remember them separately.
The country changed. The long empty fields of the west gave way to hedges, and farms, and villages close enough together that you could see the next church tower from the last one. The road got better. The waystations got bigger.
We passed Twelve, which still had no bathhouse, and nobody complained about it. Sophie started recognising things, a mill, an inn sign with a lame horse on it, a bridge she said she had dropped an apple off on the way out.
We got slowly better too, and not all at once, and not all the way. Elizabeth went back to riding a stage at a time, with Sorel's check at every halt. By the last days Sorel was letting her ride two stages in a row before the carriage, and once, very carefully, three, with Sorel beside her the whole way watching her hands.
James's hand opened more often than it closed. He still didn't touch Space, and he still didn't complain about it.
