Morning came the way it did when you had slept on ground, which was to say it came too early and with opinions about your back.
Noah was up before anyone else, which was habit more than discipline. He moved around the campsite with the efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that the steps were automatic. Scatter the ash. Bury what needed burying. Drag the disturbed earth back to something that looked like it had been left alone. He worked outward from the firepit in a radius that covered where each of them had slept, erasing the compressed grass and the boot impressions and the small accumulated evidence of four people having existed here through the night.
Pip watched this process from his bedroll with one eye open.
"You're very thorough," Pip said.
"Go back to sleep."
