CASSIAN
The journey lasted two days.
It was a slow crawl across a world I had only ever seen from the tinted windows of my father's cars.
Now, the world was loud and smelled of exhaust and old fabric.
We took a bus that dropped us at a station where the air was thick with the scent of cheap grease.
Then we found another bus. When the buses stopped running where we needed to go, we piled into a shared van with five other people who didn't look at us.
When the van reached its limit, we walked.
We had very little money. Julian managed what we had with a cold, hard focus. It was a specific kind of economy. Every cent had a purpose.
There was no room for error. We weren't using the family accounts or the cards that tracked my every move. We were using crumpled bills and heavy coins.
The motels were all the same. They were cheap in a way I had never imagined. They were the kind of rooms that didn't ask for identification.
