They moved at first light, if the change could be called that.
Nothing rose here. There was no dawn line, no gradual spill of color across the horizon. The darkness merely thinned until the light seemed to agree, reluctantly, to become more present than it had been a moment before.
Mara resumed the same method she had used the previous day: notches in bark, fixed landmarks, distance measured by pace rather than instinct.
It continued to work.
That surprised all of them more than it should have. Once they stopped waiting for the ordinary method to betray them, it proved more reliable than anything else they possessed.
Valerica walked point beside Mara, quietly cataloguing the landscape as they went.
"Footprints persist longer here," she said, studying a set of impressions that remained in the grass well after the person who made them had passed. "Not everywhere. Only in certain stretches."
Mara carved another notch into the nearest trunk.
Valerica looked toward the horizon.
