The cycling road ran straight between Eterna City and Oreburgh, suspended above the routes below on a long elevated track. Finn was moving at a pace that made the wind loud in his ears.
It's been a week now since he left Ciri, and now, he has bought the bicycle in Eterna, along with the gear. A fitted jacket, padded gloves, and a helmet. The bicycle was light, and once he'd gotten the hang of the gearing it felt smooth to operate.
Mt. Coronet rose to his right, he could see that the upper peaks were lost in clouds. He had seen mountains before, in the Witcher world, in Faerun, in Runeterra. Coronet invoked a similar feeling. That you are but an ant in this vast universe.
He kept his eyes on it for a long stretch of road.
The cycling road was mostly empty at this hour, a couple of trainers ahead of him moving at a casual pace, one on a Rotom Bike that hummed past going the opposite direction. Nobody paid him much attention.
He checked the guide he'd folded into his jacket pocket. Wayward Cave sat beneath the cycling road itself, accessible from a hidden entrance in the long grass below. The main entrance was further west, but someone during his travels had mentioned a secondary one sitting somewhere in the rough ground directly under the elevated track.
Finn slowed down a little.
He found a maintenance gap in the railing where a rusted ladder ran down to the ground below. He put his bicycle into his bag, stripped off the cycling jacket, stuffed that into his bag too, and climbed down.
The ground below the cycling road was shadowed and overgrown, with the elevated track cutting the light into long parallel strips across the grass.
Finn then drew his lightsaber.
The blue blade extended with a steady hum and he swept it through the first stretch of grass, which fell away cleanly, then through a stand of thin young trees that had grown up against one of the road's support columns. They came down in sections. He moved carefully, clearing a rough path toward the rock face of the cliff along the eastern edge of the ground.
He worked for twenty minutes, the blade disintegrating anything it touched without resistance. The cliff face appeared eventually, exposed under the last of the long grass and a sprawl of thick undergrowth.
The entrance was very low. It's a dark horizontal gap in the rock, about a meter and a half high and twice as wide. Warm air came out of it.
Finn crouched and looked in. He used his lightsaber to light the way.
He could see the stone floor. He could see the passage widened after a few meters. There seems to be nothing inside at first glance.
Then, he went in.
—
Ciri came to the daycare every morning at the same time and left in the early afternoon, and every morning the Ponyta was in the same corner of the yard, and every morning Ciri went and sat a few paces away and stayed there.
Day four had been the breakthrough. She had been sitting with feed pellets on her open palm, arm extended, and after forty minutes the Ponyta had walked over and eaten from her hand. Then walked away again immediately. Miren had said that was a significant step.
Day five, it came back in twenty minutes.
Day six, ten.
Now, a week in, Ciri sat cross-legged in the grass with the Ponyta close enough that she could feel the warmth off its mane, burning a steadier orange than when she'd first arrived. It ate from her palm and kept its eyes down.
Ciri kept her hand flat and her arm still.
It was young. Old enough to remember its mother, not old enough to have spent much time without her. When it wasn't eating its eyes went somewhere else, waiting for something that would never come back.
She always stares at the scar. A pale line running down the left side of the Ponyta's jaw, thin and old enough to have settled into the coat. Not a fresh injury. Something maybe from whatever had gotten to the mother, or from something else entirely.
When the feed was gone the Ponyta lifted its head and stood there, not retreating. Ciri lowered her hand slowly to her knee.
She didn't reach out. Miren had been clear about that.
The Ponyta's nose moved. Ciri sat still.
After a minute it stepped back one pace. Then stood again.
Miren appeared at the fence. "Better than yesterday," she said quietly.
Ciri nodded without turning around.
"She's starting to read you as a constant," Miren said. "That's what they need." She rested her arms on the fence rail. "You've been good at that."
The Ponyta stepped forward again. Its nose dropped toward Ciri's knee and hovered there.
Ciri held still.
The nose made contact. Brief, warm, but withdrawn immediately.
Neither of them said anything. Ciri kept her breathing even.
The Ponyta stepped back and turned away, stopping halfway to the water trough. It stood there with its back to her.
Then it turned its head, just slightly, and the afternoon light caught the pale line along its jaw.
Ciri looked at it for a moment. Then she reached up and touched her own cheek, once, and put her hand back down.
"You don't have to come closer," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."
The Ponyta's ear rotated back toward her.
"I know what it's like," she said. "When you feel safe, then suddenly everything collapses and you don't know what to do. It feels unfair."
The Ponyta didn't move.
"But all you have to do is bear with it," Ciri said. "Helps if there's someone that can be there for you."
A long pause.
The Ponyta turned around. It didn't come back toward her, it just turned so it was facing her direction and stood there, its mane burning low and steady.
Ciri stayed where she was.
"We can just be still for a bit," she said. "That's enough."
Miren said nothing.
Ciri kept her eyes on the Ponyta and sat, and the afternoon moved slowly around them both. Then the Ponyta went back to her corner, alone again.
Ciri sighed.
"Same time tomorrow?" she said.
"Same time tomorrow," Miren confirmed.