The camp did not stop moving.
Vane understood, watching it refuse to stop, that this was its own kind of answer to a question none of them had asked aloud.
Meals were still cooked. Watch rotations still changed on time. Water was hauled, wounds were dressed, supplies were counted, and fires were kept small beneath the cliffs. The machinery of survival continued with the same quiet discipline it always had.
The children were quieter for several days.
Then, slowly, unbearably, they weren't quite as quiet anymore.
Grief, Vane was learning, did not ask permission before ordinary life returned. It simply waited until people were too tired to keep every door shut and began slipping through the cracks.
Terin sat beside Sarel's marker most evenings, his leg still healing, saying nothing. He simply remained there, present in the same way he'd once waited outside Kest's door in another world entirely.
Isole worked.
That was how she carried it.
