The rain poured through the night, not always strong, but always there, drumming on the thatch roof. We lay on the straw with her mattress as a pillow, blanket just wide enough to cover us both. A warmth and safety we wouldn’t know again for who knew how long.

Morning dawned with a drizzle and trickle, fairly late that the clouds cleared, then our day began. It wasn’t yet midmorning, but still much later than we usually got up. Like it was a usual day, we followed our routine all the way to breakfast, the last of the loose wheat boiled up into porridge.

Once the bowls were empty, fire put out, I felt the weight of leaving here. Leaving what I knew and heading into a place as unwelcoming as this camp had been when I had first come to this world. No farms of food, no safe crevice from the rain and wind, not even fresh water to drink.

If not for Hyraj, I had no clue if I would have ever left. Daunting. Maybe I would have made a sled and brought a ton of food and kindling with me, travelling down the mountain, along the river. Maybe even that would have been too scary to try.

Well, that wasn’t what was going to happen, so thinking about it was a waste of time.

Standing up, I looked around. I had put in so much effort that it sort of tied me to it. Something like… one of Newton’s laws? That as much as I had shaped this camp, it had shaped me back too. Like how rough my hands were from moving rocks and shredding reeds and braiding.

Not sentimental, though. Just like I wasn’t sentimental about the orphanage. It was a building that kept me safe and warm and fed, but who I missed were the other children. Not even the staff. The staff hadn’t done anything bad to me or anything, they just paid attention to the children who needed it, which wasn’t me, so I didn’t really… bond with them? Not like I did with the other kids.

This was a place that kept me safe and warm and fed, but what I would miss was the silence. No one here who needed my help with homework or their hair fixed or wanted a hug or a bedtime story or for me to hold their hand until they fell asleep.

Funny how I could also miss those things too, the silence I cherished painfully lonely.

Hyraj packed away the things we used for breakfast and I picked up my “backpack”. As well as the dried peas, there was wheat—just assumed it would keep well, knowing about grain silos—and a bunch of seeds—just in case we ended up making a proper camp somewhere else. All my reed ropes too, some thin and some thicker and one thick enough for a person to climb… if they didn’t have to climb far, only about as long as I was tall.

Anyway, my heart was steady, mind clear, ready to leave behind the only place in this world I knew.

“Louise is… go?” Hyraj asked, I guessed her pause because she thought of using a word I wouldn’t know. Strange that she didn’t use it to teach me, but this wasn’t a normal day.

“Yes,” I said, making the “nodding” gesture with my hand. Consciously doing that helped keep me from nodding—wouldn’t want to upset someone important by daring to nod at them.

No one to say goodbye to, she started walking and I followed, looking straight ahead as we left. Maybe someone else would stumble across it one day and take shelter there. Well, if the room lasted that long. It wouldn’t be long until the “stormy” season and I doubted my mud walls would survive.

Although busy thinking, it was easy to follow behind her, her path avoiding roots and stones and anything else that could trip us up as she strode along. Forest full of large trees that left plenty of space to walk around whatever was in the way.

Walk we did, hard to follow the time beneath the trees, sun hidden away. Distant birds and our footsteps—mostly hers, not heavy, but firm—were all that kept us company, no glimpses of animals and barely a breeze, sometimes leaves falling from the swaying canopy above us. It hadn’t felt so empty before and I wondered if it was because the animals could feel her magic.

It felt like only minutes had passed when she came to a stop, turning to me. “Lunch?”

I took a moment to answer, first thinking it was too early, then realising I was quite tired and a little hungry, so lost in thought I hadn’t noticed.

“Yes,” I said, again doing the little clap to stop myself from nodding.

Not really anywhere more comfortable to sit than the ground, we sat under a tree. As we did, I noticed her arms were full of fruit—I had apparently been quite out of it to not notice her picking them. She split them between us, then took out two cups and filled them with water.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

We ate in silence, wind rustling leaves above our head, distant birdsong. Once we finished, she excused herself for a moment. Not wanting to leave our food and her backpack unattended, I waited for her to come back before excusing myself, better to go now than interrupting our walking.

When I came back, I expected we would set off right away. We didn’t, though, sitting for a while and talking. About life. Well, nothing that philosophical, just the sorts of things that came up in everyday life. Small talk, really.

“How did you sleep?” she asked again, third time’s the charm.

“I slept well, thanks,” I said, wondering by now if the “thanks” she taught me was more of a “thank you” or even politer.

Half an hour passed, maybe an hour, then we finally set off. Rather than the brisk pace of the morning, she walked at the unhurried speed I knew her for. I wondered if she was taking pity on me up until she glanced back and beckoned me forward; the moment I joined her side, she carried on the “lesson”.

Talking, walking, avoiding tripping hazards—I certainly had fun as the afternoon hours trickled by.

Eventually, it darkened. She kept us going until twilight, only once it became dark in the trees’ shade that we stopped at a clearing and set up camp, but we had gathered firewood and fruits as we walked for the last hour, an armful of each.

Starting a fire was as easy as always with her around. She pounded the stakes into the ground, balanced the pot on top, and summoned some water. I added a cupful of dried peas for each of us, already reminiscing about the carrots and onions and even the asparagus. Really should have brought some with, even if they only lasted the first few days.

But I was happy. The warmth of the crackling fire, Hyraj at my side, and the exhaustion of a day well spent. Three things I had come to love in this world.

While we ate, I looked back the way we’d come. Not something I’d really thought about until now, we had left my camp the opposite side that she had come from, so we were probably following whatever route she had in mind. Across the mountain, not going up or downhill. If we were just going to the nearest village, then following the river would be best, but maybe she had something else in mind.

Those were questions I could have asked her. I didn’t want to, though, knowing this was a long journey enough for me. It wasn’t like where we went mattered. There was no home or family for me to ever return to in this world, no place I grew up or anywhere at all familiar, only strangers and foreign lands.

That was fine. I grew up with strangers in a place that wasn’t my home, after all. Wherever we ended up, I would be fine, so there was no need to worry. Especially if she was with me.

The “pea stew” quick to eat, she carried on talking the moment we both finished, idly using magic as she cleaned up. Okay, she could talk and use magic at the same time like it was nothing. As if my struggle with magic wasn’t frustrating enough.

Anyway, there wasn’t a reason to stay up, so, once she finished cleaning, we put out the fire and went to bed. No straw-carpeted room out here, she put out her mattress thing and we used it like a pillow, her blanket just big enough to cover both of us. A bit of a squeeze to tuck it under us—didn’t want the wind taking it—but we were both girls.

Silence, the leaves rustling, insects chirping, and her breaths. Deep and measured breaths that, the more I listened, the closer to sleep I fell, falling.

“Goodnight,” she whispered.

My eyes shot open, not scared, but jerked back from the edge of sleep. “Goodnight,” I whispered back.

Even though that had woken me up, I just did the same thing, listening to her breaths, and quickly fell back to sleep. I’d forgotten how nice something as simple as a blanket and pillow were. Usually, I woke up once or twice in the night, but not tonight. A good sleep.

In the morning, we had pretty much the same routine as back at camp, ending with me making porridge. She had been forbidden from porridge duty after burning three breakfasts in a row, apparently fine with the taste. It worked out for the best now since I couldn’t wash up without her help. I cooked, she cleaned.

Then we set off, still at the slower pace, talking as we went. Not a constant conversation, but a few minutes at a time as she hammered in whatever she was teaching me, the silences in-between usually longer.

We walked until it was around midday and stopped to eat the fruits we had picked along the way, more since I actually helped today. After eating, she told me about the fruits, which included teaching me the word for diarrhoea—I had no way to know if she taught me a euphemism or the technical term. Whichever it was, “eesdrin” was at least easier to remember how to spell.

Then we set off, walking at her unhurried pace, idly chatting from time to time as the day passed. Evening, we set up camp and had pea stew and went to bed.

“Goodnight,” I said.

She whispered back, “Goodnight.”

A different routine than we had followed back at my camp, but we fell into it easily enough, another day passing in that rhythm, and another, and another.

We would have kept going like that if not for our food running low. Well, it was about half-empty. We weren’t halfway to our destination, though, so half wasn’t enough.

Fortunately, I was an experienced forager. It just meant that we had to stop to dig up things now and then. Didn’t find any carrots or onions, maybe the soil not right for them for whatever reason. Hopefully, if we did make another long-term camp somewhere, my seeds would grow.

What I did find was the asparagus and beans, so we had a fresh pea soup and grilled asparagus. Not entirely satisfied with that, I poked around while she washed up, digging up any old thing, sniffing the leaves—a bit like a dog, I thought to myself, trying not to burst into laughter like a madwoman.

Still, it was familiar. Reminded me of when I’d first come here, but how nice it was to have someone with me for it, to have something as simple as a metal cup and pot, to be able to start a fire in a second rather than minutes.

Different to the comfort of life at the camp, but I didn’t hate it.