April 29

morale, force, pill, display, close, representative, stomach, brown, snail, branch

Hey, look, I’m from the Veil and I’ve seen some things. But the display on this train was hardly representative of the kind of everyday magic that was the fabric of my world.

Liter was leading me through caverns, plural. On a train. And the force of the heat was boiling my blood. My body was in shock, having hardly recovered from the frost in Liter’s car, and now being exposed to the other fierce extreme.

It seemed we had walked for miles and my morale and faith in this plan dipped with every step. Liter moved easily ahead of me. Their muscled arms sparkled and glistened, like an ad for suntan oil. I was a puddle. I stumbled more than once, sweat blinding me.

Moving like a snail, I tried to stay close to Liter, but almost lost them when we came to a branch that veered left. The floor dropped away and I pitched forward, rolling to a stop at the bottom of the slope. My eyes squeezed shut as my stomach threated to mutiny. I longed for a pill or a small ale to settle it.

“Oh, you poor thing,” I heard Liter say from what seemed like a mile away.

I hazarded a guarded glance up and stared into the most intriguing brown eyes I’d ever seen.