Ten days passed in the green hollow, and they were the kindest ten days any of them could remember.
There was hard work in them, but no fear, and that was the whole of the difference. They woke when their bodies were ready instead of when a horn called them. They ate slowly, and they ate well. And because they had finally learned how to eat, the food did far more than fill them.
Sameira had the surest hand for it. She would rest a fresh cut of meat in a bowl of softly glowing Axiom Force and leave it until the Force had soaked all the way through, until the meat gave up the faint flavor of the law it had carried in life. Then they cooked it over the coals like anything else and ate, and felt a small steady warmth take root somewhere beneath the breastbone. They did the same with the fruit, the roots, and the broad green leaves. The forest had been a full pantry the whole time. They had only just found the door.
