Rua stood beside him.
She was, he noted, several inches taller than before — not physically, the breakthrough hadn't altered her height — but bearing. The specific postural adjustment of a body that now occupied a different stage and was, without conscious intent, distributing its weight differently.
Nascent Soul Early.
She stood in the morning forest with her torn leather and her loose hair and the expression of a woman who had been comprehensively taken apart and then had her foundation entirely replaced with better material, and was looking at the territory she had lived in her whole life and finding it noticeably smaller than it had been this morning.
Her eyes found him.
He was not looking at her.
She looked anyway.
'''
The village was inside the forest.
