Her feet ached. Every morning, when Sojo woke, her feet ached. Every day, as she ate an early lunch on the wagon, her feet ached. At noon, while others rode the wagon and ate, her feet ached. Every afternoon, as she rested on the wagon to drink, she took a break from worrying about her aching feet to nurse her sun-stricken headache. Every evening, as they pitched their tents and lay down in dreadful weariness, her feet ached. And every night, as they told stories and cleaned the bowls their dinner had been feasted from, she laughed until her feet were forgotten and her cheeks were sore from smiling instead. And then when she lay down, her feet ached until she fell asleep.

Travelling had become an uneasy mix of isolation and close company for her. Each moment, she was within arms reach of her companions, with hardly a change of scenery or passing breeze to distract from their closeness; yet still she longed for those not present, for the family she’d never been so long separate from.

A jolt of the wagon woke her from her stupor, and as she sat up she imagined the joy of seeing an unknown face staring at her, perhaps from a market stall or even just the back of a laden horse. Instead she saw Eyn’s kind eyes and uncomfortable expression.

“Right, right…” Sojo muttered, stretching to recover from the bleariness that had taken her. She hopped down from the wagon as Eyn smiled thankfully at her. Sojo left her to her lunch, picking up her pace to get abreast the horses. Her shoes still smelled from time to time, and she had no intention of repeating that mistake. She brushed the horse’s side to the sound of Eyn rummaging for a midmorning snack and scrambling to catch the spilled contents.

“Did you doze off back there?” Brehen asked, walking beside the other horse. “I’ve nearly done that a couple times on my worse mornings.”

She could imagine the slight smile on his face as he poked fun, and would have seen it too had she not been rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Almost,” she admitted, “but I’m not quite tired enough to forgive the road its bumps yet. Seems like today’s going to be a warm one.”

Brehen nodded, not yet sweating in the morning coolness. Each step east they took seemed to still the wind further and thicken the air they passed through. “I’ve been wondering whether we even need the tents at night, with the evenings as calm as they are.”

Sojo let her mind drift, but didn’t bother to answer. She’d got to know Brehen well enough by now not to worry about keeping the conversations going. The group seemed to find its stride best at night around the campfire, and during the walking hours drifted, dreamlike, with only the passing murmurs needed to keep pleasant company.

Even so, that feeling of isolation seemed to rear up every morning. She’d run out of topics to peruse with them, and more and more found that flights of fancy stirred faded memories to cause longer conversations. Something in the boundless horizon and endless green grasses still managed to be unique, and provoke a different path for her thoughts to wander down with every step. She found her gaze drawn into the rich, blue sky –

But needed no jolt this time to bring herself back to the present. Mirrel was walking alone ahead of the group, and she felt it was her responsibility to at least check in on him. Again, she stepped up her pace, and felt the soles of her feet renewing their endless protest.

“What travelling have you done before this, Mirrel?” she asked, finally matching his pace leading the party. She’d agonized far more than she should have over how to ask that question, worrying about intruding. As it became clear how badly she was running out of other topics of conversation, however, Sojo had given in.

“Well, I grew up in the Western Isles,” he answered, unsmiling. “The lands of mist and fog… it’s a beautiful place, but hardly welcoming. Little surprise I ended up a traveller.”

Sojo was about to reply when he continued. “I suppose you could say my whole trek out here has been one long journey. But with so many long stops in there, it’s hard to say.” He smiled then, seeming happier to get away from the topic of the Isles.

“Sounds like you’ve gone far,” Sojo said. “Did any-”

“Have you been on any long trips before?” Mirrel cut in curiously.

Sojo leaned back and stretched her arms in the air. “Actually, I’ve-”

Her response was cut short by a sudden introduction of a sharp rock to a tender foot, breaking the conversation for the next half-minute as she swore, kicked at the rock, limped a few paces regretting the decision, and finally picked the rock up and threw it as hard as she could.

Mirrel smirked, not looking as the rock landed far afield with a sullen puff. “Feet still sore, then?” he asked, not making eye contact.

“Just a tad.” She grimaced, and tried to put on a straight face, still limping slightly. “That cream of Brehen’s is useless, I swear.”

“Maybe your feet are just too soft, still need to be firmed up by more days walking. Have you done much travelling before this?” Mirrel asked.

“Oh, hang it,” Sojo moaned, her voice cracking a touch. “Don’t make me think of more long, empty roads, please. Tell me about something better than this! What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been to, a place that took your breath away and made you forget about the trip it took to get there?”

Mirrel grinned, wide and toothy. “Well, I suppose…” his eyes drifted over and beyond the fields, and slowly his grin faded. “There was a place. I’ll do you one better, as this place requires no endless roads, or aching feet. Still the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen. This place was less than an hour’s hike from the village I grew up in, and…”

“I can’t say what a treasure it was. There was a bay, surrounded by cliffs, with rough stony beaches below. Warm, emerald waters, all that. No cloudless sky, though, never on the Isles. In one place it was deep enough that you could jump from the cliffs into the water, and near there was a single patch of sand where you could lay at low tide. We would swim there often, and dare each other to jump. But some days, the mist would wash in, and the fog was so deep you couldn’t see the water from the clifftop.

“We’d always wondered what it would be like to swim in, with the mist, but no one dared. We’d stand on the cliff and look down, and believe there was no water under the clouds: just a clouded sky above, and clouded sky below.

“Well, one day, a childhood friend of mine decided she would do it. The fog had rolled in, we were sitting on the clifftop, and she said she wanted to try. None of us really tried to dissuade her, of course, because we knew it couldn’t be that dangerous in truth. It was only the feeling of something unknown that held us back.

“So we watched, and waited, and we worried that she would get lost trying to find her way back up, or in the bay. She said not to worry, that she would find the patch of sand and wait for the fog to recede. It usually did, once midday had passed.

“And then, well, she jumped. We saw her pass into the mist, turn to shadow and nothingness before our eyes, with only the roiling vapours left where she had been. And we heard nothing. No splash, no sound, no triumphant call or cry of despair. Just stared into the clouds, and waited.

“Noon passed, and the fog remained, another hour, two, and finally it began to recede, and even as our view cleared we saw nothing. Dark stone, some vague waves in water, and finally even a patch of sand, but… nothing.”

Mirrel looked up, and met her eyes. “I left a few days later, decided that there had to be other places so lovely in the world. Safer ones.”

Sojo walked in silence, and Mirrel turned to look out at the horizon again. Finally, she asked, “Did you find anything on the sand? Had she been there?”

Mirrel didn’t turn. She couldn’t see his face as he answered. “Nothing to see. The tide had gone up, and the waves come with it. Nothing left but the sand.”

–

Before the travellers lay a sight they weren’t entirely prepared for. The empire’s constructed roadway had been tapering up to this point, growing thinner, less maintained, but now they had reached the end. The point they had come to where the stone path ended, and the sandy soil of a new land took its place.

The path was still visible, lightly marked by the wheels and feet that had passed before them to settle the land, but it was no longer a permanent fixture. Sojo stared at the transition point, marking the faltering grasp of their empire. She saw the churned dirt, with the small, hardy vegetation of the arid summer growing all around it. It was a shifting thing, and vividly in her mind she saw this place as it once had been, unkempt and self-sustained. She saw the Scouts pass by, and the stones laid down in promise of a future that never quite came. She saw the years pass, and the stones slowly shifting, the eager land pulling them down under the burden of their age. She saw this reclamation interrupted by travellers like herself, hoping to renew the vows made in earnest by unprepared rulers. Finally, an unbidden image arose of the tracks grown over, and the land restoring its sway that had been so weakly wrested away.

Sojo looked at the stopped wagon, at her companions similarly lost in thought. She reached for the words to inspire them, but the image was overbearing; their goals and aspirations seemed so paltry and small compared to the slow roiling of the land itself. Instead, her actions would be rebellion to the traitorous fears she sheltered:

She walked forwards to the end of the road, stood mere inches from the shifting sand, and as she stepped across, as her foot embraced the soil, she felt as though a part of her was embraced in turn. A nostalgic recognition swept through her, and in that glorious moment, all her ails seemed to vanish, healed by the raw touch of the dirt. She took another step, and…

Her feet ached.