We ended up camping under the wide branches of a tree with silvered bark and long frondlike leaves that drooped to the ground. I liked that it obscured our camp from sight even if I didn’t like that, on the other hand, we couldn’t see any attackers coming unless we were outside the tree’s reach. Not that the fog made visibility easy at the best of times.

Really, I wished we could have found a nice normal pine tree—even one with the prickly needles—high enough to be outside the fog, but that was impossible down in the valley. Nothing was normal here. That had been apparent since Mishtaw and Creed stumbled their way down the mountainside, barely coherent, and fell asleep at our feet.

Nothing could be trusted. Not even my own awareness or dreams. And it was one thing to know that at given moment something might trigger a memory that I wouldn’t catch in time, that I’d slip into. That was common threat I had grown used to and could fight.

It was quite another when I couldn’t even trust my own dreams. The idea that I could be at the mercy of the memories of one while I was awake and unable to escape the manipulation of another while I slept. Only able to wake up when given permission.

Even though it was still only somewhere between late afternoon and early evening when we arrived at the campsite the others spread out their bedrolls and claimed their places. I climbed up the tree. Prevna’s gaze was an inquisitive weight on my back as I made my way up into the branches but she let me go without a word. The others seemed relieved to have a break from my sharp tongue as well given the way they bustled around and refused to comment on my disappearance. Occasionally, they glance up through the branches before hurrying to do something else, like they thought their looks would draw me back down.

At least among the long leaves, if I ignored their bulky width and the tree’s light bark I could pretend I was in the Seedling Palace, in one of the little nooks I had made my own. That night I took first watch and didn’t wake anyone else up for the second or third.

Prevna was immediately suspicious. Between Jika and Deamar commenting on how well they slept and the fact I hadn’t woken her up like I promised and the yawns I kept suppressing, she knew something had wrong with the night watch shifts. She tried to ask me about it but I gave an excuse about not sleeping well and shifted the conversation to our mission to discover the relic. Part of me wasn’t sure if I should be impressed or worried that she had slept the night through after being pulled into dream like I had been.

We hiked to the Mountain’s Tears which was an impressive section of rock that looked like a face crying twin streams of lava, but it didn’t really seem like the relic we were looking for. Filled with a semblance of grief, yes, but it didn’t have much in the way of a funeral pyre or being ever burning without being lit unless you counted the molten rock and at that point the whole valley could be considered the relic.

We moved on to another one of the places Tike had thought of as potential relics and then another and another as the days kept passing by. Nothing quite seemed to match what little we had to go off of.

I didn’t dream. Mostly because I barely slept. I got better at hiding the lack by saying I’d take second or third watch and then I would lay awake waiting for whoever was on watch to come “wake” me up. Sometimes I didn’t wake the watch after.

I could tell that I wasn’t thinking as quickly, reacting as fast or noticing as much because of the lack of sleep, but that only made me wish I had a stimulant to help wake me up. But there wasn’t anything for me to use in my pouches and nothing I recognized as we hike back and forth through the valley.

Logically, I knew I needed to sleep. That I couldn’t continue this forever and that I was worrying Prevna. Logically, I knew that the entity hadn’t actually ever hurt me in the dreams and that she hadn’t pressed me with questions every night.

But then the panic of turning to find Prevna gone without a trace would bubble up in my chest and the horror of closing and opening my eyes only to find the nightmare unending would scratch at the back of my throat—and no matter how gritty my eyes were and how my head ached I’d find my gaze trained on the fog surrounding us without blinking.

At least then my will was my own.

Prevna tried to get me to talk. She’d prod and joke and once even joined me up in the tree I had claimed for the evening to lean close and tell me all about how she had been trapped in her own dream. Turning suddenly to find me no longer with her and the chamber gone. Instead she had sprinted through tunnels of stone that hadn’t ended until she tripped on a rock and suddenly woke up.

I deflected and kept silent and tried not to snap back at her in turn. I knew she was only trying to help. Trying to get me to open to her like I had before but anything I tried to say got stuck in my throat. The problem wasn’t with the nightmares or the insistent questions or the things the entity had insinuated about the goddesses. Those were problematic and interesting, stressful, but they weren’t what truly made me unable to sleep.

No, this was something deeper, something so ingrained that I didn’t always have the words for it even when I could make myself look at it fully. This was the same impulse that had pushed me to cut up Fellen’s hair cord and the part of me that hated our unfamiliar surroundings even as it relished how the others were responding to my glares and curt responses exactly how I wanted them to: by giving me space.

Everyone but Prevna.

And it took more than I liked to hold that impulse back from digging through my memories and cutting her down like I had with Fellen. That wasn’t what I wanted in the long run. I knew that, and, perversely, that same part me of was pleased by my restraint.

After all, that was a clear bit of control amidst the threats that could make everything else go sideways.

As long as I was awake I could be vigilant against memories and dreams taking over my awareness. I could test myself to see if I had suddenly slipped into a dream or not. I could watch over our group and know that everyone was there in their proper place.

So I stayed awake.

It wasn’t like I couldn’t pay the price for it. Better to be grumbled about and given pensive looks than have everyone nice and close, and have even more to worry about. It almost felt like being the healer’s daughter in the tribe again. Comfortingly uncomfortable. Familiar.

Everything passed in a blur. There were a surprising number of things and places that had potential to be the relic we were looking for in this valley alone, but despite my usually strong memory I would have been hard pressed to tell someone about the things we had looked at without mixing them together. My focus was elsewhere.

By the fourth day, Prevna lost all patience for my deflections and excuses. The others had disappeared somewhere and I found myself standing across from her inside a ring of stones though three of the stones had fallen over into a pile. Carvings were etched into each stone telling the simple story of a funeral.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t let the fog make you sleep once our dose runs out?”

My attention snapped back to Prevna. “I’m fine.”

She laughed but it sounded more exasperated than amused. “When we got here you just stared at the stones. You didn’t try to figure out if they match the relic’s description or tell Deamar to stop acting like an idiot or interrogate Tike to learn more about this place. Since when do you just stare at stones?” Prevna crossed her arms and glared at me. “Unless you don’t care about our mission anymore?”

Suddenly, I was nine years old again. Feeling sick and nauseated and betrayed by my body. Hating how weak I felt simply because the goddess had walked past me on the Calling Road and knowing that I wasn’t supposed to be weak. Needing to prove that I wasn’t a child. So I fought to stay on my feet only for a disgusted snort to come from overhead.

“You were supposed to be better than this.”

I blinked and I was back in my grownup body. Truly not a child but feeling just as sick weak and hating it.

Not a memory I had to break out of but enough of one to feel kicked in the teeth. Only to feel it again when I glanced up to see Prevna staring at me, wide eyed. She knew what I looked like when I got caught in a memory. This one might have been quick but Prevna had always been observant.

Her whole demeanor had softened and she reached one hand partially out toward me, caught somewhere between shock and concern. “A memory?”

I didn’t answer but my sudden focus on the ground was answer enough. Prevna tensed. A memory, and neither of us had ever thought she could trigger one.

Her outstretched hand curled into a fist and she let it drop to her side. “I’ll leave you be.”

I heard her turn and start to walk away, somehow unable to tear my gaze from the ground but I couldn’t let it end like that. Not with her.

“Prevna?”

She stopped immediately and turned back to face me. I answered her unspoken question. “Don’t give me the next resistance dose right away even if I ask for it.” I swallowed and got the next part out past my dry throat. “I can’t sleep.”

If I was forced to sleep by the fog that would at least give me some kind of relief even if the thought of succumbing to it also made my skin crawl.

She nodded.

And that made me just brave enough to ask the next nearly whispered question. “Stay with me then?”

She smiled and nodded again. “Where else would I go?”

We didn’t search out any more potential relics. Instead we camped out by the ring of stones until it was time to return the village before we all ran out of our resistance to the fog. Deamar put up a fuss since he wanted to go back to the village right away but no one else was keen on returning, not even Tike, and interestingly enough Deamar didn’t seem confident in his ability to hike back on his own.

Prevna kept close by me even though I was poor company as we hiked back. Which shouldn’t have been a problem, and hadn’t been, since Tike had skillfully lead us around the valley’s dangers while we searched for the relics. So skillfully, that neglecting our usual strategic positions hadn’t seemed like a issue especially in my sleep deprived state.

Which was of course when the valley decided to remind us that it shouldn’t be taken lightly.