Third Person POV
The market was loud in the way that only markets could be, not just the noise but the pressure of it, bodies pushing from every direction, elbows and baskets and the smell of fried things and unwashed skin all pressed together under a sky that could not decide if it wanted to rain.
Sonita moved through all of it with her head down.
Her bag was on her shoulder. The cloth was wrapped tightly around her hair. Her eyes stayed on the ground in front of her feet, watching the gaps between people, finding the spaces and moving through them before they closed.
She had been walking for hours.
Not toward anything. That was the honest truth of it. She was walking away. Away from the cottage and its familiar smell of dried herbs and wood smoke. Away from the cave and everything she had seen inside it. Away from the image that had been sitting behind her eyes since she turned and walked out, Kai's voice, Helen's face, the particular way the space between them had looked.
