Mia woke in the morning more refreshed than she'd felt in a while. Yawning, she stretched.
Utterly exhausted yesterday, she'd fallen asleep before dinner and gone to bed immediately afterward.
It had been building for a long time. She was overusing her magic, and she knew it. Constantly changing what she was searching for was taking its toll on her.
The best path, the right path, the safest path, the quickest path, the safest place to camp for the night… she flicked through these options more and more.
Up to the canyons, she hadn't fretted in the least. Even the grasslands, the path had been constant and safe, where they mainly traced the path of the river for a ready supply of water.
The anxiety of first the chimera and then the flowers that cut flesh was weighing. That wasn't even mentioning the unseen dangers of the distant thump they had fled to get to the clearing. Of course, for most of that time, Ford's secondary pull had been largely absent as well.
