If you like music while you read, try "Hope" by Nathan Wagner while you're reading this chapter. It's what I was listening to while writing!
*****
GAR
Gar and Rika walked on the trails to the north of the Tree City. He was still struggling to sleep until dawn, and that morning Rika had woken early as well. They'd shared breakfast at the market and he'd been showing her around as much as possible, but mostly they ended up just walking—talking like they had in those first days. Remembering childhoods, families, and sometimes pains.
But that morning, instead of the pain and grief that had permeated every breath for the past month, it had been a joy.
"Do you think we could go back to the honeymoon cave?" Rika asked him carefully at one point. "I feel like we didn't get to take full advantage of that… solitude."
Then she looked up at him from the corner of her eye, grinning wickedly.
