Mid-afternoon on Day 69 brought a dead, windless heat beneath the dense pine canopy of Hushwood.
The trail dipped into a broad, sheltered stream hollow surrounded on three sides by towering, century-old resin pines whose massive trunks cried long, glistening ribbons of amber pitch in the humid warmth. With zero subalpine breeze to circulate the air, the volatile turpentine vapors baked out of the bark and needles had pooled in the low basin like invisible, heavy water.
Kezra Venn felt the change in the air the moment the handcart rolled down the gravel bank toward the creek.
The air was thick, sweet, and suffocatingly healing, coating the back of her throat with a sharp, oily film that tasted of boiled pine tar. Within ten minutes of halting beside the stream to fill canteens, Fellis Dain began rubbing a dull, throbbing ache behind his temples, his breath coming in shallow, labored gasps. The pack mule snorted wildly, tossing its head and pawing the gravel. Its nostrils ran with clear, watery mucus.
In Kezra’s own skull, the low silence of her damaged left ear took on an unpleasant, heavy fullness, with a faint, swimming sluggishness in her balance that reminded her dangerously of post-exchange dizziness.
