Chapter 1829 My Fucking Duty & Service:>Ep39

• Interminable amounts of time on the road later and they found the first signs of civilization. Forests remained, but occasionally swaths of the ancient wood had been slashed back, revealing clear pasture land and flat fields for incoming crops. Even now, green shoots for crops planted in the late fall were emerging, and every now and again there was a farmhand fixing up a snake rail fence or picking through the fields for the first sign of weeds. Once or twice, the caravan had to pull to the side to allow a shepherd and their herd. Another sign that life was returning to the world once more.
• The journey lasted long enough that they saw clear evidence of Spring emerge from the gloom of late Winter. Tree species that had just started budding when they left the Winter Palace were half-covered in green by the time farms were more common than forests on either side of the long road. A bridge they had needed to cross halfway to their destination had been washed out by meltwater, and they had to travel several miles downriver to a place where they could ford. Even still it had been touch and go, including a moment where everyone (except Katerina of course) had gone out to push the carriage out of a morass it had gotten mired in. At the very least she'd suffered indignity of standing amidst the mud, rather than further weighing down the wheels within the cabin.
• They encountered a military presence twice during their journey. The first was a chance encounter with a group of the Frontier's famed ranger unit, the Woodwraiths. Three figures in cloaks, masks, and strung bows gave them an archer's salute as the caravan passed by a large and particularly gnarled copse.