Sheepeater Cliff spring dawning

The girl still doesn't understand what happened to bring her here, into this terrible world under an unfamiliar sky. She had forgotten her sister's hiding place and then she had remembered it. Why was she being punished?

She can still see it - her mother and her red-rimmed eyes. I wish it'd been you instead of her. She wept mindlessly, without true comprehension, until her body ran out of tears.

A strange new smell distracts her. Her mind is a freight train and in the distance there is the mechanical groan of a railroad switch as it locks into place. She trails the scent until it brings her to a steep, rocky incline.

She scales the slope.