"Aunt Maela, do you, do you really think they're taking us to Lothian City?" Micheline asked as the carriage clattered down the frost-covered road.
Micheline had her cheek almost against the glass. Outside, the countryside rolled by, just as it had for several days; low hills with the snow lying grey in the furrows, a stand of alders along a frozen ditch, and every league or so a farmhouse with a thatch roof and a barn with a thread of smoke going straight up in the cold. For a land recently conquered by demons and witches, it looked… bland. Bland and a bit boring.
"You've been here before, haven't you, Aunt Maela?" Micheline asked, turning away from the window to look at her aunt in the seat across from her. "Does any of this look familiar?"
"No," Maela said mildly, glancing briefly out the window only after she'd given her answer.
"No, it doesn't look familiar?" Micheline asked. "Or no, you haven't been here?"
