The guesthouse owner saw us off at seven-thirty.
She stood in the doorway in the cold morning with a paper bag that contained, she informed us, enough food for the journey and a small additional item she pressed into my hands separately — a jar of the guesthouse's own preserved cabbage, which she said kept well and which I would want, eventually, when I was back in the capital and having the kind of day that required something made properly and not approximately. She said this with the certainty of a woman who had no doubts about the category of days she was describing and no doubt that such days would occur.
I thanked her. She nodded once, the nod of someone who did not require effusiveness and found it unnecessary. She shook Kaien's hand and told him, directly, that he was welcome back. He thanked her. She nodded again and went inside, and that was that.
