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Prayer after prayer was said in your head, thanking God that you'd just barely gotten out before nighttime.
You glanced to your side. Rosetta's face was still stained with tears. She hadn't been crying for almost half an hour, yet she looked as if she'd kept at it until mere seconds ago. Her nose was nearly as red as Berry's.
A chorus of yips sounded out as the forest-children faced the sunset for what seemed like the first time. Stone visibly recoiled while the rest simply shook themselves or forced their eyes shut. Berry stumbled over to the side of the small river in front of you, throwing himself at it like he'd been set on fire, returning to the pack only to shake off all the water with such force that you saw it go <span class="mu-i">right through</span> everyone but Rosetta.
The children looked wet afterwards, of course, but not in the right places. Tree had made his hair damp, Twig had somehow gotten her shoulders wet. Neither of them were short enough for Berry's shaking to have reached that far.
Only the pale green bulb-lizard, now trailing Rosetta like a tail, seemed to appreciate the impromptu dowsing.
You motioned for the girl to turn around and look at it. She'd been too preoccupied with conversing-- both with her pack and with you-- to notice it until now... and when she finally saw the stranger trailing her, a smile stretched across her face for the first time in hours.
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The setting sun kissed Central Road, drenching it in a sort of pink glow that you'd never really expected the town to wear well. Yet its presence was so welcome, so soothing, that you felt yourself unwind upon seeing it. Even through the sheer exhaustion weighing down your shoulders it was hard not to appreciate the sight of the setting sun. The light dancing on rooftops, the small bits of dust shining in the air...
It helped that the road was rather sparse at the moment. There were maybe two or three people outside. One of them was Nannie, fixing up some plants in front of her restaurant, looking away from you as she did it.
Across from her, down a store or two, was Steele. He was carrying some kind of basket to the amateurish fields finally taking hold at the end of the biggest street in town. His once-pristine suit was now covered in dirt. His pants were nigh-unrecognizably dirty.
Otherwise, the area was empty of people.
It wasn't even compensated-for by demons. A rather large metal-eater lay slumbering near a half-eaten piece of ore near the fields, with a strange brown dog covered in facial hair chasing one of the electric sheep out of the town, and... that was it.
