They left the eastern community on a Saturday.

The journey home felt different from every previous version of it. Not because the terrain had changed or the group had changed or the frequency of the pre-pack channels running beneath them had changed. Because Marina had changed in the specific way that people changed after completing something that had been building for a long time, the settled quality of a thing that was no longer ahead of her but behind her and part of what she was now.

The ceremony. The convergence. The distribution.

Behind her.

The work that followed, ongoing and distributed and no longer requiring her at the center...