"I’ll go take a look." Evelyn Ford put on her down jacket and shoes. She hadn’t seen a rainbow in a long time and was getting excited. Ronan Kendrick grabbed a hat and helped her put it on, taking the chance to get a little fresh with her.

When she reached the shore, Evelyn Ford stared in awe at the two rainbows arching over the lake.

The sunlight held a hint of warmth, and the rainbows were magnificent. The forest-covered mountains were a pure, unbroken white, making it feel as if they had stepped into a fairy tale.

"It’s so beautiful."

The others came over as well, lining up and tilting their heads back to gaze at the rainbows.

"There’s a rainbow!" 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Wendy clapped her hands in excitement, and smiles spread across everyone’s faces.

"Whoa, a rainbow!"

Wyatt Vaughn tore off his hat and yelled out across the lake. Seeing this, Quincy yelled along with him.

"Please grant us a safe journey!"

Everyone turned to look at Quincy. He just shrugged. "Aren’t you supposed to make a wish on a rainbow? You guys should try it."

"I wish the temperature would rise soon, and for there to be no more disasters!"

"Please let everything go smoothly, so we can reunite with everyone else after we reach the Northwest!"

"Please keep Roy Henderson and Owen Chapman safe and sound!"

"Please keep my family safe, and I hope I can find them soon."

...

Everyone shouted out their wishes, while Evelyn Ford silently prayed in her heart, ’I hope these disasters end soon and let Azure return to normal.’

After resting by the lake for two days, it was time for the group to set out on the next leg of their journey. Deep within the Drakeridge Mountains, they could occasionally spot villages, but the houses were all collapsed and long since abandoned.

However, in a vegetable patch behind one village, Evelyn Ford discovered yams. Yams are a cold-hardy plant. In this harsh environment where most trees had frozen to death, the yam vines were still putting out tender sprouts.

Ronan Kendrick used a hoe to shovel away the snow and began to dig for the tubers. He thought it would be an easy job, but unexpectedly, this particular plant had an incredibly extensive root system.

The others grabbed hoes and came over to help. An hour later, they had turned over the entire vegetable patch, and the yams they had unearthed were piled into a small mound on the ground.

This particular yam plant was a bit old, and its tubers were very thick, but they were still edible.

Wyatt Vaughn picked up a yam, examining it from all angles. "Evelyn, you’ve got some sharp eyes to spot yams in that patch."

"I didn’t know they were yams at first," Evelyn said. "I just saw a few green leaves in the patch. I got curious and brushed the snow away to take a look."

"Let’s clean them up and take them with us. We can leave some of the rootstalk for replanting and cook the older ones."

They used snow to scrub the dirt off the yams before tossing them into the shipping container. That evening, they cooked the yams in a stew with pork ribs. The yams were a little tough, but they tasted decent, and they were especially starchy and filling.

Evelyn Ford saved a section of the root in her space. Once they reached the Northwest, she could try planting it. If it grew, they would have another food source.

’It’s a shame I don’t have any cassava in my space,’ she thought. ’Cassava has a high yield. Even though it’s toxic and not very nutritious, as long as it’s processed correctly, there are many ways to cook it. It’s also very filling. In times of famine, many people survived on it.’

As they entered the latter half of the Drakeridge Mountains, the road became rugged and difficult to traverse. Although the sun came out each day, the temperature remained low and the wind was biting. After such a long trek, everyone was starting to show signs of catching a cold.

At 9:30 that night, the convoy stopped in front of a ruined temple.

Fortunately, a few of the temple’s rooms hadn’t collapsed. With a little cleaning, they could make do there for the night.

"There are several bodies here," Donovan Irving said. While clearing the floor, he had discovered a pile of bones behind a statue of the Buddha.

At the sound of his voice, everyone hurried over.

"Probably refugees," someone said. "Look, there’s a handcart and a bamboo basket over here. There’s a bundle on it, too."

Evelyn Ford poked the bundle open. Inside were clothes, as well as pots, bowls, and ladles.

A somber mood fell over the group. Taylor Vance silently grabbed a hoe and began digging a pit in the temple courtyard, intending to bury the bones.

The others quickly went to help. Only after the bones were buried did they start cleaning the temple.

They started a fire to boil water and hurried to make dinner. Instead of cooking rice, they simply made a large pot of black bear meat stew. There were plenty of low-lying shrubs near the temple, so they led the animals over to forage on their own, saving them the trouble of cutting branches.

The old temple was drafty, so everyone stayed in their truck compartments. In the dead of night, a violent wind kicked up and blew Donovan Irving’s compartment completely over. He had no choice but to spend the night in the truck with Miles Vaughn and Peter Owens.

Later that night, the pitter-patter of a light rain began to fall. The sound woke Evelyn Ford. She got up and glanced outside. The animals had all taken shelter inside the temple, and the fire pit was down to its last embers.

「By ten the next morning」, the light drizzle had turned into a downpour. It looked like they were going to be trapped in the temple. They pulled tarps from the containers to cover their truck compartments and set about repairing the leaks in the temple roof.

Everyone, dressed in raincoats, was busy at work. The sheep wouldn’t stop bleating from the cold, so Evelyn Ford started another fire. The three elk huddled in a corner, looking utterly miserable.

"You’ve got to be kidding me. This rain couldn’t have come at a worse time."

"We’ll probably be stuck here for a few days. We need to chop more wood and build up the fires. It’s too cold."

Evelyn Ford was shivering uncontrollably. Rainwater streamed down from the roof tiles, carving pits into the snow on the ground.

Once the temple was in order, Evelyn Ford returned to her compartment. She quickly changed out of her wet clothes and drank a large mug of hot water, which finally started to chase away the bone-deep chill.

The rain was coming down so hard that no one was in the mood to cook dinner. They just pulled out some naan bread to fill their stomachs.

Evelyn Ford pulled two boxed meals from her space, along with several other dishes: roast duck, wraps, stir-fried pork with mushrooms from their time at the safe zone, braised eggplant, smashed cucumber salad, and tofu with greens.

The two of them rarely made private meals like this anymore, but their compartment was far from the others. With the raging storm outside, there was no way the smell would carry.

"We still have plenty of these desert mushrooms," she said. "And the eggplant and cucumbers... we bought all this when we stocked up in Corinth, remember? And the roast duck—we made this back when we were in that building in the safe zone."

Of course, Ronan Kendrick remembered. He remembered every single day since he had met Evelyn Ford with perfect clarity.

"When we get to the Northwest, let’s build our own little house with a courtyard. Just the two of us." Ronan Kendrick looked at Evelyn Ford earnestly. "Can we do that?"

It wasn’t that he disliked the others; he just wanted to be alone with Evelyn more.

"Okay," she said. "And we’ll have a vegetable garden."

Once they had eaten their fill, Evelyn Ford took out an MP3 player, giving one earbud to Ronan Kendrick and keeping the other for herself.

In a compartment not far away, the others were still complaining about the fickle weather. Quincy and Wyatt Vaughn had run out of charcoal for their stove and were yelling to ask which truck it was in.

Evelyn Ford didn’t know when she fell asleep. When she woke up the next day, the rain was still falling without any sign of letting up. The sun was nowhere to be seen, and the sky was a dark, oppressive mass that felt as if it could come crashing down at any moment.