Chapter 189: Simple Beauty

~ SASHA ~

They lay on a fur in the sparse winter grass of the meadow under a crooked-branched tree. Sasha sat with her back to the tree's trunk, while Zev lay on his side, leaning on one elbow, his head at Sasha's hip.

They were eating the fruit and dried meat Zev had brought, but Sasha's mind was more on the sheer beauty of the place. She hadn't been able to see it last night when they came through in the near-dark. But now… now the wide, sloping bowl between three snowcapped mountains that stood over it like guards, called to her. 

This place was gorgeous even now, with the grasses dry and sparse among banks of snow, the landscape dotted with twisted trees and jumbled boulders that must have been pushed into the wider areas of the valley by floods many years earlier. She couldn't imagine the beauty of it when the grasses were green and lush, and the trees covered in leaves.