The force of the blow sends him flying; he lands heavily against the railing that circles the deck, and has to take a moment to catch his breath, snarling silently with pain and anger. The soldiers stationed along the railing shift to ready stances, but for some reason none of them attack.

(She does not, in fact, catch on fire; the flames are uncomfortably hot, but dissipate without touching her.)

Huh. In any case, she's feeling kind of like she's overstayed her welcome at this point.

She charges for the railing.

The soldiers start to move, probably into simultaneous fire blasts—but then they stop, abruptly, and instead stand aside to let her pass.

She gives up on trying to formulate a mildly cutting remark about his honor. Maybe this sort of arguably counts as letting her go.

She dives as far as she can away from the ship and swims for the shore.

(It's fine fine fine fine, the shore is right over there, she's not gonna drown.)

He stands at the railing to watch her go, but doesn't chase her or send his men after her.

When she climbs out of the river, she looks back at him, briefly, and then heads off towards the forest. She doesn't run until there are enough trees between him and her that she can't be seen. No sense in letting him know about how fast she travels over land.

Firebending is much scarier up close, the spirit comments once they're out of sight of the boat.

"Didn't even burn me to a crisp. I guess he's not very old, though. Probably scarier in the hands of someone who has a better idea what they're doing."

If that's true I think I don't want to see a better firebender than that.

"Sorry. Thanks for sticking with me."

I want you to be able to talk to people, and if I went away you couldn't.

"Yeah. I think that would have gone a lot worse without the talking."

She stares up at the sky through the trees. There're stars. 

"If I settle down for the night, can you go find Wishbone and lead him here?"

I think so.

"That would be really helpful."

Okay, I'll go.

"Thanks."

She climbs a tree and mopes. She still hasn't eaten dinner, the meat in her pack is getting really suspicious, and everything in the world is deeply unfair.

She sleeps.

The spirit successfully retrieves her dog and settles back into place before she wakes up.

She rises with the sun.

"Everything is TERRIBLE."

Wishbone whines tiredly.

Well, you're still in one piece. I was honestly pretty worried you wouldn't be, before the spirit came and got me.

"Sorry."

She sighs heavily.

"I guess we're back to finding food. And a bow, my imaginary Alex is really insistent that I gotta get my hands on a bow before the next time something concerning happens. At least we have more than zero money now. Any idea where the closest settlement besides Fen's village is, Glimmer?"

I'm sorry, I don't really know.

Sigh.

"Well, the river's big enough that it might have settlements along it, but it also has prince burn victim, so following it downsteam is maybe kind of dumb. We could head upstream and you can look around and come find us if you see anything townlike?"

But what if he finds you while I'm not there? the spirit says worriedly.

"If I see any steamships I'll lay low. It'd just be super lame to starve to death because we were scared of him, y'know?"

I guess so. Okay. I'll look.

The spirit emerges, a tiny flicker of light in the air in front of Karen's face, and swirls away on the breeze.