El spends her last day at home with her mother, getting her hair cut, being fed extremely buttery foods for maximum last minute calories to mass. She has her outfits and her crystals and her crochet hook and all that jazz in a series of Tesco bags. Her mum saved some of the single-use ones when they started switching to the thicker kind, specifically for this purpose. The crystals take most of her weight allowance but it's worth it.

El sleeps. Her mum sits beside her, singing songs to keep her steady and safe once she gets where she's going, and keeping watch, all night long. Her mum wakes her at thirty minutes to six so she can go to the bathroom, step on the borrowed scale, pick up an extra toothbrush out of the nice-to-have pile.

It's too early in the morning for El to see one last sunrise. (They watched the sunset, the night before, like it might be the last time. It might.) They sit out front of the yurt, looking at the pre-dawn sky.

"'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we will not be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right," sings El's mum.

At six a.m. sharp, El, bags in her lap, exits the valley of love and delight.