Some time has passed, now.  It might be an hour, or two hours; the Sun's higher, but Pilar has been deliberately not thinking about angles and seasons and what that means for how much time has probably passed.

Her feet grew sore, and her legs, after some of that time; but Pilar cast Lesser Restoration on herself when she noticed herself beginning to slow, and continued.

A hill stands before her, and Pilar deliberately goes up it, so she can check that her sun-bearing is correct and hasn't taken her away from the coastline she's trying to parallel towards Ostenso.

The coastline looks more distant, to her left.  But to Pilar's right there's what looks like an unpaved road, with wheel-ruts to show that carters travel along it; a road like that ought to be bearing toward Ostenso, Pilar thinks.

And if not, or if she's about to get lost or late for anything important, Snack Service can stop her about it - right?

(Silence.)

Pilar angles towards the road.  It's not just that Pilar is less delighted, now, by the sparkling leaf-dew dampening her - she cast Endure Elements on herself, when that started to be true - but that it's been four months since the last time she had a genuinely normal conversation with anybody.

The road is smoothed dirt, unstoned and unpebbled, and still much easier to walk over than untamed forest ground.  One obtains twice the speed, for half the effort, walking on almost any road at all.

Pilar's mind goes automatically to Asmodia's patient efforts to test the usability for road-surfacing of common materials that would be easily found nearby in forests or in plains; dampened, Prestidigitated in various ways, with heavy rollers run over them after the dampening and Prestidigation.  Looking for a surface that would last and shed water, once solidified.  Looking for a way to make lasting roads, cheaply, with one 1st-circle cleric to conjure water and a handful of wizard apprentices to Prestidigitate, lay roads almost as fast as a heavy roller could roll.  Roads firm enough that Keltham's 'tricycles' could be invented and set loose on them...

...would Asmodia have saved tens of thousands of Chelish lives over the next year, as Snack Service did claim, through some other use that Asmodia had in a war with Osirion, or by her influencing Keltham somehow?

Or is roadmaking just that important, that quickly?

...probably roadmaking is just that important.  Too many people walking them, too many goods moving across them.  Why did they mock Asmodia?  What were they thinking?  There can't be many more important matters than roads.

Only, what good does it even do, to Cheliax, to know how to make cheap roads?  If many people have to be taught the knowledge, to make many roads cheaply, it can't be kept from Osirion, from other countries' spies.

It wouldn't have helped Cheliax.  Cheliax wouldn't have gained any advantage.

It would only have helped the Chelish people.

Pilar closes her eyes, and walks blind, for a minute, along a straighter portion of the path.

She doesn't need to think about such things, right now.  Pilar commanded her so.

The road presents Pilar with her first carter, traveling the opposite way from Pilar; a woman with a narrow cloth-covered cart resting on wide wheels, drawn by a single ox.

By the time the cart has drawn close enough that the woman's expression is readable, her face is very guarded.  She has had time to see Pilar, by then, of course, and maybe wonder to herself what an Ostenso wizard-apprentice is doing on this road from Ostenso to who-knows-where.

(Pilar never did get herself into the habit of wearing clothes other than the uniform of Ostenso's wizard academy.  It was something of an unofficial uniform among the Old Guard of Project Lawful, and an honorable one, for that time.  Egorian has learned to fear it, not least because of Pilar herself, and that city will have odd reflexes if some innocent Ostenso student somehow ends up visiting there.)

"Am I on the road to Ostenso?" Pilar calls to her, once they're in easy hearing range.

"Who's asking?"

Pilar Pineda of Project Lawful, the Cake Girl, Cheliax's Secret Weapon and Terror of Lastwall...

...that's probably not going to help here, is it.

"Jacme, of Ostenso's wizard academy.  Don't ask me why I'm here, or why I don't know if I'm on the right road.  It's a long story, a private story, and you're welcome and encouraged to report on this event to any authority you deem appropriate."

The woman measures Pilar as she passes, not slowing down her cart at all; showing no fear, though even a wizard apprentice is a dangerous creature to a commoner if it comes to battle.

"You're on the right road," she says in a tired voice, and passes on without saying aught else.

Pilar, feeling sad and not really knowing why, trudges on.

After a couple of minutes, she sighs, and reaches up to her hair to Prestidigitate it a more ordinary color.

There just aren't that many people who want to draw that particular attention to themselves.  'Pink-haired young woman in Ostenso academy uniform' is too identifying, even if you don't call yourself 'Pilar'.

Some time later, several other carters have passed Pilar going the other direction from her, all with similar guarded expressions, and Pilar hasn't met a single cart going her own way.

Pilar spends several embarrassing minutes speculating about whether carters are starting out from Ostenso at dawn, but carters who started out at dawn from wherever this road's other end goes, are too far away to have caught up to her yet.

Then Pilar actually visualizes the road in her mind, as though it were a spell she was analyzing.  She realizes that obviously if Pilar is walking quickly in one direction, it's like the carters are moving very quickly in the opposite direction, relative to her; while carters moving in her own direction, are traveling more slowly, relative to her.

Pilar slows down, then, and walks at a more relaxed pace, to give the carters behind herself time to catch up.

It's not too long afterward that Pilar hears a clopping sound approaching from behind herself.

This cart is moving at a fair pace (as one might expect, on priors, would be overrepresented in carts overtaking Pilar); it's drawn by two horses, instead of a single ox.  The cart they draw is draped with hides, washed but neither cured nor tanned, and bears also a barrel overfull with fish.  The man who steers the cart is large, muscular, bears a short sword at his hip; hides like these are more valuable by the pound than produce.

"Hail the road," Pilar calls to the carter, as he draws nearer her.  "Have you place for a traveler to Ostenso?"

"No.  You'd tire the horses and my cargo is perishable."

"That means the price is higher, not that you don't have a place available," Pilar says back, before she quite remembers that not everyone thinks as ilani do.

"Ha.  Sure.  If you're willing to spend two silver on it, I'd let you ride up here until I judge the horses are slowing or breathing heavier.  Then you're back on the road, but you'd have a rest of it, anyways."

Money in that amount means nothing to her, anymore.  "Accepted."

It's only then that Pilar realizes, just like a silly princess in a story, that most of her money is in platinum - Project Lawful in the old days didn't want Keltham seeing that Chelish paper currency was backed in souls on the markets of Dis.  Even the paper currency she does have isn't in denominations smaller than five gold.

She reaches into her robes and finds a gold piece, as is, literally, the least valuable exchangeable thing she's carrying.

Pilar waits until she's already on the cart to hand it over and ask him if he's got change.

He's already wary and blank, and if this question produces any increase in wariness, it's not noticeable.

Suppose he doesn't have change.  What then, hm?

"Maybe I've been hanging out too much with the wrong crowd, these last four months.  But I can't help but think that the obvious thing to do would be for both of us to generate numbers between one and five, and if they're the same, you keep the gold piece, and otherwise, you give it back.  One chance in five of a gold piece is equivalent to two silver."

That gets a short bark of laughter from him.  "I ain't matching wits with no wizard."