A ll that hot afternoon Nell toiled up the numberless switchbacks, 
occasionally reaching into the bag that dangled at her waist, drawing out a 
handful of Purple's ashes and scattering them behind her like seeds. Whenever 
she stopped to rest, she could look out across the burnt desert she had just 
crossed: a tawny plain scabbed with reddish-brown volcanic rock, patches of 
aromatic greenish-gray shrubs clinging like bread mold to any parts that were 
sheltered from the eternal wind. She had hoped that when she climbed the face 
of this mountain, she would rise up above the dust, but it had followed her, 
coating her lips and her toes. When she drew a breath through her nose, it only 
stung her parched nostrils, and so she had given up trying to smell anything. 
But late in the afternoon a cool moist draft spilled down the mountain and over 
her face. She drew in a breath of it, hoping to catch some of the cold air 
before it trickled down into the desert. It smelled of evergreens.