As the afternoon wears down into evening, the heat of the day lifts out of the rough tarmac and warps the humid air. The hard-packed dirt of the shoulder gives way within feet to rice paddies of verdant green that stretch out to the low, forested mountains away in the middle distance. There is still some ground to be covered, then, and not in a straight line. She peers up from under a wide straw brim at a sky that is the light blue of day on one horizon but already the washed out navy of twilight on the other. It was time she was moving again.