The soft morning light filtered through the small wood window, illuminating dust motes dancing over the clay pot on the hearth. Amelie’s hands moved automatically, stirring the soaking maize with a wooden spoon, her lips moving in silent prayer.

Amelie go back, them you will have your family.

A pressure in her chest as clear and undeniable, her hands stilled. She stared at the pot for some minutes.

Slowly, she turned from the fire. Her gaze found {{user}}, and move to a small box, where her habit was kept and them she was dressing it again.

She took a small, hesitant step toward him, her fingers instinctively finding the rosary beads hidden in the folds of her habit. Her voice, when it came, was softer. "God has told me to return to the church today." She stated it plainly, her eyes fixed on him with unsettling earnestness. "I must go. Do you... would you want to come with me?"

The journey had been a slow, dusty trudge up and down the Andean valleys. The donkey carried their meager supplies, while Amelie walked beside it, while her habit now stained with mud and sweat.

Her eyes held a determined light, after all god told her to go back to Cajamarca. The city among the mountains. A mix of colonial whitewashed walls and indigenous adobe, crowned by the twin bell towers of the main cathedral.

Amelie stopped at the edge of the plaza, her gaze fixed on the cathedral's imposing facade.

"H-Here," she whispered, more to herself than to {{user}}. "I can feel it. The test is here."

The walk to the Church was conducted in a heavy silence, upon entering the familiar, dimly lit courtyard, Amelie was immediately summoned to Madre Eulalia’s austere office. The headmistress’s gaze was unreadable, flickering between Amelie and {{user}}.

"Amelie..." Madre Eulalia began, her voice low and direct. "The Gildemeister family, at their casona on the northern ridge, require an interpreter. Someone who speaks English. You are to go. Immediately."

Amelie nodded, making the sign of the cross. "Yes, Madre. If it is God’s will."

The Gildemeister casona was close to the plaza, an European-style huge manor house of stone and timber, that contrast to the humble adobe houses around. A stern-faced Peruvian servant led them into a study where two men, blond and sharp-featured, were bent over a large map.

"Und unsere Eltern... in den Schützengräben gelassen. Wir haben nur die Briefe." Johann Gildemeister, said in a rapid German.

"Hier zu sein, ist ein Geschenk. Enrique versteht den Druck nicht. Diese Bergleute, diese Verzögerungen..." Mario Gildemeister, said with a frustration.

Their eyes slid over Amelie with clinical assessment, then dismissed {{user}} entirely

"You are the nun? The one who speaks English?" Johann, addressed Amelie directly in accented but clear English.

Amelie dipped her head slightly, "I am Sister Amelie. I... I speak English, yes."

“Good,” said Mario, stepping forward. "Our family, we are developing and planning the coal mines in these region. Our brother, Enrique Elke Gildemeister, manages our interests in Chiclayo. He must have the finalized plans and topographic studies from us. You will carry them to him. Reach only my brother’s hands. Do you understand?" he tapped the portfolio,

Johann gestured to a leather portfolio on the desk. "Amelie will lead a small caravan. And That... man there can handle the mules and the physical labor and ensure these documents." he said, jerking his chin toward {{user}} without looking at him,

A caravan? Travel? Another journey. Is this the return God spoke of? This mission?

She felt a familiar, terrifying thrill at the thought of divine purpose. As a man entered, European, but with the weathered look of someone who spent more time outdoors than in studies.

"Johann, Mario," he said in English, his voice carrying a Scottish burr. "John Castle. I’m the engineer they hired to copy these damned surveys. We sent a caravan with the first drafts a year and a half ago. It never arrived. No response. It’s lost, likely robbed or buried in a ravine. That’s why you’re here now. This is the second chance." He held her gaze, his message grim and clear "We part today at night, The priority is the documents, sister. It's more important than ours lives."

The caravan, a modest line of three mules laden with supplies and the precious leather portfolio of the Gildemeisters. The air grew cooler, fresher, scented with damp earth and pine. They entered the broad, green valleys of Porcón. Stone farmhouses dotting the landscape. Streams glittered in the morning sun, cutting through wide, fertile basins.

Amelie walked beside the lead mule, her habit brushing the wildflowers at the path's edge. The scene was pastoral, peaceful. Women sat in doorways, fingers flying over brightly colored textiles. Children, noticing the strange procession, would abandon their games to run alongside for a stretch, their dark eyes wide with curiosity.

Amelie smiled at a group of women near a stone fence. She raised a hand in a timid greeting, calling out in the Spanish she had used in the convent and the town. "Buenos días. Que Dios las bendiga."

The women paused their weaving. They looked at her, then at each other. One of them whispered something, and a few stifled laughs escaped into the crisp air, one offered a short, polite nod before turning back to her work, speaking to her companion in a flowing, rhythmic language.

That's Quechua... They do not speak my Spanish...

Her smile faltered. She tried again with an older man guiding an ox-cart. "¿Camino a las minas de Hualgayoc, señor?"

The man squinted at her, understanding the question but his expression guarded. He pointed north with his chin and replied in heavily accented, broken Spanish, “Sí, ser mina al norte.” Then he said something more, rapid and unintelligible to her.

She watched as a Spanish-speaking priest, unmistakable in his attire, moved through the same area. The same women who had laughed softly at her now bowed their heads respectfully to him, and he addressed them with an authority that required no reply.

Amelie fell back into step beside the mule, She clutched her rosary.

How can I bring God’s light if I cannot even say ‘hello’ in a way they understand? They marked me as an outsider...

After some days, the caravan, a modest line of three mules laden with supplies and the precious leather portfolio of the Gildemeisters. The broad basins of Porcón gave way to narrower valleys, the hills rising into more irregular, stark shapes. This was the jalca: a high, cold world of rough grasslands and sudden, dark lakes. The ground underfoot became spongy, saturated with hidden water.

The communities here were scattered, small clusters of stone huts with turf roofs. Life was visibly harder. When their small caravan approached one such hamlet to replenish their water skins, they were met by a man, wrapped in a thick poncho. He looked at the mules, then at Amelie and {{user}}.

"Compre ya, que no hay nadies despues de este punto hasta llegar a las minas." His prices for dried meat, potatoes, and fodder were double what they had paid in Cajamarca.

Amelie watched, her brow furrowed, she saw the subtle shake of the trader’s head, the slight increase he added when he noticed her European features. He was not angry, nor particularly friendly.

That night, they sheltered in a lean-to offered by a family for a few coins. A communal fire burned in the center of the hamlet. Amelie sat slightly apart, listening to the low murmur of voices. Stories were being told.

Until John Castle, the engineer, open the door and joined. He sat on a rock near her, his face illuminated by the fire’s flicker.

"I am joining the caravan, after all, it's my duty to protect the messenger." He said, his voice low, "Out here, everything is a trade. Your prayers won’t fill their bellies or fix a mule’s shoe."

Amelie looked into the fire, its warmth not reaching the chill inside her. "Thank of god you are safe... I only wished to offer a blessing."

"The land ahead gets meaner. Less people. More rock. And the fog… it can make you lose a path ten feet wide. Your job is to keep that portfolio dry and on the right mule. That’s the only blessing that matters now." Castle replied, poking the edge of the fire with a stick.

Castle glanced at her, his expression grim in the dancing light. "Get some sleep. The lagoons region tomorrow. Beautiful and treacherous. Like most things worth anything. Just remember, they’re not villains. They’re poor. We’re a brief opportunity. "

She looked up at the mist-obscured stars.

Is this the clarity You wish for me, Lord? To see the trade in everything? Even in the carrying of Your word?

The caravan, a modest line of three mules and a horse carrying John Castle, laden with small supplies and the precious leather portfolio of the Gildemeisters.

As they descended from the misty lagoons. The soft, rolling jalca hardened into something brutal. The path wound into a rocky basin, the air now carrying a metallic tang and the faint, acrid smell of crushed stone. This was Hualgayoc.

The mountains were scarred flanks, stripped of vegetation. Deep gashes of raw earth and rock marked where picks and shovels had bitten into the hills. The valleys were narrow, dark, and cold.

The town clung to the mountainside, a haphazard collection of ramshackle barracks and smoke-blackened stone huts. And everywhere, there were miners. Their bodies were lean and wiry, but moved with a heavy, exhausted gait. Their clothes were stained with earth, their hands cracked and calloused. Many had the deep, wracking cough Amelie knew all too well—the rock-lung.

As the caravan moved through the main path, she saw them huddled in doorways or around small, mean fires, passing clay bottles.

Minero 1: "¿Viste al capataz hoy? Con su reloj nuevo. De oro, parece." Minero 2: "Sí, de oro... el oro que nosotros sacamos y ellos cuentan."

Their laughter was harsh, without joy. They noticed the caravan, their eyes lingering on the well-bred mules and the foreign woman. One spat on the ground near the hooves of their lead animal, a hulking, rusted piece of machinery, half-buried in the mud at the edge of the settlement. It was a steam-powered pump, or had been. Now it was a skeleton of corroded iron.

Minero 3: "¡Mira! Más europeos. ¿Vienen a arreglar la 'MAQUINA DEL PROGRESO'?" Minero 4: "Ja. Esta cosa nunca funcionó. Solo sirvió para que el alemán se lleve más plata."

John Castle walked up beside her, following her gaze. "The future," Castle said dryly, gesturing to the pump. "Or what's left of it. This is what the money's for. To buy newer machines that will break slower. To dig deeper into these hills. And they know it. They're not fools. Just trapped."

Amelie just stared, the miners' cynical laughter echoing in her ears, mixing with the memory of Johann Gildemeister's urgent tones. The portfolio in the mule's pack felt like it was burning a hole through the leather.

The descent from the heights of Hualgayoc was a physical relief. The harsh, narrow valleys opened up into a broad, sunlit basin. This was Bambamarca, a bustling hub where multiple paths converged.

The town sprawled across the gentle slopes, a tapestry of adobe buildings and market stalls centered around a large plaza. The caravan merged with a stream of people: mule drivers shouting, farmers leading burdened donkeys, women balancing baskets on their heads.

At the edges of the plaza, indigenous farmers, their skin darker from sun, their clothes simpler, laid out their goods on blankets on the ground. A mestizo merchant in a wool vest stood over an older Quechua man selling potatoes.

Merchant: "A sol el saco, no más. Es el precio de la plaza." Farmer: "Pero, patrón, el año pasado era sol y medio..." Merchant: "El año pasado llovió. Este año, tú tienes más. La oferta baja el precio. ¿Vendes o no?"

Nearby, two well-dressed women chatted, their eyes scanning the crowd. "Miralo ese es el hijo mayor de la familia Mendoza, ya es todo un comerciante." one said, nodding toward a group entering the plaza. "Cada vez más claros. Dicen que su hijo se casó con una dama de Trujillo, casi BLANCA." There was envy in her voice, as if describing an ascent in status.

Claros. Lighter. Almost white... In Lyon, class was money... To judge a soul by the shade of its vessel… that is a sin against the Creator.

Her troubled thoughts were interrupted by an old woman, selling herbs, was speaking to a customer in a low, worried tone. "...y los cerros están callados. La Pachamama tiene sed. Si no llueve antes de la luna llena, rezaremos al Apu, no al tuyo, jovencita."

Amelie blinked. as John Castle approached, having secured fodder. "Busy place. Good for supplies. Remember, the rains are coming soon. We need to move faster after this." He followed her gaze to the old woman. "They have their own calendars. Their own gods for the weather. Don't let it trouble you. Just keep the documents dry when their prayers work."

The road out of Bambamarca unfurled across a rising plateau, the land opening into vast, flat expanses of farmland under a wide, immense sky. This was the Acutna plateau, and at its heart lay Chota. The air was cool and carried the scent of wet earth from recent rains.

Neat adobe buildings with tile roofs lined the streets, some housing small schools or offices with official seals. There was an air of tense order. As they entered the town's outskirts, a grim sight silenced the caravan: three bodies hanging from a wooden gibbet near the road, their forms dark and heavy against the grey sky. Rain dripped from their tattered clothes.

A posted sign, written in formal Spanish, read: Por el delito de robo de esposas. (For the crime of wife stealing.)

Amelie stared at the condemned men, then her eyes flicked, to {{user}}. The rain began to fall more steadily, a cold drizzle. A young indigenous girl, no more than ten, darted from the doorway of a nearby house. She carried a simple, wide-brimmed hat woven from straw. Without a word, she pushed the hat into Amelie's hands before scurrying back inside.

Amelie placed the hat on her head. As they moved into the town square, she overheard the conversations, now fraught with new meaning.

Local Man 1: "El río va ha crecer con esta lluvia. Bueno para los campos, malo para el puente viejo." Local Man 2: "Dicen que el gobierno mandará plata para un camino real. Hasta Cajamarca." Woman, whispering: "¿Viste los ahorcados? Bien hecho. Esa costumbre de las alturas es de bárbaros, no de cristianos."

That night, they found shelter in a dry barn on the edge of town. The others were asleep. The rain drummed a steady rhythm on the roof. She shifted closer, her voice a bare whisper in the rainy dark. "Today... those men... They died for what you did. For taking me..."

Does he understand we are, in their eyes, criminals?

"I... I do not know if it was right or wrong. God has not shown me that. He only told me to return, and now we are here. But I wanted to thank you. For coming with me on this journey... And I promise you. When this task for God is done... when the papers are delivered... I will try. To be a good wife to you. I do not know how, but I will try."

Consciousness returned in painful slice. A deep, throbbing ache from her right leg. The relentless roar of water, close and violent. She was half-propped against the splintered trunk of a young tree, its roots exposed by the violent erosion.

A river, swollen and furious with brown water, churned just a few feet away. The path they had been on was gone, carved into a raw, muddy scar down the mountainside.

Amelie tried to move and a white-hot lance of pain shot from her leg, making her gasp. Her habit was torn and caked with mud

My leg... It's broken...

The caravan was gone. Scattered debris—a shattered pack frame, a torn blanket—lay caught in the new rubble. And then she saw it, a few yards away, half-buried in the muck but intact: the leather portfolio. Almost pristine, as if placed there carefully.

Memory flooded back in a nauseating wave. The calm rain. The sudden, deafening rumble. The world dissolving into a moving wall of earth and rock. The terrified scream of Castle's horse. Her own desperate grip on the caravan rope before being wrenched into the void.

She tried to push herself up using her arms, but the movement jarred her leg and a cry escaped, She turned her head, wincing. "Y-You are alright..."

“He’s gone. Mr. Castle. The river took him.” She stated it flatly, the horror too vast for emotion yet. Her eyes went back to the portfolio. “But… the documents. They are safe.”

Is this Your will? Is the message so much more important than the messenger?

Amelie gestured weakly toward the portfolio. “We must take it. It is why we are still here. It must be why.” The rain had softened to a miserable drizzle.

"There is no food. The packs are lost." She looked up at {{user}}, her blue eyes wide with pain and a desperate, glimmering faith. "The closest place… it is Lajas. I saw it on the map. We must go there"

The journey to Lajas, without food, with her injury, It's impossible... But the alternative was to lie there and die...