For a long time the valley lived in one endless evening. Now it keeps its own hours: a few minutes of night, a slow golden sunrise, a long bright day, and dusk again.
The sun only finds what the ember has reached. Woken places get their colours back in full, their windows go quiet and long shadows stretch across the squares. The places still asleep get the daylight too, but it finds them grey and lifeless, so you can tell at a glance where the line still has work to do. And the mist over the land not yet open doesn't care what time it is.
The trains have learned to travel light. An engine now sets out with just its tender, and the wagons a job needs form behind it where it loads, out of ember glass: an ember wagon for an Ember, stake wagons for logs, a coach for passengers. Once the load is delivered, the empty wagons fade away. The logs themselves arrive one at a time and settle into a little pyramid on the wagon.
People travel now, too. From Roots and Roofs on, villagers wait on the town platforms under a paper tag that says where they are headed. Fetch them in the luggage coach, and at the other end they step off and stroll into town.
