Leaving Thanh Hoa, something in the journey began to shift. The dragon was no longer something we entered; it travelled with us. Outside the bus window, the hills rose and fell like the back of a great body moving beneath the earth, keeping pace with us as we moved north. What we had encountered in the caves had not been left behind — it flowed with us – was now a part of us. Within that movement, I felt a settling. The intensity of the previous days softened into something m