Unity had decided to walk the length of New Zealand. She started in the far north, where the land narrows to a thin strip between two seas, and the beaches stretch for miles in both directions. The sand was so white it almost hurt to look at. The water was the colour of glass.

She walked south. The land changed around her. The flat farmland of the Waikato gave way to the volcanic plateau of the central North Island, where steam rose from cracks in the earth and lakes sat in ancient craters. She passed Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngāuruhoe — three volcanoes standing like sentinels against the sky.

She crossed Cook Strait by ferry and stepped onto Te Waipounamu, the South Island. Here, everything felt bigger. The Southern Alps ran the length of the island like a spine, their peaks capped with snow even in summer. On the west coast, ancient rainforests grew right down to the sea. Glaciers — rivers of ice moving so slowly you could not see them move — carved valleys out of solid rock.

Further south, the fiords of Fiordland cut deep into the land — sheer walls of rock dropping straight into dark water, waterfalls tumbling down from above. At the very bottom of the South Island, the land tapered to a point, and beyond it was only ocean — all the way to Antarctica.

"We live here," Unity said quietly, looking out across the water. "We actually live here."

New Zealand is small — about the same size as the United Kingdom or Japan. But within that small space, it contains more different kinds of landscape than almost anywhere else on Earth. That is not an accident. It is geology — the story of how our land was made, still being written today.