Food was the second problem. I lived on the last of the salted pork I’d been able to grab and hard biscuits from my father’s old satchel. The kind of biscuits that could survive any war, including the one happening inside my chest.
For a week, I became a ghost at the edge of Redemption. The town went on without me, warm windows glowing in the distance like a different universe. I moved the flock across sparse frozen grasses by day and huddled under the overhang by night, always listening, always alert.
On the eighth day, while gathering fallen branches for a small smoky fire, I saw a figure approaching.
He moved like an old tree deciding to walk.
Mr. Abernathy, the blacksmith.
He was built from years of work. Hands like cured leather. Face carved from oak. He didn’t smile. He didn’t rush. He stopped a dozen feet away and simply looked.
At my pathetic camp.
At the shivering sheep.
At the desperation I was trying to hide behind stubbornness.
He didn’t offer condolences. He didn’t say “poor girl” like the town would.
