Seven weeks.
Seven versions of the same ending, each one stitched with a different excuse. The air is too thin. The nights are too quiet. I didn’t know you meant… all of this. Some cried. Some yelled. One spat near his boots like she could poison the ground and blame him for the taste.
This one hadn’t even offered a goodbye. She climbed into Old Pete’s wagon like she’d been climbing out of a bad dream, eyes fixed on “civilization” the way starving people looked at bread.
Daniel didn’t call after her.
He didn’t ask her to stay.
He didn’t do anything dramatic, because the mountain didn’t reward dramatics. It rewarded only two things: work, and endurance.
He closed the door, slid the thick wooden bolt into place, and leaned his back against the logs he’d set with his own hands. For a moment he let his eyes shut. A tired heaviness sat behind his ribs, not sharp enough to count as pain anymore, just… weight. Like a wet coat you couldn’t quite take off.
He ran rough palms over his face and pushed his dark hair back. Thirty-two. Not old, not young. Old enough to know how to stitch a cut in his own thigh without flinching. Young enough to still get surprised by loneliness when it came at him sideways.
