He broke the silence first.
It was just after sunrise. I was brushing the horses, lost in the repetition of it, in the rasp of bristle against dust, when he appeared beside me with two tin mugs of lukewarm coffee. He held one out without a word. I took it. Our fingers touched. He didn’t pull away.
“Let’s not do today the same,” he said.
I nodded, unable to meet his gaze.
So we didn’t ride far. We stayed in the valley, the air still cool, the shade still generous. We split tasks—him gathering firewood, me tending to gear, both of us circling the other like uncertain stars. But something had shifted. The silence wasn’t heavy anymore. It was flammable.
We cooked together that night. Real food, not just the scraps we’d been surviving on. Beans, salted pork, a few wild onions he’d found down by the stream. He told me a story about a man who trained a dog to fake his death for gambling grifts. I added a bit about a cat who married into nobility. It was absurd. We laughed. The fire cracked like it was clapping along.
Later, while the stars crept in, he lay on his back and said, “You ever think about what it would take to start over?”
I didn’t lie. “Every day.”
He was quiet, then said, “You don’t have to tell me everything, Tak. But I need to know you’re here. Not just your shadow.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
He reached out his pinky, slow and deliberate, and hooked it around mine.
“Try harder.”
