Iyisha sat in the corner with her knees drawn close to her chest, watching the thin gray ash scattered across the floor where wanderers had once built their fires.
Even the sight of that ordinary mess made her throat tighten because it reminded her that people had lived here before them, had laughed here, had cooked and rested and believed they would keep going, just like she and Malcolm had.
They had moved back to the same building where they had first stayed, and the familiarity of it made everything feel heavier because it carried the quiet proof that time had passed, that their journey had not been short or meaningless, and that somewhere along the road she had begun to believe that those days might continue for much longer than they actually would.
These past months had been the best years of her life.
Not the easiest.
Not the safest.
But the most alive she had ever felt.
