Day 46 — Morning

Frost melted off the roof today. Sunlight spilled through the cracks. For the first time in months, she smiled. Not the brittle kind—the real one.

The flowers around the memorial are blooming. She calls them resurrection blooms. Says they only grow after fire.

We fixed the roof, patched the fence, cleared a patch of land near the creek. For a while, it felt like we were building something again.

Day 46 — Afternoon

She wanted a day off. “Just us,” she said. “A day that isn’t about surviving.”

We packed peaches, bread, a bit of smoked meat, and a couple of beers that hadn’t gone flat yet. Climbed the hill behind the cabin. From up there the valley looked whole. Green, endless, untouched.

“Do you ever think,” she asked, “that maybe everything broken still wants to heal?”

I told her maybe that’s what we were doing—healing, piece by piece.

She smiled. “Then maybe we’re not broken anymore.”

Day 46 — Evening

It was our anniversary. I went back to the cabin to fetch something special—a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23 I’d scavenged months ago. Hid it under a floorboard, waiting for a day that felt right.

As I lifted the board, I heard it—a low sound, deep and alive. Not thunder. Something heavier. The walls rattled.

I stepped outside and saw it crest the ridge: wings wide as a building, hide glowing with green cracks that pulsed like veins of fire. The air shuddered around it.

For one stupid moment I thought it was a plane.

Then it screamed.

The sky poured open. A mist—green, glittering—fell from its body like poison rain. I looked toward the hill. She was still there, laughing, the wind in her hair.

I screamed her name.

She turned. The dust reached her first.