He shrugged—another grunt, but softer this time—and she reached into her backpack. Not for food. Not for clothes. For a battered pencil roll and a tin full of odds and ends: scraps of metal, wire, fabric, small smooth stones, a twist of copper.
He blinked. “What is that?”
“My art kit,” she said, spreading everything out like a miniature treasure hoard. “I do mixed-media sculpture. Found objects. Things with texture. Things people throw away.”
Mixed what?
She held up a shard of brushed metal and a tiny bit of driftwood. “I build pieces that blend organic and industrial elements. Chaos and structure. It’s weird, but it’s mine.”
He had never understood humans’ need to explain themselves, but the soft fondness in her voice made something warm kick behind his ribs.
“And what are you making?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Her smile widened, brighter than the fire. “A little sculpture of the way the storm felt. Not the scary part. The part where it was quiet. And beautiful.” She paused, glancing at him shyly. “And safe.”
Safe. Around a troll. He kept his face neutral, but the word burrowed deep.
She bent over her small pieces, hands moving delicately. Gunnar returned to his carving—slow, practiced strokes shaping the rough block. Even so, he felt her watching him again.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“A bird.”
“Oh!” Her eyes lit. “Why a bird?”
He ran a thumb along the wood grain. “The wood wants to be one.”
She blinked. “The wood wants to be one?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “You listen. You feel where the lines are, where the curves lie beneath the surface. The shape is already inside.” He tapped the block. “I just let it out.”
Wren stared at him like he’d just revealed a secret doorway to another world. “That’s beautiful.”
He snorted. “It is just wood.”
“No,” she said gently. “It’s art.”
Art. He’d never used that word for what he did. His hands simply needed to make things the way lungs needed air.
She settled beside him, close enough that her knee brushed his thigh. Warm. Soft. Familiar already in a way that terrified him.
But they worked. Quietly. Together.
His knife whispered through wood. Her metal clinked and bent. The fire crackled. Their breaths mingled in the stillness, and Gunnar realized—slowly, painfully—that the cave felt different now. Less like a den built for one. More like… more like something shared.
She laughed suddenly, soft and delighted, holding up her sculpture: a twisting form of wood, wire, and a shard of silver, shaped like the curve of a wind-gust.
She looked proud. She looked happy.
Happy to be here.
The realization hit him like a blow. She could be content in this cave. She could wake here, work here, smile here. With him.
Hope—dangerous, bright, reckless—rose inside him, swelling against his ribs.
He forced his gaze back to the carving, throat thick.
She could stay. She mightchooseto stay.
