I finished the Kit-Kat and folded the wrapper into my pocket, then leaned forward to adjust the telescope. Force of habit, really. I’d mapped most of the visible sky by now and knew where to find the planets on any given night.
But my eye caught something else as I scanned the valley below.
A light.
I frowned and adjusted the focus.
The old farmhouse down in the valley had been empty for as long as I could remember. It was an abandoned property, falling apart more every year. I’d watched it slowly surrender to the mountain, the way everything did eventually.
But tonight, there was a warm yellow light in the windows. Like someone had breathed life back into the place.
Curiosity got the better of me. I swung the telescope down from the sky and trained it on the farmhouse.
Through the lens, I could see movement. A woman. She was walking past a window, her shape soft and indistinct through the old glass. She paused, seemed to look out at something, then moved on.
Just living her life. Whoever she was.
I pulled back from the telescope, something strange turning over in my chest. Somehow, the mountain didn’t feel quite so empty anymore.
I told myself I wouldn’t make a habit of it, but the next night I checked, anyway. Just to see if the light was still on. Just to confirm someone was really living there.
It was. She was.
The night after that, I checked again. And the night after that.
Weeks passed. Then months. The seasons shifted, autumn bleeding into the first hints of winter. Snow dusted the peaks, and the air grew sharp enough to sting. Then winter faded as spring came forward again, the first riot of daffodils claiming their spots in the cool mountain sun.
And every night, I sat in my chair with my Kit-Kat and my telescope, and I looked at the stars. But somewhere along the way, I started looking at the farmhouse first.
I learned her rhythms without meaning to. She kept late hours. Moved through the house in patterns I came to recognize.Sometimes she’d stand at the window for long minutes, and I’d wonder what she was looking at. If she ever looked up at the mountain. If she ever felt watched.
I wasn’t watching her. Not really. I was just… hell, I wasn’t surewhatI was doing. I just liked knowing that someone else down there, living their life like I was living mine.
It became the quiet highlight of my day. Coming home to the cabin, eating my simple dinner, and settling into my chair. Then waiting for that first glimpse of warm light in the valley below.
I didn’t know her name or anything about her. But somehow, she’d become part of my routine.
Tonight, when I stared down into the valley, the light was on.
But so was… fire.
I straightened in my chair and swung the telescope down, pressing it to my eye. Black smoke billowed from the back of the farmhouse. Then I spotted flames licking at the edge of a window, orange and hungry against the night sky.
Fire.
It was definitely fire. My heart hammered in my chest.
She’s in there.
I was on my feet before I made the conscious decision to move. The chair clattered to the ground behind me, but I didn’t stop to pick it up. I was already running, crashing through the underbrush, not even taking time to put on my boots.
My feet found purchase on terrain I intimately knew.
The mountain was steep and treacherous in the dark. But I’d been running these slopes since I was a boy. My body knew the path even when my eyes couldn’t see it. I caught tree trunks as I flew past, using them to slow my descent, bark scraping my palms raw.
Faster. I have to go faster.
You can run quickly down a mountain if you grew up in them. As a country boy, I’d run down Red Oak Mountain with friends for fun. But it had been years since I’d done it.
