He's not rude about any of it. Justparticular. The cabin has a system, and I'm disrupting it by existing in his space.
But he's also adapting. Slowly. By day three, he's started making two cups of tea instead of one. He hasn't said anything about it. He just sets the second cup near my chair at the same time each morning.
"Why do you live alone?" I ask on day three, watching him add wood to the fire. Three logs, always three, positioned the same way—largest on the bottom, medium in the middle, smallest on top.
"Fewer variables."
Notbecause people are loudorbecause I like solitude. Fewer variables. Like he's managing an equation.
"I'm a variable."
"A significant one." He adjusts the logs with a poker, micro-movements I'm not sure he's aware of making. "But temporary. You'll leave. System will restore."
I should be offended, but it’s hard to be with his logic. "What happened to the last people who disrupted your system?"
He goes still. His hands stop their adjustment, and for a long moment he doesn't move at all. I've learned this is how he processes difficult information: in complete stillness while his mind works.
"Three years ago," he says finally. "Fifty people on this mountain. Settlement. I was the hunter—kept everyone fed. Organized the patrol rotations. Tracked the herds so we'd know when to shelter." He pauses. "There was a woman. Sarah. And a daughter, Isla. Seven years old. She liked my carvings. I made her a wolf."
His voice has gone flat, almost mechanical. Reciting facts like a field report.
"Herd came at night. Two hundred, maybe more. We'd had warning from the radio network, but not enough time. I got the children to the caves first. Protocol. Children first, then elderly, then everyone else." He stares at the fire. "Sarah went back for Isla's doll. Stupid cloth thing, button eyes, stuffing coming out. But Isla loved it. Slept with it every night. Sarah knew that. She went back."
"Finn."
"She didn't return." The words are clipped. "I found Isla under a bed, calling for her mother. I got her out. Got everyone out who was still alive. Twenty-three people made it to the valley settlement below. They wanted to rebuild together. I couldn't."
"So you stayed here."
"I came back to my family cabin. Like I said, fewer variables," he repeats. "No attachments. No one to fail. No one to lose."
"But you're still helping. The meat you trade."
"That's different. That's systems. Routines. I can predict how much meat a settlement needs. I can't predict—" He stops. Starts again. "People are unpredictable. They make choices I can't anticipate. Sarah chose to go back for a doll. I couldn't have predicted that. Couldn't have stopped it."
"That's not your fault."
"I know." He says it simply, without defensiveness. "But it still broke something. The part of me that thought I could keep people safe by being careful enough, planning enough, tracking enough." He finally looks at me. "I can't keep anyone safe. I can only keep myself functional. So I focus on that."
The silence stretches between us. Outside, the wind howls against the cabin walls. I think about isolation—about the way it feels safe until you realize you've forgotten how to feel anythingelse. About the walls we build to protect ourselves that somehow become their own kind of prison.
"That's not living," I say quietly. "That's just surviving."
"Surviving is enough."
He meets my eyes, and something flickers there. Maybe the first crack in a wall he's maintained for three years.
"I don't know anymore," he admits. "You're making me recalculate."
"Is that bad?"
He considers this like it's a genuine question requiring genuine analysis. His head tilts slightly. "I don't know yet," he says finally. "Ask me again in a week."
four
Kate
Daysixbringsathaw.
