“Necessary enough,” he replied.
The heat built as the day wore on. Sunlight crept closer to the cave mouth, warming the stone until it began to give back whatit had taken overnight. Rygnar shifted our resting place deeper, angling me away from the draft so the swelling in my ankle stayed down.
“Let me see it again,” he said.
I extended my leg without arguing this time.
He unwrapped the cloth slowly, methodically, eyes on my skin instead of my face. The swelling had gone down a fraction. Not enough to be safe, but enough to be hopeful.
He reapplied the gel and rewrapped the ankle with firmer support.
“You’ll walk tomorrow,” he said. “Slowly.”
“I always walk slowly.”
His mouth curved faintly. “You always walk stubbornly.”
That earned a huff of reluctant laughter from me.
Midday passed in careful quiet. Not silence—the wind moved through the rocks; insects buzzed faintly somewhere beyond sight—but the kind of quiet that asked to be respected.
Once, a sound drifted up the slope, and both of us stilled at the same moment. Rygnar raised a hand. I froze where I was, breath shallow, heart loud in my ears.
He waited. Counted. Listened.
Then the tension eased from his shoulders. “Wind,” he said.
I breathed again.
He didn’t apologize for the pause. I didn’t ask him to. The interruption did its work anyway. It reminded me that rest wasn’t safety, only strategy.
Later, when the heat became too much, he led me a short distance deeper into the cave, where the air stayed cool. He showed me how to place my foot to avoid rolling the ankle again—how to use the wall for balance without scraping skin.
“Like this,” he said, demonstrating, then waited until I mirrored him.
“You teach like a medic,” I observed.
“I learned from one,” he said. “Long ago.”
In the afternoon, he went out again to check the ridges, this time farther. He told me where he would be, how long, and what to do if he did not return on time.
He came back early.
No tracks. No smoke. No voices.
As dusk approached, the light shifted from white to gold, then faded toward gray. Rygnar arranged our sleeping places without comment, positioning himself closer to the cave mouth, his body a quiet barrier between me and the world outside.
I watched him do it and realized he hadn’t once asked where I preferred to sleep.
He already knew.
“Why here?” I asked, nodding toward his place.
“Because if something comes,” he said evenly, “it will come for me first.”
That sat heavy in my chest.
When the canister burned low and the cave settled into evening, I tended the shallow cut on his arm. He watched me with the same still attention he had given my ankle, as if the act itself mattered more than the wound.
