The wind changed when the ridge broke.
Not enough to howl—just enough to scrape frost across my teeth as we looked down into the hollow carved out by time and stubborn will. There it was.
My home.
It looked smaller than I remembered. But only because everything else had gotten that much bigger. War. Names. Expectations.
But the house itself hadn't changed.
The roof was thick with pine bark shingles, darkened from a year of snow and silence. Smoke didn't rise from the chimney. No one stood on the porch. But someone had cleared the path.
I narrowed my eyes.
The front steps were swept. The stack of wood under the awning was split fresh—cut clean, not by me, but by hands that cared enough to keep it from rotting.
They'd come while I was gone. The villagers. The ones who used to call me ghost or witch or nothing at all. They'd tended it anyway. Something inside of me melted at that idea.
