That night, I returned to my tent with my thoughts heavy. I turned the idea over and over, weighing the risk, and the opportunity.
I might have sat there until dawn, if not for the sudden ring of the device I had hidden in my knapsack.
The satellite phone.
I held it in my hand for a few seconds until it rang again. My hands shook as I pressed the button, the sound of static rushing into my ear.
And then—.
"Mia? …Mia, are you there?"
My husband's voice, crackling through the void of distance, filled my chest with warmth. I pressed the phone so tightly against my ear that it started to hurt.
"Yes! Hanes, I'm here!"
I sobbed as I tried to tell him everything about how I had been torn away, how I had fought to survive, how I had found a place among warriors and the clan. The words tumbled out, broken intermittently by static, but I forced them through.
"I've missed you so much," I cried.
