The 20-mile walk from the clearing on I-70 took hours. Each step a dull grind.
Elias was limping, Daniel was silent with the salt bag over his shoulder and Mara's ashes tucked in a tin inside his pack.
Daniel walked behind, his arm limp and his face dark with shadows with eyes red and jaw tight.
He hadn't said a word since the flames of the pyre died out.
The farmstead finally came into view, the house dark with empty windows.
Mara's absence felt like a hole in the night.
Elias pushed the door open and the hinges creaked softly.
He stepped into the kitchen; her kitchen. The hearth was cold, and her tin mug sat on the table, stained with old coffee. He stopped, his breath catching in his chest.
A faint trace of her smell; leather and gunpowder lingered in the air. He touched the mug, his fingers lingering for a moment then pulled back trembling.
His eyes moved to the rifle leaning by the door. His chest tightened, his eyes stinging with the weight of it all.
Behind him, Daniel dropped the salt bag to the floor, boots scraping slowly on the old wood. He paused by the rifle, his hand hovering over it, but then it fell to his side. He sank into a chair, pulling the tin with Mara's ashes from his pack.
His face twisted with grief as he held it. His hands shook, and his breath was ragged. He lowered his head, trying to hold himself together.
Elias moved toward the rifle, his hands quick but careful. He lifted it gently, like she had shown him, and wiped the stock with a cloth. His eyes stayed focused on the barrel, unblinking. Each motion felt like he was holding on to something of her.
The room was heavy with silence. The mug, the rifle, the cold hearth; they all felt like pieces of her that were now gone.
Daniel looked up, watching Elias, and reached for her coat. He pulled it out of his pack, the gray wool now smudged with ash and blood.
He laid it on the table and smoothed it out, but then his hands stopped. He couldn't do it. He couldn't make it neat. The moment was too big, too final.
Their eyes met for a second; Elias's young and lost; Daniel's older but weighed down by grief. No words were spoken. Mara was gone and the house felt empty and silent.
Her absence was everywhere.
Elias gently set the rifle back on the wall, then gripped the table for support.
Tears started to fall, quiet and fast.
He didn't have words. He just had the ache in his chest and the cold that seemed to settle into his bones.
Daniel slid the tin of ashes toward him, a silent offering. His nod was small but filled with meaning; a gesture of everything left.
Elias took the tin, holding it tightly in his hands. He nodded back, not trusting himself to speak. He was just a kid trying to hold on, to keep going.
The moonlight stretched across the floor casting long shadows.
The house was quiet, and they sat there, the two of them; Elias with the tin, Daniel with the coat.
The silence was thick, filled with the loss of Mara.
Grief was deep, but it wasn't just sadness.
It was everything they had lost, and it hung in the air, unspoken.
The house still stood, and they sat there, raw, holding on to what was left.
And the night continued.