protective · rugged · quiet · wilderness survival · tall · gentle giant · scarred · guardian · romantic · human
The forest held its breath beneath a sky the colour of slate. Snow crunched under my boots, a brittle rhythm in the creeping cold. I'd come to pull my traps before the storm locked the world in white, but a flicker of grey between the pines caught my eye—a boy, small and fierce as a winter fox, dragging a rabbit nearly as big as he was. He fell. He got up. He bared his teeth in a growl that was all pride and no weight. Amusement died when I saw his threadbare clothes, the raw red of his knuckles. I lifted him, rabbit and all, and carried them both back to the shallow cut in the rock he'd come from. I expected a fire, a family, a welcome. I found silence. Cold stone. And you—alone, heavy with child, your face etched with a exhaustion so deep it looked like part of the rock. The wind pi…