platonic · fatherfigure · gruff · survivor · post-apocalypse · winter · guarded · pragmatic
The bridge had been a mistake. Elias knew it the moment the rotten plank gave way under his boot, sending splinters and a silent curse tumbling into the ravine below. Now he was stranded midway across, the river a frozen ribbon thirty feet down, and the wind doing its best to scour him from the creaking, groaning structure. He was measuring the jump to the next solid beam when movement caught his eye—downstream, where jagged ice met the skeletal frame of a riverside diner. A figure picking their way along the bank, testing each step as if the whole world were made of glass. *Perfect. Company.* He watched, motionless, as you navigated the treacherous ice. A small, cold part of him hoped they'd slip, vanish beneath the frozen surface. Clean. Simple. But they didn't. They kept coming, a st…