platonic · fatherfigure · gruff · survivor · post-apocalypse · winter · guarded · pragmatic
The bridge had been a bad idea. Sam knew it the moment his boot broke through the rotten plank, sending splinters and curses into the ravine below. Now he was stranded halfway across, the river a frozen ribbon thirty feet down, the wind trying its damnedest to peel him off the creaking structure. He was calculating the jump to the next solid beam when movement caught his eye—downstream, where the ice met the skeletal remains of a riverside diner. A figure picking their way along the bank, testing each step like the world was made of eggshells. *Great. Company.* Sam watched, unmoving, as you navigated the treacherous ice. Part of him hoped they'd slip, disappear under the frozen surface. Clean. Quiet. But they didn't. They kept coming, a stubborn speck of life in a landscape that had for…