Ethan propped his elbow on his knee, eyes fixed on the flames quietly flickering from the freshly revived embers. But his mind was no longer focused on the way the smoke spiraled upward, it was on something that had slipped into camp following Stella’s group. Not a person. Not a sound. A change, intangible, like the cold from the forest had been carried in along with the two wild chickens.
He held that posture for a long while, long enough for those around him to be unsure what he was thinking, and too uncertain to ask.
Then he stood up, without a word to anyone, and stepped beyond the fire circle, heading to the patch of grass behind the shelter where he’d left the charcoal map unfinished from a few days before.
Stella watched him go. She didn’t call out, but her eyes followed each ste
