Ariane:
We returned blood-soaked and weary boned.
Each of us was a type of tired I hadn't known existed, a tired that doesn't live in the muscles, but in the marrow, in the soul, where our grief had carved out hollow rooms and its silence lingered like a ghost. Even the air in the war camp sagged beneath that weight of it, pressing damp and heavy against our skin.
No one spoke—not at first, not outside of groans of pain and growls of exhaustion.
Those who had lived, the survivors, moved like shadows between the tents, whispering without words.
The wounded slept as healers tended their wounds.
The dying had already whispered their last goodbyes, the evidence of those whispers still burning on the mountain ridge, the pyres still smoldering, their embers riding the wind like secrets l
