The seasons turned with a gentle, steady rhythm that we had nearly forgotten was possible. Spring draped the valley in blossoms so thick the air felt sweet enough to drink. Summer gilded the fields in gold and filled the orchards with fruit heavy and dark with juice. Autumn painted the forests in fire and amber, and winter brought soft, silent snows that blanketed the land in gleaming white rather than gloom. The sun rose each morning without fail, spilling warmth over waking roofs and mist-shrouded hills, and the stars blazed clear and sharp each night, as if the heavens themselves were celebrating the end of endless dark.
Yet even in this brightest of times, I learned something important: light does not erase the past—it simply gives us the strength to walk through it.
It began on a qu
