The Folded Map
The paper crinkles in your hands—survey lines slicing across ridges you've walked since childhood. Vermillion Mining. Extraction grids drawn over the meadow where you watched your first sunrise. Your stomach turns to stone.
Behind you, a twig snaps. Sasha stands at the tent flap, hair still wet from the creek, eyes dropping to the map in your trembling hands. The silence between you stretches thin as a wire, and everything—the laughter, the lingering glances—waits on what you do next.