Whitefish River running through the parking lot, he chased me and he wouldn't stop

She took what he said—things she would try on herself—solid advice that could be taken into future account when she had to tend to others similar wounds. She would have thanked him for the lesson, but her desire for conversation had all but withered—instead, honeyed eyes searched him, studying him. “Where are you from?”

None of this was going to be about her—she had shared enough of herself to last a lifetime, it felt in this very moment—and she knew her questions to the dark man were only to help delay the fact she would once more need to return back to the valley that had once been paradise and re-navigate just what that home meant to her.