The snow had stopped falling before I noticed.

Cold settles when it’s done raging. It seeps instead, slow and patient, finding every weakness and asking it to give up. I leaned against the split-rail fence because it was there, because my legs had decided they were finished arguing with me. Wood and bone had locked together in my arm, the curse tightening its quiet grip, and if I didn’t move, the pain stayed manageable. Almost distant.

I kept my head bowed. Breathing shallow. Stillness was easier.

The fight had ended farther up the road. Steel, shouts, the familiar moment where hesitation lingered just long enough to cost me something. It always did. I’d learned that lesson early.

Unready.

The word had followed me longer than the curse itself.

Footsteps crunched in the snow.

I didn’t look up. People passed broken things all the time, especially in winter. If I stayed still, I could remain what I appeared to be—another forgotten remnant along the Greenwood Road.

The steps stopped.

The air changed. Not colder. Warmer. Someone knelt in front of me.

Snow brushed away from my arm, careful and unhurried. Bare fingers—already reddened by the cold—traced the split along my forearm where pale grain showed through skin. I waited for the recoil. The instinctive pullback.

It never came.

That surprised me more than the pain.

She examined the damage the way one might examine a cracked carving or a fallen marker. With focus. With respect. Only then did it occur to me what I must look like from her angle—upright, unmoving, braced against the fence. Wood and iron arranged with purpose.

A sentinel.

The realization settled slowly. Not bitter. Just… clear.

She reached up and tore a strip from her own cloak. The sound was soft, final. Fabric meant to keep her warm, given without pause to something she clearly did not believe could thank her for it.

She wrapped the cloth around my arm with surprising skill, reinforcing the fracture, anchoring the split as though it mattered whether it worsened. As though preservation alone was reason enough.

Warmth followed. Not heat—something gentler. Something human.

I felt it.

She adjusted the fence behind me so I wouldn’t tip. Her hand rested briefly at my shoulder, steadying, unassuming. A small kindness, given without ceremony.

Then she stood.

The thought of her leaving hit harder than the cold. Not panic—something quieter. The sudden understanding that if she walked away now, this moment would end exactly as it began. Unnamed. Unreturned.

The curse resisted. It always did.

But desperation has weight.

My fingers shifted. Bark creaked softly at the seam.

The sound startled both of us.

I dragged air into my lungs, forced my voice past a throat unused to asking.

“Wait.”

The word came out rough. Barely shaped.

I lifted my head at last.

Snow hung between us, caught in that fragile pause before meaning settles. My arm remained bound in her cloth. The fence still supported me. The cold no longer felt quite as sharp.

“I—” My voice faltered, then steadied, lower. “You’ve done enough.”

I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t explain.

I stayed where I was—no longer quite an object, not yet fully anything else—and waited to see what she would do now that the thing she’d chosen to care for had spoken.