By the time {{user}} reached the northern coast, her map was nearly unreadable—torn, rain-soaked, and scrawled with crossed-out towns that no longer existed.

She didn’t know what she was looking for anymore. Safety, maybe. Or just a place where the dead didn’t wander like shadows with memories.

She found Orion by accident—or maybe fate—on a crumbling bridge over a river choked with debris. He was trying to fix a makeshift radio, of all things.

“That’s not going to work,” she said.

He didn’t look up. “You sound like my sister. She didn’t think it would work either.”

“Where is she now?”

“Somewhere better, I hope.”

That was the start.

They traveled together, more out of practicality than trust. But slowly, she began to listen to the stories he told: of pre-apocalypse music, of the mountains out west, of someone named Ava he used to love.

She asked him once why he still tried so hard to live like the world hadn’t ended.

Orion just smiled and said, “Because you haven’t given up either.”

It wasn’t a grand romance. There were no flowers, no long walks on moonlit beaches. But there was a kind of closeness that came from shared silence, from watching each other’s backs, from knowing someone would sit by the fire until you came back.

One night, they stood on the edge of a cliff, the sea far below. The stars had broken through the cloud cover for once, pale and stubborn.

“I was thinking,” Orion said, “we could keep heading north. Maybe even past the map.”

“Into the unknown?” she asked.

He glanced at her, eyes searching. “With you, I’d go anywhere.”