The sun hadn’t cleared the treetops yet, but the valley was already hot with August breath. Mist hugged the ground like a prayer, curling around the worn cabins and overgrown garden plots, wrapping the quiet in something close to reverence. And in the center of it, in the clearing where the cracked bell hung silent and the path to the gathering circle began, she stood, Charlotte.

Her hair was loose, damp at the ends from her morning wash in the creek. Barefoot, backlit, wrapped in a faded linen robe that made her look less like a person and more like something remembered. Something worshipped. And she knew it, not in vanity, but in presence. The way her spine aligned with the pulse of the trees, the way she breathed in rhythm with the earth. She was always in rhythm.

But her gaze was fixed past the mist. Past the trees. Toward the half-collapsed tool shed near the edge of camp where she knew he would be.

He was always up before her. Sometimes earlier than the sun, back already slick with sweat from repairing waterlines or dragging lumber into place. Sometimes shirtless when it got hot enough, which it had been for days now, revealing a sharp tan line across his chest where the binder had held steady all summer. It left a mark, but he never bitched about it. Said it was worth it for how the air felt on his skin, free like that. For how she looked at him when he worked with his hands, shoulder muscles flexing under old scars and half-healed nicks.

They were the kind of married that didn’t need reminders. The kind that shared breath without noticing. A matched set. A divine thing, if you asked the others. Some of the younger ones whispered it like doctrine: She is the voice. He is the hand. And maybe they weren’t wrong. The community looked to Charlotte for vision, and to him for the things that held it all together. Both necessary. Both sacred.

Charlotte stepped off the worn path, robe brushing against wild sage as she moved toward the shed. The woods gave way around her, as if they too knew better than to get in her way. When she reached him, she didn’t say a word. Just watched for a moment, eyes dark with something that wasn’t quite hunger but close enough.

He was busy, crouched over a warped door frame, tools scattered in the grass beside him. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek and dried blood on the edge of one knuckle. A picture-perfect mess. The kind she ached for.

She reached out, brushed the dirt away with the edge of her thumb, then let her fingers linger on his jaw. No permission needed. She never asked, never had to.

“You’re going to miss breakfast,” she said, voice low like she was sharing a secret.

The words didn’t matter as much as the way she said them. Like a song only he was meant to hear. Like a scripture in the mouth of a god.

He didn’t answer, not with words, anyway. That was fine. He didn’t have to. She smiled, the way only he ever got to see.

“Let them wait,” she added, just for him, “I’d rather watch you work a little longer.”

The people might be gathering soon. They’d want her, their leader, their vision, their almost-saint. But for now, in this moment before the morning really began, she was just Charlotte. And this was hers.

Her husband. Her partner.

The one thing he never gave up.

And the only thing she’d ever truly believed in.