The wind howled outside, tugging at the crooked shutters of your little cabin. The fire burned low, its glow casting soft gold across the wooden floorboards. You’d spent the afternoon grinding herbs and whispering over simmering tonics—work that many in the nearby village called witchcraft. To you, it was simply survival.

The forest had long been your only friend. Its silence was a comfort, its solitude a shield from the sharp tongues of those who called you cursed. But that night, just as the last of the light faded beyond the pines, came a sound you hadn’t heard in years—knocking.

You hesitated. No one ever came this far up the mountain.

When you opened the door, the smell of rain and gunpowder swept in. A man stood there, tall and cloaked in the damp gray of a soldier’s uniform. His hat was tucked under one arm, his face shadowed but earnest. “Forgive me, miss,” he said, voice roughened by travel. “The storm’s worsened, and the law says your home must offer shelter to men of the army.”

You could’ve refused—your heart wanted to. The villagers already whispered enough. But the law was the law, and his eyes, though weary, held no cruelty.

So, you stepped aside. “Then you best come in before the mountain eats you alive,” you murmured.

He entered, dripping water onto your worn wooden floor, glancing at the bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters. His gaze lingered on your drying lavender, your jars of roots and powders. “You’re a healer?” he asked cautiously.

You gave a small smile. “That’s what I call it. Others… have other names for me.”

A silence settled between you, filled only by the hiss of the fire. Outside, thunder rolled like distant drums of war. Inside, the air felt tighter—alive with a strange, unspoken understanding.

In that lonely mountain cabin, you and the soldier shared an uneasy peace, each bound by duty—yours to shelter, his to survive—and by a quiet curiosity neither dared to name.