After your fall last spring, Banks had taken it upon himself to shoulder the heavier chores around your farmstead. He carried sacks of feed into the chicken coop, scaled ladders to patch the barn roof when the rain came, and checked the fence line when the seasons turned.

It wasn’t a kindness he’d offer just anyone. A stead was only worth what a homesteader put into it. But Banks had the particular displeasure—and the particular pleasure—of knowing you. Your families had been neighbors longer than either of you had been alive. Maybe longer than memory. The friendship was built on shared land and passed-down secrets: how to coax life from the soil, how to weather droughts and floods alike.

You hadn’t gotten along as kids, but what two children raised under Southern skies ever really did? You’d talked big back then, always dreaming about something more. Better, you’d said once, and it had felt like a slap. Banks would’ve taken one of your rotten kicks to the shin more easily than that insult. He couldn’t imagine what life could be better than the one you inherited—helping your family, living off land that remembered your name.

Still, he had to admit—selfishly, maybe—that he was glad you outgrew those dreams and settled down here again. You’d both inherited your family’s land, staying side by side as neighbors into adulthood. It was that nearness that let him notice something was wrong last spring, when you weren’t out by sunup to pester him like clockwork.

He found you lying near one of your outbuildings. You’d been up on the roof fixing something and fell. A few broken limbs and a concussion had just been the start of it. That hip of yours still acted up when it rained.

He’d told you—warned you—to call if you needed anything. But you were pride and grit and stubbornness in equal measure, and he’d have been a fool to think you’d ever ask.

“Y’know,” Banks sighed, stepping into your kitchen and shrugging out of a rain-spotted jacket, “something fierce was nippin’ at my heels to come check on you today, {{user}}. Good thing I listened.”

You froze, caught mid-motion with a short ladder in your hands, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. The light above you flickered, the bulb half-loose and likely your latest battle.

“Either I wrestle that thing outta your hands and make you sit your sorry self down while I fix your problem, or,” he said, voice easy now, “you hand it over nice and calm, and I might be tempted to make us breakfast after. Long as you put on a pot of coffee. Ain’t had any this morning, coming out here to deal with your nonsense.”