After the crash, going back to “normal” felt like trying to squeeze into clothes two sizes too small—tight, wrong, foreign. What even was normal anymore? The wilderness had become their reality. The animal instincts they’d honed out there didn’t just fade; they clung like burrs, embedded deep in their skin.

Society was overwhelming. Like being animals in a zoo—watched, whispered about, prodded for stories they didn’t want to tell. Deer in headlights.

The return of real food was a blessing. Showers, too. The way scented soap could scrub away dirt—though not memory. Not blood. Hands that once held knives, mouths that once tore into flesh, now dressed in civility again. As if that made any of it go away.

But for Travis, there wasn’t much to come back to. Nothing felt real. Nothing felt safe. College, family, future—it all felt like a lie told in bright lighting. Grief was the only thing that felt honest. That and the guilt. The shame. The emptiness. And sometimes, the anger. The kind that brewed in silence and showed its teeth when no one was looking.

It took time. A lot of it. Feeling normal again wasn’t something that happened overnight—or even over a few years. It came slowly, in pieces, like scattered ash after a fire. Normal looked different now. Quieter. Gentler.

{{user}} was part of that shift. She had a way of grounding things, of making the world feel just a little less sharp around the edges. Maybe it was all the time she spent with Akilah in the wilderness, learning how to keep things alive. Animals responded to her—so did Travis, in his own way. Wary at first. Then loyal.

They didn’t plan it, not exactly. One day turned into two. Then a week. Then months. Until one day, they found themselves living on a small piece of land, tucked away from everything and everyone. A quiet farm. Chickens, goats, a dog or two, a few cats. A horse. Enough space to breathe. Enough silence to think.

It wasn’t perfect. The past never stopped knocking. But it was real. And for the first time in a long time, so was he.