8. Bianca #2
I stumble to the main hall, where people are already eating and planning their day. Someone hands me coffee—real coffee, not the instant stuff—and a plate of eggs and toast.
“Anna wants to meet you,” Ezra says, sitting beside me. “She’s excited about having a new student.”
Anna looks to be in her late twenties, built like she could bench-press a car, with scars on her arms that suggest she has had a painful past.
“Ezra says you want to learn archery,” she says without preamble.
“And how to fight… how to use weapons. I want to learn how to protect myself.”
She studies me for a long moment. “All right. Finish eating and meet me at the range.”
The archery range is just a clearing with targets set up at different distances. Anna hands me a bow that feels heavier than expected.
“First lesson,” she says. “Archery isn’t about strength. It’s about focus. You can’t hit what you’re aiming at if your mind’s somewhere else.”
She shows me how to hold the bow, how to nock an arrow, how to draw the string back to my anchor point. My first shot goes wide, hitting a tree ten feet from the target.
“Again.”
The second shot hits the ground in front of the target.
“Again.”
By the tenth shot, my arm shakes from holding the bow. By the twentieth, it’s almost too difficult to draw the string. But I sense a change. The part of my brain that usually cycles through all the ways I’m fucked up goes quiet.
There’s just the target, the bow, the arrow, and the moment between drawing and release.
“Better,” Anna says when I hit the outer ring of the target. “Your form’s shit, but you’re starting to focus.”
“Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment. Most people can’t focus for five minutes on their first day. You went an hour without your mind wandering once.”
She’s right. I didn’t think about them once. Didn’t spiral into self-hatred. Just focused on the task at hand.
“Same time tomorrow,” she says, taking the bow.
The rest of the day blurs together. Lunch in the garden, learning which vegetables are ready to harvest. Afternoon in the kitchen, helping prep dinner and learning that cooking can be meditation if you let it be.
Evening maintenance, fixing a loose board on someone’s porch and learning how to patch a hole in a roof.
By the time I fall into bed, I’m too exhausted to do anything but sleep.
Day three, my arms don’t shake as much when I draw the bow. Day four, I hit the target more than I miss it. Day five, Anna starts teaching me about different types of arrows and when to use them.
“Why archery?” I ask during a break, both of us sitting in the shade and drinking water.
“Quiet,” she says. “Teaches patience. Makes you think before you act. Good skills to have when the world’s trying to break you.”
“Did it? Break you?”
She looks at her scarred arms. “For a while. But I put myself back together… just like you will.”
I want to ask what happened, but she doesn’t offer, and I don’t push. Everyone here has stories. Everyone here survived atrocities. But no one’s competing to see who had it worse.
The days start blending together in the best way.
Up at dawn, coffee, breakfast, archery practice, sparring where I get my ass kicked over and over, weapons training, gardening, lunch, whatever needs doing, dinner, sleep.
My body stops aching as much. My hands develop calluses from the bowstring.
My shoulders get stronger from drawing and drawing and drawing.
Three weeks in, I hit a bullseye for the first time.
“Not bad,” Anna says, but she’s trying not to smile.
“Not bad? I’ve been working toward this for weeks.”
“And now you’ve done it once. Can you do it again?”
I can. Not every time, but more often than not. The focus becomes automatic.
I start helping with other things too… security patrols around the perimeter with Marc, who also teaches me self defense… garden and kitchen duty with Ellie, who makes bread that could turn into an addiction.
Everyone here works. Everyone contributes. No one gets to just sit around feeling sorry for themselves, which turns out to be exactly what I need.
Six weeks in, Megan finds me on my porch after dinner.
“You look different,” she says, settling into the chair I dragged out from inside.
“Different how?”
“Less like you want to disappear.”
She’s right. I do feel different. Not healed—I’m not naive enough to think six weeks fixes months of trauma or a lifetime of beliefs. But... present. Like I exist in my own skin instead of floating somewhere outside it.
“I don’t think about them as much,” I admit.
“The alphas that hurt you?”
“Any of it. The whole mess. Hard to spiral when you’re too busy to think.”
“That’s the point. Idle time’s dangerous when you’re healing. It gives your brain too much space to go to dark places.”
We sit in comfortable silence, watching other people move around the settlement. Someone’s playing guitar near the fire pit. A few people are still working in the garden, taking advantage of the last light.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“Saving me. Bringing me here. Giving me a reason to get up in the morning.”
Megan’s quiet for a long moment. “You’re saving yourself, Bianca. We just gave you a safe place to do it.”
That night, I sit on my porch looking at the stars and realize I’ve stopped wondering if the world would be better without me.
I have a purpose here.
I’m not fixed. But I’m doing a little better.
I’m... present. Breathing. Living instead of just surviving.
That feels like enough.