Lonely Travelers #3
Dragonfly and Arion often went there on dull evenings, more to pass the time than for any particular desire to socialize.
Still, it was a place to feel young and noticed.
She met plenty of girls her age, some of whom she grew to like, even trust. And then there were the boys—charming, confident, eager for connection.
She didn’t mind their attention. Their compliments flattered her, and she flirted when it felt easy, playful.
But she always made her boundaries clear.
She wasn’t looking for a winter fling. No cozy distractions, no shallow promises whispered by firelight. Her heart, though she tried to keep it hidden, was already tangled somewhere else.
One young man, Andrew, started pursuing her not long after their first meeting. He was a few years older, charming, and completely smitten—but far too serious. He kept asking her out, and she kept saying no.
Things got awkward fast when he suddenly proposed.
After that, she avoided the eatery. When he started showing up at the farmhouse, she asked the housekeeper to turn him away.
She couldn’t decide which was worse, to be pursued by someone she didn’t want or to be bored to death in a house full of strangers.
Dragonfly yanked off her gloves and rubbed her hands together hard, trying to summon back the feeling in her fingers.
They were stiff and pale, nearly useless from the cold.
Why hadn’t she brought her fire kit? Or water.
Or food. She would’ve brought them all if she’d been thinking.
But she hadn’t been—only rushing out the door when the first wave of chatty neighbors arrived, needing to escape before their cheerfulness smothered her completely.
A low, distant rumble interrupted her spiraling thoughts. She froze. It sounded like hooves—hundreds of them, galloping far off—but no, not hooves. Not horses.
Then it came.
The clouds split open, and the sky dumped its rage on the world. Rain hammered down in sheets, so heavy it bounced back up from the earth. Mist bloomed around her like smoke. She stayed where she was, hunched beneath the old tree, but there was no shelter to be had.
The rain drenched her, but it wasn’t the storm that undid her—it was the ache inside.
She couldn’t hear her own thoughts. Could barely see beyond a few feet.
Cold water streamed down her face, slid past her jaw, soaked through her collar.
She pushed her hood back and tilted her head into the storm. Let it come.
Why not? She was already wet.
A strange laugh burst out of her, raw and sudden. It rang out through the roar of the rain, the only sound that felt like hers. She’d wished for water—and here it was, endless and merciless.
Maybe Collin had been right. Maybe the gods really did keep watch—not to help, but to be amused. And when mortals got too quiet, too ordinary, maybe the gods stirred the pot just to make things mor interesting.
By the time the storm had soaked her to the bone, when her clothes hung heavy and her fingers were numb stubs, she rose. Slowly, stiffly, she began the long walk back to the house.
The rain had eased to a drizzle by the time the farmhouse came into view.
Dragonfly could already picture the guests inside—waiting out the storm with full plates, lively music, and easy laughter.
Quietly, she slipped through the back door.
Sure enough, the house rang with chattering voices and warm, familiar melodies.
She crept down the long, empty hallway, dripping water with every step.
In her room, she peeled off her soaked clothes and left them in a heavy heap on the floor.
The towel was too rough against her chilled skin, but it helped.
She wrapped herself in a thick quilt, pulled it snug around her shoulders, and sank onto the edge of the bed with a sigh.
Her hair still clung to her back in cold, dripping strands.
Even in the warmth, she couldn’t stop shivering.
The breakfast tray still sat untouched on the small table. She reached for the teapot, lifted the lid—cold. Still, she poured herself a cup. The lavender and chamomile were faint, but familiar. Even lukewarm, the taste quieted the restless storm inside her.
She wrapped her hair in a towel and fluffed the pillows behind her, sinking deeper into the bed. Her eyes fluttered shut.
And, as always, Collin came.
He appeared behind her eyelids like he always did, steady gaze and all. Those blue eyes—still full of questions, still full of home. He looked at her like he was asking her to return. And god, how she wanted to say yes.
She could almost reach him. She could smell the crushed herbs from his garden, the sun-warmed wild grass from his meadow.
She could feel the faint scratch of stubble on his jaw, the strength of his arms as they curled around her.
Their hearts had once beat together, breath syncing in fear and love as they survived the aftermath of the forest panther.
It had all been so vivid then—terrifying and electric.
And somehow, it still was. All of it surged back like it had happened yesterday, as if Collin were standing in the room, waiting.
Many minutes after the stag disappeared, Collin remained still, staring into the distance. Now that he’d stopped, it was difficult to move again. Ahead of him stretched a smooth, unbroken canvas of white—waiting for someone to leave a mark.
He glanced back. A long, winding trail of footprints lay behind him, soft impressions pressed into snow. Mortal shapes in an immortal world. The sight made something in his chest ache.
Where was his place in this vast world? The snow would melt. The wind would cover his trail. Just like a heartbeat—here, then gone. Would anyone remember he had existed? Would anyone stumble across these quiet tracks and wonder about the man who left them?
A soul’s silent journey, a destination unknown.
Do footprints find purpose, or fade all alone?
He let out a long breath, heart still beating, steady and sure. There was nothing to do but go on. More miles to walk. More marks to leave.
He was the ephemeral artist. And his canvas awaited.
At the tail end of autumn, Collin had a strange encounter with a young gray wolf.
One evening, during a pounding rainstorm, the creature stumbled into his lean-to, seeking shelter.
For a long heartbeat, boy and beast stared at each other—two startled hunters caught in the same refuge.
The wolf was straggly, silver-coated and soaked to the bone.
Then, with a flash of movement, he bolted past Collin and vanished into the drenched meadow.
But he didn’t go far. Collin spotted him again a few days later, prowling through the tall grass, lean body low, chasing field mice and birds. The young wolf must have been starving to come so close to people.
When winter arrived and laid its first quiet veil of snow, paw prints began appearing near the fence line and the edge of the woods.
But that was the last sign he ever saw. Collin had resisted the impulse to leave food—he knew too well the danger of taming a creature meant to be wild.
Still, a trace of guilt clung to him. Perhaps he should have done more.
Perhaps he had failed a fellow wanderer.
What had separated the wolf from its pack? Wolves weren’t meant to be alone—not at that age. Had it lost its family in some accident, or had it simply wandered too far and lost the trail? Was it looking for someone? Searching for its place in the great, indifferent wilderness?
Sometimes, Collin liked to imagine the wolf still out there—traveling across the snow-blanketed world, restless and driven. A lonely traveler, just like him. Chasing after something it couldn’t name. Hoping it would recognize home when it finally found it.
After miles of perfect footprints, Collin finally looked down.
Snow clung to his arms, his shoulders, the fur-lined edge of his hood. A few damp flakes had caught in his lashes. He blinked them away, disoriented, as if waking from a dream. Or a winter spell.
He hadn’t even noticed the clouds gathering, the way the light had dimmed. The air had changed—he could feel it now, heavy and thick with coming snow.
Big wet flakes fell slowly, soundlessly, as if the sky were plucking petals from some endless white blossom. And if he weren’t so bitterly tired of this winter that refused to end, of this world that refused to soften, he might have found it beautiful.
He clenched his jaw. A knot inside him twisted—tight, sharp, unbearable.
A roar clawed up his throat before he could stop it. He threw his arms wide, fists crashing into snowbanks, striking at nothing, at everything. His voice cracked through the woods like a broken branch.
He wanted the snow to hit back. To rise up and fight him. But it just kept falling, slow and gentle, like it pitied him.
He drew his knife and slashed at the empty air, at ghosts, at gods, at fate. Swore until his voice was hoarse, until there was nothing left to spit but silence. No one answered. The trees stood still. The heavens kept shedding its petals.
His fury burned out fast, leaving only smoke.
Collin dropped to his knees in the snow, breath ragged, arms slack at his sides. His body shook, not from cold, but from the hollowness that followed the storm.
He stared at his lap, unmoving, as the snow settled over him—on his shoulders, his hood, his hands. It buried him slowly, gently, as if trying to make him another piece of the empty landscape.
He didn’t fight it.
Time slipped past. He didn’t know how much.
Eventually, a small detail broke through his fog—one of the leather laces on his snowshoe had snapped. Just cleanly broken, like it had given up.
He flexed his fingers, stiff and red. His lips were numb. His ears throbbed with cold. He couldn’t go on like this. Not today.
With a long, shaking breath, he forced himself upright. The snow whispered as he moved, but offered no resistance.
He turned back the way he’d come, retracing his own lonely trail.
It was time to go home.
He was about halfway home when a figure emerged through the thickening snow. As he drew closer, the shape sharpened—broad shoulders, steady gait. Aries. Great. A lecture was coming.
“I was worried about you!” Aries called, his voice rough with cold—and something else. Relief, maybe. Or anger trying to pass for it.
Despite the exhaustion weighing down every step, Collin lengthened his stride. Aries had come out into this brutal cold just to find him. That said more than any lecture would’ve.
Aries didn’t ask where Collin had been, or why.
He just fell into step beside him, silent as they trudged through the snow.
Collin stole a glance. Aries’s coat was half-frozen at the hem, his jaw clenched against the wind, but it was the flicker of worry in his eyes that caught Collin off guard.
He looked like he’d been out there too long—like he hadn’t planned to go home without him.
They walked like that until the faint shape of the cabin emerged through the strengthening snow.
The moment the door flung open, a gust of cold swept in with them. Hadria stood in the entryway, arms already crossed, her breath rising. She didn’t speak right away—but the set of her mouth said she had plenty to say.
Before she could open her mouth, Aries turned to her and delivered a single, sharp look—so direct, so loaded, it stopped her cold.
Aries helped Collin peel off his frozen cloak and boots. His hands moved briskly, but not unkindly—like someone tending a wounded animal. Collin didn’t resist. He had no strength left for that.
Aries guided him to the hearth and eased him into the chair closest to the fire. Hadria appeared a moment later with every blanket she could find, piling them onto him one by one. A cup of steaming tea was pressed into his hands, its heat a distant sensation he could barely register.
He was too cold, too hollow.
The flames leapt and danced in front of him, but he stared through them, numb. Only the slow return of pain—tingling fingertips, stinging toes—reminded him he was still alive.
And then, behind the bedroom door, the arguing began again.
“Please, Hadria, just leave him alone. You’re not helping him by picking him apart.”
“How long are you going to keep ignoring this? He’s going to get himself killed!”
“He knows these mountains.”
“He’s reckless, Aries! Can’t you see that? He’s not thinking straight—he could get you killed too!”
“He’s my friend. My brother. I’m not going to turn my back on him. So please, stop pushing.”
A silence followed—brief, but weighted. Then Hadria’s voice, sharp as glass, “He needs to know she has a new life. He needs to get over her.”
Collin closed his eyes as if he could shut the world out, but the words lodged in his chest. He drew the patchwork quilt over his head and curled in on himself.
Moonlight poured through her window, so bright that for a moment, Dragonfly thought it was already morning.
She pulled the curtains wide and looked out into the stillness.
The sky was impossibly clear. Stars burned above her like a million quiet souls, and the moon’s glow wrapped around her shoulders like a lullaby.
She let it carry her—to that place in her heart where Collin waited.
Collin sat by the window, watching the stars. He tried to count them, but there were too many—each one blinking in and out like heartbeats, scattered across the endless canvas.
The moon hung low, pale and calm, her quiet face watching over the night. He stared at her for a long time, drawn in by that still, distant beauty.
When sleep finally took him, it came soft and slow. And in its light, he saw Dragonfly—dancing beneath the glow of winter’s moon, as if she’d always belonged there.