17. Wren
WREN
ONE BED, NO GENERATOR, NO EXCUSES
The sky doesn’t darken so much as it becomes bruised, a deep, sickly purple that presses down on the canopy until even the birds go silent.
I shove my father’s old crowbar into the side pocket of my pack, the metal clinking against a spare box of nails.
We’re up here finishing the winter prep on the North Ridge shelter, checking the roof shingles and making sure the emergency rations haven’t become a squirrel’s buffet.
It’s a six-mile hike from the lodge, a distance I usually navigate with a steady stream of internal complaints, but today the silence between me and Rowan is heavier than the dark clouds above us.
“The air is wrong,” Rowan says, his head tilted as if he were listening to a conversation happening three ridges away.
Even in his human form, he looks like something the forest grew rather than something that walks through it.
Seven feet and two inches of ancient, stubborn muscle, currently draped in the ridiculous HIDE he’s the product. We’re in a strategic alliance against the internet.
But business partners don’t usually find themselves trapped in a ten-by-ten box while the world is ending outside.
“There are blankets in the chest under the bed,” he says, draping his wet shirt over the back of a chair. “They’re wool. They’ll be scratchy, but they’ll keep the heat in.”
“Wool is fine,” I say, my voice a pitch higher than usual, my cheeks suddenly very hot, which has nothing to do with the fire in the woodstove. “I’m an art history major. I spent four years in unheated libraries wearing vintage knitwear. I’m basically part sheep at this point.”
I drag the chest out, the heavy wood scraping against the floor, and pull out two thick, gray blankets that smell of aged cedar.
I hand one to him and keep the other, wrapping it around my shoulders as I sit back down on the bunk.
The fire is roaring now, throwing long, dancing shadows against the walls.
Outside, the wind howls, a desperate, lonely sound that makes the shelter feel like the only safe place left on earth.
Rowan pulls the single wooden chair closer to the stove and sits.
For a moment, I worry that his large frame will break it, but it holds—a trick of his will, the magic, concealment, or whatever.
He looks perfectly at peace with his legs stretched out in front of the stove, a man who has spent centuries waiting for things to pass.
The firelight catches the amber in his eyes and the sharp line of his jaw. He’s so still. It’s a kind of stillness that doesn’t exist in my world of pings and notifications and the constant, buzzing anxiety of a failing bank account.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” I ask, the question slipping out before I could edit it. “The waiting. The being alone. I get twitchy if my phone is in the other room for more than twenty minutes. I don’t know how you’ve done it for decades.”
Rowan turns his head toward me, his expression thoughtful. “Time is different when you aren’t trying to outrun it. Humans spend their lives building fences against the wind. I just watch the wind move.”
“Spoken like a man who doesn’t have a mortgage,” I mutter, pulling the blanket tighter. “Fences are expensive. Especially when they’re heritage-listed and falling into a ravine.”
“You’re still thinking about the lodge,” he says, rising from the chair and walking toward the bunk. He sits down on the end, his weight tilting the mattress so I slide a few inches closer. “You should sleep, Wren. The bridge won’t be passable until the runoff slows. That will be hours.”
“I can’t sleep when it sounds like someone is playing a drum solo on the roof,” I say.
I am hyper-aware of the distance between us.
Six inches of scratchy wool and heavy air.
I can smell the pine on him, the salt of his skin, and that clean, cold-air scent that I’d started to associate with safety.
“And you can’t sit in that chair all night.
You’re seven feet tall. Your spine will turn into a question mark. ”
“I’ve slept in worse places,” he says, his voice low. “Trees. Stone ledges. The ground is often more honest than a bed.”
“Well, this bed is honest enough for two if we’re strategic about it,” I say, my heart taking another frantic leap. “It’s just... physical proximity. Like a very crowded elevator. Or a survival documentary. We’re just conserving thermal energy. It’s purely scientific.”