The wind began to ease, the rain slackening from downpour to heavy shower. By the time dawn came, gray and waterlogged, the worst had passed. Rhett opened the door and stepped out into a world transformed. The garden was gone, completely erased.
The barn stood, but barely. Half the roof was missing, one wall caved in. The fence was matchsticks. The creek had retreated to its banks, but the land around it was scoured clean, stripped down to bedrock in places.
Ayah stepped out beside him, surveyed the damage, and said nothing. "We can rebuild," Rhett said. "I've got tools. Lumber in town if we need it."
"It's not the same." "No, but it's something." She looked down at her hands, still caked with dried mud, then out at the ruined land. "I need to walk," she said abruptly.
"Want company?" "No. I need to be alone for a while." Rhett nodded. He understood that need.
"Don't go far. Ground's unstable." She walked toward the canyon rim without answering. Rhett watched until she was a small figure against the red rock, then turned to assess what could be salvaged. The barn was first.
He spent the morning pulling away debris, stacking anything usable. His muscles screamed. His hands were raw. But the work felt necessary.
It gave him something to do other than think about how close they'd come to losing everything. Midday, he noticed Ayah hadn't come back. He walked to the canyon rim, scanning, and found her 100 yards out, sitting on a flat boulder, staring at the horizon. He approached slowly, making noise so he wouldn't startle her.
"You all right?" he called. She didn't turn. "I thought I could make it work. Thought if I just tried hard enough, gave enough, this place could be home."
Rhett sat down beside her on the boulder. "It still can be." "Can it?" She finally looked at him.
Her eyes were red but dry. "Every time I try to plant roots, something rips them up. My home. My people. Now this."
"The storm wasn't personal." "Wasn't it?" "Feels personal. Feels like the world's telling me to stop trying."
"The world doesn't talk," Rhett said. "It just does what it does. Rain falls. Rivers flood. People die."
He paused. "But people also survive. Plant. Build. Keep going even when it doesn't make sense."
"Is that what you're doing? Keeping going?" "Trying to." Ayah was quiet for a long time. A hawk circled overhead, riding thermals, hunting.
The canyon stretched out below them, scarred and ancient and indifferent. "My grandmother used to say the land remembers," Ayah said eventually. "Every footstep, every seed, every life lived on it." She picked up a pebble and turned it over in her fingers.