"Long time ago." "What do they mean?" "They mean we were here. That we existed. That we mattered."
She touched one of the handprints, her fingers tracing the outline. "My grandmother brought me here when I was eight. Told me that as long as these marks remain, we're not forgotten." Rhett watched her stand there, so small against the ancient stone, and felt the weight of everything she'd lost settle on his shoulders like a physical thing.
"You're not forgotten," he said quietly. "No." She turned to look at him. "Then why does it feel like I'm the only one left who remembers?"
He didn't have an answer for that. So he did the only thing he could think of. He took her hand and held it. They stood there in the shadow of her ancestors' marks until the light shifted and it was time to head back.
That night, lying on their bedrolls near the fire, Ayah asked him about his family. "You never talk about them," she said. "Your parents. Where you're from."
Rhett stared at the cave ceiling, at the patterns the firelight made on the stone. "Not much to tell. Mother died when I was young. Fever."
"Father raised us. Me and Caleb, until we were old enough to work. Then he died too. Kicked by a horse. Stupid, random thing."
"How old were you?" "Seventeen. Caleb was 15." Rhett shifted, uncomfortable with the memories.
"We tried to keep the farm going for about six months. Failed spectacularly. Lost it to debts we didn't know Father had. After that, we just drifted."
"Took jobs where we could find them. Eventually found our way into less legal work. Robbing stages, among other things." Ayah was quiet for a moment. "Do you regret it? That life?"
"Parts of it. Not all of it." He turned his head to look at her. "I regret getting Caleb killed. I regret not being smarter, more careful."
"But I don't regret learning how to survive. That's what that life taught me. How to read people. How to think fast. How to stay alive when everything's trying to kill you."
"Sounds lonely." "It was." He reached out and found her hand in the darkness. "This is better."
Her fingers tightened around his. "Yeah, it is." Three weeks in, they had visitors. Rhett was checking his snares near the canyon mouth when he heard horses.
He froze, listening. Two riders moving slowly, picking their way through the rocks. He recognized the voices before he saw them. Territorial scouts talking about tracking Apache holdouts.
"Heard there might be some hiding in these canyons," one of them said. "Waste of time if you ask me," the other replied. "Anything down there is probably dead already."