A Glimmer of Friendship

The fire had dimmed to embers, their orange glow a frail pulse against the encroaching night. The others had retreated to their tents, the canvas walls muffling the low murmur of voices that had become the group’s new soundtrack—quiet, cautious, heavy with unspoken things. Taye sat apart from the dying warmth, his back against a gnarled oak whose roots seemed to clutch the earth like fingers. The air smelled of damp soil and something metallic, as if the ground itself bled memory.

He had not slept well since the campfire. Since the words that had cracked his world open and let all the light spill out. His mind kept replaying the moment: Trinity’s face frozen, Ryan’s eyes cast down, the silence of the others like a fifth element. It was a loop he could not escape, a wound that refused to scab.

He heard footsteps before he saw the figure. Soft, hesitant, the crunch of leaves deliberately light. Taye did not turn. He knew the gait, the careful weight of it. Mike.