What We Carry

The cabin smelled of pine needles and something medicinal. Elena stood in the doorway, three months of silence between her and Sarah thickening the air like dust motes in afternoon light.

"You came," Sarah said, not turning from the stove. Her voice was thinner than Elena remembered.

"You sent me your address." Elena stepped inside, boots still on. "That's not nothing."

Sarah turned then, holding out a small orange bottle. "Vitamin D. Doctor says I'm deficient." Her laugh cracked. "Apparently, grief depletes you."

Elena took the bottle, reading the label. It was vitamins, but the way Sarah's hands shook—

"I stopped taking them," Sarah said quietly. "I think I needed to feel something, even if it was this."

Outside, the November woods were burning red and gold. They walked in the brittle silence of old friendship, of words unsaid until they'd calcified into something too heavy to lift. Sarah had left the city after Mark died, just packed up her life and driven north. Elena had let her go—hadn't called, hadn't written, because she hadn't known what to say to the kind of loss that swallowed people whole.

Then, through the trees: movement. Massive and dark.

A bear, materializing from shadows like something the forest had conjured.

Elena grabbed Sarah's arm, her heart hammering against her ribs. The bear regarded them with black, ancient eyes, then turned and lumbered away, its presence leaving something altered in the air.

"He comes through sometimes," Sarah said, and when she looked at Elena, her eyes were wet. "Every time, I think: this is it. This is what I've been waiting for."

"Sarah—"

"No, listen. I needed to know I could still feel afraid." Sarah's fingers pressed into Elena's wrist, urgent. "Mark's death wasn't noble, El. It was stupid and pointless and I've spent three months trying to die without actually dying, and you letting me—that was the gift. You didn't try to fix me."

Elena pulled her into a hug then, Sarah's body folding against hers like something fragile and resilient all at once.

"Friend," Sarah whispered against her shoulder. "I forgot what that word meant."

They walked back to the cabin as the woods darkened around them, the bear's shadow lingering between them like a benediction. Inside, Elena placed the vitamin bottle on the table.

"Start with one," she said. "We'll figure out the rest together."