When I opened my eyes again, it was daylight.
The storm had passed.
The village looked washed raw.
Wendy told me they still had no signal, so some of the women had gone to the main road and managed to stop an empty bus. The driver had heard enough of their story to agree to take them back to the city first, police or no police.
I told Wendy to get everyone out.
She looked at my hand and said, “You’re hurt badly. You can’t stay here alone.”
I smiled a little. “I know my limits.”
That was a lie.
My hand was getting worse. Rain and mud had done damage. It needed real treatment.
But I had stayed alive this long by not measuring life the way other people did.
Then I saw a small child walking toward me.
A boy.
Maybe eight years old.
He stopped in front of me and said shyly, “Thank you for saving us.”
I stared at him.
My mind went strangely blank.
“No,” I said before I could stop myself. “Where’s Mia?”
Wendy frowned.
“What?”
The little boy just looked confused.
Then, from the edge of the yard, another child seemed to walk toward me.
Big eyes.
Small features.
The same tiny frame.
The same quiet look.
Mia.
I pointed. “There. That’s Mia.”
Wendy and the boy both turned to look.
But their eyes showed nothing.
No recognition.
No reaction.
A strange cold feeling moved through me.
The child I called Mia stepped closer and smiled.
“Don’t you remember me?” the child asked.
And suddenly, all the scattered pieces came together.
The scars on the scalp.
The age.
The chocolate.
The way Hank had looked at me in terror when I spoke to empty corners.
The way my chest had tightened the second I stepped into that courtyard.
Mia had never been there.
Not the way I thought.
The child my mind had shaped in Hank’s house wasn’t a little girl at all.
It was me.
The eight-year-old version of me I had left buried in a village like this one so many years ago.
At first, I had seen a little boy in that yard.
But my memory had rewritten him.
Given him my face.
My pain.
My silence.
I had spent my whole life turning myself into a weapon so I would never have to look back at that child again.
And yet here, in this place, that child had found me anyway.
I looked at Wendy and forced a breath out.
“It’s nothing,” I said softly. “I remembered wrong.”
The little figure beside me smiled as if that was enough.
As if being seen at all was enough.
Wendy crouched in front of me, worry written all over her face. “Sierra, come with us. You saved all of us. We can’t just leave you here.”
I opened my mouth to refuse.
Before I could, Wendy wrapped her arms around me.
It was awkward at first. Careful. Unsure.
Then firm.
Like someone trying to hold together something broken without making it hurt worse.
Bella came over too, limping but determined, and stood beside us in silence.
For a long moment, I couldn’t speak.
I had walked alone for so long that I had forgotten what it felt like not to.
The child beside me—my child, the one I had abandoned in memory—seemed to grow lighter somehow.
Less trapped.
Less cold.
I lowered my head and whispered in my heart, I’m sorry.
I never should have left you there alone.
When I finally lifted my eyes, the bus was waiting beyond the washed-out road.
The women were gathering.
The mountain village behind us was quiet for the first time.
And for the first time in a very long time, the road ahead did not look like something I had to walk by myself.