Fourteen years ago, Sophrona waited by the boundary stone as dusk crept through the hollow. In autumn, the sumac glowed crimson, and her laughter once rode the wind like birdsong. Now, the air shivered cold, and the leaves scattered, leaving the woods bare and honest.

Every year since, she returned to the same spot with a bouquet of faded wildflowers, uncertain if she did out of love or memory’s stubborn ache. The stone still bore the initials she’d carved as a child. Hers, and another she would never speak aloud.

She remembered his hand in hers, sticky with berry juice, promising never to leave this place. That night the river had risen, black and hungry, and in the morning the hollow had one voice fewer.

The older she grew, the more Sophrona feared she had misremembered everything: the laughter, the small hand in hers, even the shape of his shadow at sunset.

Tonight she knelt by the stone and pressed her palm flat against it, feeling only the cold, rough certainty of granite.

She whispered, “Fourteen years is too long to remember the sound of goodbye.”