Pearl Pov
For a long, heavy beat after I told them we would stay together, my mind went white with fear and nothing else could find purchase. The road ahead seemed swallowed by night and the weight of a thousand small faces, children, old women, expectant mothers, pressed into my ribs like a living thing. I had spoken for them, and now the spoken words hung in the air, fragile and dangerous.
I had to do more than speak.
In the chaos one memory rose like a beacon: the little village that had taken us in once, months ago, the place no soldier bothered to search because of one small rule they kept, only married couples were sheltered there. I thought of the old woman who had wrapped me in a faded shawl and laughed when she told me of destiny and stubborn stars. She’d said things then that
