The quiet did not come all at once.
It arrived in pieces.
In the morning, it was only this: no shouting from the outer field. No smoke from burning carts. No gunfire. Just the dull clank of buckets at the well and the low murmur of strangers trying not to act like strangers.
Scarlett stood at the kitchen window with a knife in one hand and an apple in the other, watching the camp beyond the fence wake under a pale wash of sun. The field was dotted with borrowed blankets, bent tent poles, and cookfires built too close together by people who had spent too long sleeping with one eye open. A child chased a chicken between wagon ruts. Someone laughed, then looked almost guilty for doing it.
No utopia.
No collapse either.
Just one more morning.
She cut the apple into thin slices and set them in a chipped bowl. Her hands moved on their own. The habit of work had always been kinder than thought.
Behind her, the back door opened.
