The grass was wet and cold under her bare feet.
Mia followed the path between the trees until she saw them.
Ludwig stood inside the small fenced enclosure, bucket in one hand, rifle still slung across his back. Atlas sat a few feet away, ears forward, watching everything. A dozen deer moved around them in the half-dark — thin, scarred, some still limping from old wounds. One doe kept her head low, never turning her back to the fence.
Ludwig didn't look up when Mia slipped through the gate.
He simply held out the second bucket.
She took it.
No words.
They worked side by side in the gray light before dawn. Grain scattered across the ground in soft handfuls. The deer approached slowly, one by one, noses twitching. A young buck with a healed fracture on his front leg came closest to Mia. He stopped two steps away, ears flicking, and watched her with dark, wary eyes.
She stayed very still.
The buck took one more step. Then another.
He lowered his head and began to eat from the grain she had poured.
Ludwig moved to the far side of the pen without speaking. He checked a bandage on an older doe's shoulder, fingers gentle, movements sure. The animal let him. She even leaned into his hand for half a second before pulling away.
Mia felt something loosen in her chest.
No one asked her to smile.
No one measured her voice.
No one waited for the perfect angle.
Just cold air, wet grass, and the slow crunch of animals eating.
Inside her head, the alters had gone quiet.
Even Lilith was only a low, steady presence — not pushing, not speaking. Just… watching.
The sky began to bleed pale gold along the treeline.
First light touched the tops of the pines, then slid down, catching dew on the grass like tiny sparks.
Mia straightened.
Her hands were dirty with grain and earth.
Her hoodie sleeves were damp.
She looked at Ludwig.
He met her eyes for the first time.
A small nod. Nothing more.
Atlas let out a single soft huff, almost like agreement.
For one quiet minute the four of them — two broken humans, one wolf-dog, and a dozen scarred deer — stood together in the rising sun.
No performance.
No masks.
Just breathing.
Mia felt the weight of the day waiting ahead: breakfast, Aster, the others, the questions, the switches, the war still going on inside her skull.
But right now, in this small pen, none of it had reached her yet.
She breathed in the cold, clean air.
And for the length of one sunrise, the nervous system remembered what it was like to simply exist.