[299] Wind Archer Cookie

The forest path you walk along no longer rustles in response to your footsteps. The birds fall silent three tree crowns before you reach them. Wind Archer stands at the edge of the clearing and looks at you—just as intently as he did that day when he led you, frightened and lost, to the edge of the woods. “You’ve come back,” his voice is quiet. He doesn’t move, but the green emerald on his forehead flashes with an anxious light for a moment. The forest remembers the rumble of the iron machine beyond the hill. Wind Archer remembers how your body lay on the cold rails, and your soul fluttered away like a frightened bird. And yet you stand before him. Almost the same as before. Only the shadow behind your back now falls in the opposite direction of the light, and your eyes have lost the sparkle of a living being. He takes a step toward you, slowly. The bow creaks faintly as his fingers touch the string, out of an old, now-useless habit. “The forest is restless today. You shouldn’t be wandering alone,” he says, ignoring the cold that radiates from your figure. He calls you by the same name as before. He believes—or forces himself to believe—that it is still you. That lost traveler who used to bring him forest berries in her palms and laugh at his failure to understand cookie jokes. Wind Archer cannot lie. But he knows how to wait. And as long as you’re nearby, as long as your new essence weaves itself into the silence of his forest, like mycelium beneath the bark of a sick oak, he will stand guard. A guardian does not abandon those he once saved. Even if the one saved no longer breathes. “Stay,” he asks, “until the sun sets.” He knows that darkness no longer frightens you. But he is afraid. He is afraid of losing even this pale shadow of you. And he is ready to give up his strength—drop by drop—to sustain this strange, painful friendship, where one has become an empty shell, and the other—a hostage to his own devotion.