Campfire

“Stillness can be generous—but only if you’re brave enough to sit in it.”

Sitting cross-legged in the dust beside Paul, I found, for the first time all day, a rare and fleeting moment of tranquillity. The light was beginning to thin, the sky overhead painted in slow strokes of amber and indigo as the sun melted into the far reaches of the horizon. Shadows stretched long and soft across the landscape, casting a melancholy sort of beauty over the arid terrain.

Before us, the fire crackled steadily, its flames licking and coiling around the remnants of our meal. Paul's empty paper plate, now consumed by the fire’s hunger, curled at the edges before disintegrating entirely into glowing embers. The smoke rose in a slow, deliberate spiral, disappearing into the evening air as though offering up a quiet prayer.

I exhaled, a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. The heat of the flames, the rhythmic sound of burning timber, the simplicity of sitting without expectation—it all worked on me like balm. My features softened involuntarily, the tension I’d been wearing like armour all day beginning to dissolve from my jaw, my brow, my shoulders.

The tent we’d erected earlier now stood behind us, humble and patched together but sturdy enough to shield us for the night. The task of setting it up had been a quiet ritual of sorts, our movements synchronised without the need for words. Paul, attentive and attuned, had intuitively understood that I needed silence more than comfort, presence more than platitudes. It was a grace I hadn’t anticipated from him—one I hadn’t thought to want—but it settled around me like a well-worn coat.

Together, we had pulled canvas taut and hammered pegs into the baked soil, neither of us mentioning the sobs I hadn’t quite managed to hide earlier, nor the emotional wreckage they had left in their wake. He gave me that space, and I took it, gratefully.

Afterwards, I had turned my focus to the practical: sorting and relocating supplies. With a quiet, deliberate energy, I transferred food and medical essentials into the new tent, stacking items with a methodical care that gave structure to the disturbance inside me. Every fold of cloth, every twist of a lid, was its own small, grounding act.

While I worked, Paul had attended to the fire. I’d watched him from a distance as he gently fed it, coaxing flame from smoulder, building it with the same quiet patience he’d shown me. Now it danced between us, casting our faces in gold and orange, lending the dust around us a strange, amber glow. The flames seemed almost sentient in their movements—flickering, flaring, then dipping low before rising again—as though they, too, were trying to find their rhythm in this unfamiliar place.

In that firelight, amid the soft murmur of flames and the quiet vastness of the Clivilius dusk, the world no longer felt quite so raw. For the first time in what felt like hours, maybe even days, the frantic pulse of living eased, and something gentler crept in. Not peace exactly, but an echo of it.

Now, as the evening settled around us, with Jamie still lost to the world of sleep, it was just Paul and me sitting in the quiet. The fire held our attention—its hypnotic dance a welcome distraction from the drama that had filled the day. Around us, darkness pressed in, not threatening, but vast and unknowable. The fire carved out a small circle of certainty in an uncertain world.

I found myself absently tapping my empty plate against my knee, the dull thud a rhythmic counterpoint to the crackle of the fire. It was an old, unconscious habit—a remnant of long hospital shifts and too many coffees gulped between trauma calls. After watching Paul's plate reduce to ash, curling inwards like a burnt leaf, I made the decision to let mine follow. I tossed it into the flames. The plate caught quickly, flaring up before collapsing in on itself, its brief existence extinguished without ceremony. The momentary flare mimicked the adrenaline surge that had carried me through the day's trials—intense, fleeting, and now dissolving into embers.

But peace was elusive. My fingers soon began to twitch again, dancing restlessly across my thighs. The tension that had been momentarily eased now coiled again, low in my chest. It didn’t matter that the fire was warm, that Paul’s presence was comforting—my mind refused to settle. Images of Jamie’s injury, the screech of pain, the splinter, the dog’s bite, Luke’s departure… they cycled endlessly behind my eyes.

Paul’s question, gentle and laced with concern, pierced the veil of my internal turmoil.

"Everything okay?"

His voice carried an openness that invited honesty, but I couldn’t bring myself to give it. Not fully.

"Ahh, yeah," I replied automatically, my tone too light, too quick. The lie was paper-thin, but I hoped it would hold.

My hands rubbed along my thighs again, as if motion could chase away the unease that curled there. I knew Paul could see it—the tension, the way my body betrayed what my voice tried to conceal.

"You sure?" he pressed, not unkindly. His voice remained steady, sincere. "I'm here if you need to talk."

The offer lingered between us, a lifeline I wasn’t ready to take.

For a moment, just a breath, I considered accepting it. Telling him the truth. Letting it all spill out—the grief, the fear, the isolation that had crept in through every crack of my resolve. I imagined what it might feel like to let someone in, to not carry all of this alone. But the thought withered almost as quickly as it had formed.

He wouldn't understand, would he?

How could he? The weight I carried wasn't just medical, or emotional. It was layered with Earth, with my father, with Pierre, with the knowledge that I no longer belonged to the world I’d come from, and wasn’t yet rooted in this one either. I was suspended—adrift.

"I need to check on Jamie," I said instead, my voice composed, my smile faint. A pivot, neatly executed.

The movement to stand was brisk, too brisk perhaps, but it served its purpose. I needed to move, to shift focus, to step away from the vulnerability his presence stirred. The tent—dim, quiet, and familiar—offered an escape, and for now, that was what I needed more than conversation.

Making my way to the tent, the dust of Clivilius clinging to my trousers went unnoticed, a trivial concern against the backdrop of our current reality. The fine, ochre-coloured grit, which had earlier seemed a nuisance, now felt almost symbolic—an unavoidable residue of this world, settling into the folds of everything we carried, both physical and emotional.

Standing outside the tent’s entrance, I paused. My shoulders sagged slightly, the weight of the day pressing down on them as if the very sky above Clivilius had grown heavier. I cupped my hands over my mouth, not to hide from anyone, but as a quiet gesture of self-comfort. The warmth of my breath against my palms was grounding—an affirmation that I was still here, still breathing, still functioning, even as the ground beneath me had long since stopped feeling solid.

With eyes closed, I drew in a deep breath, then another, the cool night air drying the inside of my throat but doing little to ease the tension that curled in my chest. I was trying to summon something—strength, resolve, calm. Maybe all three. Each inhale was a silent plea for composure. Each exhale, a small surrender to the truth that I could not afford to fall apart. Not now.

The offer of support from Paul lingered in my mind, a quiet echo that followed me from the fire to here. His words, sincere and gently spoken, had struck something within me—a reminder that, despite the fortress I often built around myself, I wasn’t entirely alone. There were people here, now, willing to shoulder pieces of the burden if I allowed them. But the decision to keep my worries to myself, to keep my mask of competence firmly in place, wasn’t just about pride. It was about survival. I didn’t know how to crumble safely. The idea of vulnerability—real, exposed vulnerability—felt too dangerous, too irreversible.

Perhaps I’d spent too long in hospitals, in crisis wards and emergency rooms, where composure was currency and cracks were only allowed in private. Maybe I'd spent too long being the one people leaned on. Even here, even now, it was easier to focus on the responsibilities that tethered me to purpose—on Jamie’s care, on the practicalities of medical intervention—than it was to confront my own unravelling.

As I stood there, just outside the flap of the tent, the silence of Clivilius stretched around me. Not the suffocating silence of isolation, but the contemplative kind—a silence that listened. That watched. That bore witness.

The brief moment of solitude, with its sharp edge of reflection, was a reminder of the strange dance we were all performing—balancing closeness with distance, connection with caution. In the face of shared adversity, every interaction became layered, every choice coloured by survival instincts and the desperate need for meaning.

And yet, when I reached for the tent flap, it was not with hesitation but with intent. Jamie was in there. My patient. My focus. The tether I needed.

I could not unravel. Not yet.