Embers and Pride

"Turns out sharing feelings is harder than hauling concrete. At least with concrete, no one laughs when you get it wrong."

The fire was dying.

I watched the flames shrink, the logs settling into themselves with soft cracks and sighs, the warmth retreating inch by inch. Soon there'd be nothing but embers, then ash, then darkness. The thought should have bothered me more than it did, but the whiskey and the exhaustion had combined into a kind of numbness that made everything feel distant and unreal.

I closed my eyes, trying to push away the coils of unease that had wrapped themselves around my thoughts. The questions about Joel, about safety, about who else might be out there — they were still there, lurking, but I was too tired to chase them anymore. Tomorrow. I'd deal with it tomorrow, when my head was clearer and the world made marginally more sense.

Deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The rhythm of it was almost soothing, a small anchor in the midst of so much chaos.

The log beside me shifted suddenly, the rough bark scraping against my arm. My eyes flew open just as my body tipped backward, balance gone, and I found myself sliding off the log and onto the dusty ground with a graceless thump.

"Glenda!" The name came out sharp, frustration cutting through my voice. "What the hell!"

She was perched on the log I'd just vacated, her lips forming a silent apology. Her hand reached toward me, offering to help me back up.

"Glenda!" Paul's hiss came from somewhere to my right, low and urgent.

Glenda jumped, visibly startled, her eyes going wide as she spun toward him. I grabbed her outstretched hand more to steady her than to pull myself up, my fingers closing around hers as she found her balance.

Paul's chuckle broke through the tension, a grin spreading across his face in the flickering light.

"Sorry," he whispered, not sounding sorry at all.

"No, you're not," Glenda shot back, but there was a smile tugging at her own mouth, softening the moment.

I hauled myself back onto my feet, brushing dust from my jeans — a pointless gesture, given that everything I owned was already coated in the stuff. Glenda had settled onto the log properly now, her earlier tension apparently forgotten.

"You don't like the tent?" I asked, nodding toward the medical tent she'd disappeared into earlier.

Her expression shifted, something more serious replacing the lightness of the moment before.

"Actually, there's something I think we should do as a group first."

I raised an eyebrow, curiosity prickling despite my exhaustion. "What is it?"

"Gratitude."

The word landed flat, unexpected. I stared at her, waiting for the punchline, for some indication that she was joking. When none came, I let out a short, skeptical laugh.

"Gratitude?"

"Hear me out," Glenda said quickly, cutting off whatever else I might have said.

I fell silent, more out of surprise than agreement. The firelight played across her features, casting half her face in shadow, and there was something in her expression that made me want to listen despite my instinctive resistance.

"It's something my father taught me. I've done it every day since..." Her voice caught, the words trailing off into silence. I watched her throat work as she swallowed, her eyes glistening briefly before she regained control. "It's become a nightly tradition for me."

She moved as she spoke, lowering herself to the ground near the dying embers of the fire. The heat must have been fading, but she knelt there anyway, her knees pressing into the dust, her hands resting on her thighs.

"Come join me," she said, looking up at us with an expression that was part invitation, part challenge.

I glanced at Paul, expecting him to make some excuse, to wave off the idea with a joke or a dismissive shrug. Instead, he just gave a small shrug and lowered himself to the ground beside Glenda, folding his long legs beneath him with a soft grunt.

Right, then. Apparently we were doing this.

I hesitated, my mind churning through objections. This felt too... something. Too earnest, too vulnerable, too much like the kind of thing people did in self-help groups or church basements. I wasn't good at this stuff. Wasn't good at opening up, at sharing feelings, at any of the touchy-feely bullshit that seemed to come so naturally to other people.

"It's okay," Glenda said, sensing my reluctance. "We're not praying or anything."

That settled it, somehow. I lowered myself to the ground on Glenda's other side, feeling the dust shift beneath my knees, the lingering warmth from the fire barely reaching my face. The three of us formed a loose semicircle around the embers, our shadows stretching out behind us into the darkness.

"I'll go first," Glenda said, her voice calm and steady. A pause, and then: "I'm grateful for life."

The words hung in the air, simple and profound. I knelt there in the silence that followed, staring into the darkness beyond the fire, acutely aware of my own discomfort. The awkwardness sat heavy on my shoulders.

Should I say something? Was I supposed to respond, or wait, or—

The minutes stretched out, each one feeling longer than the last. The fire crackled softly, the only sound in the vast emptiness that surrounded us. I could feel Paul and Glenda waiting, their patience a kind of pressure that made my skin itch.

Finally, Paul spoke.

"I'm grateful for the river."

His voice was low, almost reverent. The river. That impossibly blue ribbon of water cutting through all the brown and red, the only source of life in this barren wasteland. It made sense, I supposed. Without it, we'd have nothing to drink, nowhere to wash, no—

Glenda's elbow connected with my ribs, a sharp nudge that made me flinch.

Right. My turn.

But what the hell was I supposed to say? What was there to be grateful for in this nightmare? I'd been ripped away from everything I loved, dumped in a world that made no sense, forced to watch a dead man come back to life and a lagoon do things to my body that I still couldn't process. Grateful? For what?

The elbow came again, more insistent this time.

My mind raced, grabbing at fragments, discarding them just as quickly. The sleeping bags? The whiskey? The fact that I hadn't died yet? Nothing felt right, nothing felt true, nothing—

A third jab, sharp enough to make me wince.

"I'm grateful for Uncle Jamie."

The words came out before I could think them through, blurted more than spoken. And they were true, I realised as soon as I'd said them. Despite everything — the weirdness with Joel, the secrets about the lagoon, the uncomfortable conversations — Uncle Jamie was still family. Still the one familiar face in this whole mess, the one connection to the life I'd lost.

Paul's hand flew to his mouth, but he was too slow. The chuckle escaped, soft but unmistakable.

Something snapped inside me.

The sound was small — barely more than a breath, really — but it landed like a slap. Here I was, kneeling in the dirt, trying to play along with this stupid gratitude game, forcing myself to be vulnerable in a way that went against every instinct I had, and Paul was laughing at me.

I was on my feet before I'd made the conscious decision to move, frustration and embarrassment and anger all tangled together into something hot and sharp.

"Kain, I'm sorry," Paul called out, genuine regret in his voice.

I ignored him. My feet were already carrying me away from the fire, away from the circle, away from the whole bloody charade. Past the fading glow of the embers, past the tents, out into the darkness that swallowed everything beyond the reach of the flames.

The night air was cooler than I'd expected, fresh against my flushed face. I walked without direction, without purpose, just needing to move, to put distance between myself and the humiliation still burning in my chest.

I barely registered the change in terrain until it was too late.

My foot came down on nothing. The ground vanished beneath me, and suddenly I was sliding, tumbling, my arms pinwheeling uselessly as I tried to find purchase on something solid. Dust filled my mouth, my nose, coating my tongue with that familiar taste of wrongness.

"What the fuck!"

The words tore out of me as I hit the bottom of whatever slope I'd just fallen down. Pain shot through my hip where it had connected with something hard — a rock, maybe, or just packed earth. I lay there for a moment, stunned, staring up at... nothing.

Darkness. Complete, absolute darkness, the kind that presses against your eyes and makes you doubt whether they're even open. No stars, no moon, no distant glow of campfire. Just black, endless and suffocating.

Panic clawed at my throat.

"Oh, shit."

I scrambled to my hands and knees, my fingers digging into loose dust, my breath coming in ragged gasps. Which way was up? Which way was back? I couldn't see anything, couldn't orient myself, couldn't—

There.

A faint glimmer, barely visible, somewhere above and to my left. The campfire. It had to be. The dying embers, casting just enough light to create the smallest hint of orange against all that black.

I climbed.

My hands clawed at the slope, dust sliding away beneath my fingers, my muscles screaming in protest. Every few feet I slipped backward, losing ground, having to start again. The panic was a living thing in my chest, a wild animal thrashing against my ribs, making it hard to think, hard to breathe.

But I kept going. Kept climbing. Kept my eyes fixed on that tiny spot of warmth in the distance, the only proof that there was anything in this world besides darkness and dust.

When I finally crested the slope and stumbled back toward the camp, my lungs were burning and my legs felt like they might give out at any moment. The fire had shrunk even further in my absence, reduced to a handful of glowing coals that barely pushed back the night.

Paul sat alone on his log, his figure outlined by the fading light. Glenda was gone — retreated to her tent, probably, tired of waiting for me to sort myself out.

I didn't say anything. Just lowered myself to the ground near what remained of the fire's warmth, my body aching, my pride in tatters. The dust was soft beneath me, almost comfortable if you ignored the fact that it got into everything, coated every surface, filled every crevice.

I lay on my back and stared up at the void overhead. No stars. No moon. Just emptiness, vast and impenetrable, stretching out forever in every direction.

The loneliness hit me then, harder than it had all day. Paul was right there, close enough to touch, but the distance between us felt infinite. We were strangers, really. Thrown together by circumstance, united by nothing except shared misfortune.

I thought about Glenda's tradition. Gratitude. The idea still felt foreign, forced, like wearing clothes that didn't fit properly. But there was something to it, wasn't there? Something about focusing on what you had instead of what you'd lost, about finding small lights in the overwhelming dark.

Movement beside me. Paul's sleeping bag landing on the ground with a soft rustle, close to where I lay. His footsteps retreated, and then there was just silence again, broken only by the soft settling of the dying fire.

I stared at the sleeping bag for a long moment. Dark green fabric, practical and unremarkable. Warmth, when the night grew cold. Comfort, when the ground pressed hard against my bones.

A small thing. But small things were all we had.

I reached for it with trembling hands, pulling it from its case. The zipper was loud in the quiet, a harsh sound that seemed to echo off the surrounding dunes. I stripped down to my underwear — the jeans were still gritty from earlier, stiff with dust and dried sweat — and crawled inside.

The fabric wrapped around me, soft and close. I tucked the edges under my chin and lay there, cocooned in borrowed warmth, staring up at the starless sky.

"I'm sorry, Kain."

Paul's voice came out of the darkness, quiet and sincere. The apology I'd been too angry to accept earlier, offered again now that the heat had faded.

I let out a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. The frustration was still there, but it had softened somehow. Worn down by exhaustion, maybe, or just by the weight of everything else I was carrying.

"I'm grateful for the light," I said finally.

It wasn't much. Wasn't profound or meaningful or any of the things Glenda probably hoped we'd come up with. But it was true. In this place without stars, without moon, without any of the familiar markers that told you which way was up and which way was home — the light mattered. The fire, however small. The promise of morning, however distant.

I closed my eyes and let the sound of the dying embers carry me down into sleep.

Tomorrow would come. And somehow, I'd face it.

But for now, there was warmth, and darkness, and the small comfort of knowing I wasn't entirely alone.