The River Doesn’t Ask

“Some grief doesn’t break you with noise. It just waits by the river and lets you realise you’re already cracked.”

Compelled by a mixture of fear and a desperate need for clarity, I pressed on alone. Paul didn’t follow—perhaps couldn’t. I barely registered whether he called after me. My heart thudded against my ribcage with the blind insistence of something trying to escape, to outrun whatever truth waited ahead. The dust clung to my feet as I wove between the tents, the canvas flaps whispering in the breeze like they knew things no one wanted to say aloud.

Every step felt heavier than the last, as though the ground itself were conspiring to keep me from reaching the river. My palms were clammy. My throat, dry. Time distorted—everything too quiet, too sharp.

And then I saw him.

Jamie sat at the water’s edge, the river flowing past with indifferent ease. His frame was slouched forward, shoulders hunched in a way that made him look smaller than I remembered—as if the grief had compacted him, folded him inward. His legs dangled in the river like they belonged to someone else, ankles submerged, trousers clinging damply to his skin.

But it was what he held that stopped me in my tracks.

At first, it was just an indistinct bundle in his arms, obscured by the angle and the soft movement of his hands. My mind raced to fill in the gaps—hopeful, delusional. But then the light shifted. A breeze stirred the fur.

Duke.

With each step closer, the scene settled into horrible focus, and the realisation hit like a blow to the sternum. I gasped—sharp, involuntary—my chest tightening as if the air itself had conspired to crush it. My eyes stung instantly, a raw ache building behind them, unshed tears gathering without permission.

"Is he–?" I asked, my voice cracking on impact. The words barely made it past my lips. They didn’t need to. The question lived in the silence between us, swollen with dread, with knowing.

Jamie’s eyes lifted to meet mine. Red. Swollen. Hollowed out in that particular way only true grief can manage. There was no answer in his expression—only confirmation. A silent echo of the weight I already carried.

He didn’t speak. Just kept stroking Duke’s fur in long, steady motions, the way you might soothe a sleeping child or a frightened animal. But there was no fear left in Duke now. No resistance. Just stillness. The kind that has nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with endings.

The silence was unbearable. Not because it was empty, but because it was full—saturated with the absence of breath, bark, movement. The kind of silence that makes your ears ache, that presses against your skull with the presence of what’s no longer there.

Duke, once all motion and mischief, reduced to this quiet. This unbearable stillness.

And Jamie—still holding on, because letting go would make it real.

In that heartrending moment, the world seemed to shrink to a pinpoint—the place where Jamie sat, cradling the still body of the only creature in this strange place who always greeted me without judgement. Everything else—the camp, the noise, the past twenty-four hours—receded like a tide, leaving only the raw, exposed shoreline of grief.

I knelt beside him without thinking. The dry earth scraped against my knees, grounding me in the moment with its coarse insistence. My hand found his shoulder—solid, trembling—and I gripped it tightly, as if he were the only thing tethering me to the world. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t need to. My presence wasn’t intrusion. It was... understanding. A quiet solidarity forged not in words, but in wounds.

My other arm reached round him, hesitant at first, then firmer, wrapping him into an embrace that was half instinct, half desperation. He leaned into it, just enough to let me know he didn’t want to be alone either. The tension in his body didn’t break, but it shifted—like a bridge sagging under weight, finding new equilibrium.

There, beside the river, our tears fell unchecked, mingling with the gentle current lapping at Jamie’s feet. The sound of water moving—constant, oblivious—was the only witness to the unravelling.

Grief is rarely tidy. It doesn’t move in poetic arcs or give you room to prepare. It simply cracks you open. And in that moment, clasping Jamie like a lifeline, I felt something in me tear—quietly, irreversibly. The emotions I’d stitched down tight over the last day—the panic, the confusion, the guilt, the aching need to feel safe somewhere—came rushing to the surface in one breathless surge.

I buried my face into the crook of his neck, inhaling the salt of sweat, the faint musk of dog fur, and the acrid sting of sorrow. I didn’t sob. I just shook.

Please, don’t let me go, Jamie. Not yet.

The words echoed inside me, silent but deafening. Not a romantic plea. Not even about Duke—not entirely. But about the world unravelling, about needing something—someone—fixed in place while the ground buckled beneath us.

The intimacy of it, the small human weight of sharing devastation, felt like a fragile sanctuary. Not escape. Just pause. Just breath.

A stolen moment in which the darkness, for once, waited.