Alias left them at the table and did not return for hours. By midday he had gone all the way down to the village.

He walked fast, as if distance could burn the rage out of him. In the bakery he bought bread he didn’t need. In the grocery shop, coffee, salt, soap — things anyone could have carried. At the post office he stood in line behind farmers, pensioners, students sending parcels. Their ordinary errands moved with a rhythm he no longer felt part of. His own packet — blank envelopes and stamps — he bought mechanically, without speaking more than he had to.

Back on the climb up, the weight in his rucksack felt absurd. Groceries, paper, nothing that could shield Pegged from what was coming. By the time he reached the treeline again, the light was already thinning.

That was where Amara found him, standing still as the snow began to crust.

“You’ve been out all day,” she said.

Alias didn’t turn.
“I had to leave. Couldn’t stay after that.”

She waited.

He leaned against a tree, the bag slipping from his shoulder into the snow. A loaf, a packet of soap half-spilled. His voice was quieter now, uneven.
“I tell myself I built something that doesn’t bend. But I do. I let myself want. And wanting her made her exposed. She carried Pegged further than I ever could with words alone. And my desire turned her into a target.”

Amara’s breath clouded in the cold.
“So you cut her off.”

“I told myself distance was protection. But it never stopped. Desire doesn’t fade. It’s the one thing I can’t lock down.”

He glanced at her then, face older in the pale light, shoulders trembling once before he mastered them.

Amara stepped closer and laid her hand on his arm. Not comfort, not absolution. Only presence.

They stood like that as the light slipped behind the ridge. His bag of groceries darkened with frost at their feet, forgotten in the snow.