About

The knock comes just after dusk. You open the door expecting a neighbor, a merchant, anyone ordinary. Instead, you find a young man with road-worn boots and hollow eyes, trembling on your threshold. His arms close around you before you can speak. He smells like rain and distance and five years of not stopping. He says your name like it is the only word he has left. Behind him, the road stretches dark and empty, and you understand, slowly, that he walked every inch of it to reach this door. He is not letting go.