Burnout doesn't come with a fire. It comes with erosion. Nora had woken one Tuesday to find the inside of her mouth tasted like a spreadsheet. It made no sense. She hadn't cried in weeks. Her muscles felt unused and yet incredibly fatigued. The say it takes an awfully long time to recover from that.
So she left.
A four-day solo hike. No signal, no slack, no curated wellness podcast telling her to breathe. Just pine, moss, rock, and a vague notion that walking might reorganize her. She packed too lightly - as lists were out of the question, she didn't dare to look at her phone or take out her notebook. Nora assumed water sources would appear when needed - it was a well marked, popular hiking trail after all. They didn't.
By the end of the second day, the flask was empty. Nora's tongue was a dry stone. Her thighs ached. Still, she pressed forward, as if walking alone could undo the years of performative productivity in her current job.
She hadn't told anyone where she was going. That was part of the appeal. No tracker. No check-ins. Just this - a woman moving alone through a world indifferent to her mental exhaustion.
The forest was beautiful, but intense. Bracken tangled the path in places. Mosquitoes constantly circled the backs of her knees. The smell of the pines was so strong it almost stung - sap, resin, rotting bark, all baking beneath the late afternoon sun.
By the time night fell on the first day, Nora's thighs were trembling. She found a flat patch of moss and dry needles near a big pine tree and collapsed without even putting up her one-person tent. Ate a protein bar without tasting it, crawled up in her sleeping bag and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep for a few hours.
On the second day, the terrain turned from forest to elevation. The trail climbed - slowly, insistently - into thinner air and exposed roots. Her calves burned. The water ran out around noon.
She hadn't planned for this.
She had counted on fresh streams, but the one she'd marked on her map had dried to a muddy trickle. A few sips left in the flask, which she rationed like a fool. By late afternoon, she could feel the headache throbbing behind her eyes. Her mouth was all now indeed as dry as her last project calculation.
But more than the thirst, it was the disorientation that rattled her. The trail signs had thinned out, something she has not thought would happen. The air smelled different here - sharper, like coal and sun-warmed rock. She stumbled more often now. Her arms and legs were covered in fine scratches. One elbow ached from a fall she'd taken, trying to jump over a large rock ok the path.
By dusk, the forest opened - suddenly, stunningly - into a wide, silent mountain meadow. The grass reached her waist in places, golden and soft, bent by the wind. Wildflowers nodded gently in the breeze: buttercup, clover, violet lupine. Insects murmured. The air was warm and thick with pollen, perfumed like something on the verge of rot.
She swayed, blinking.
Her whole body was pulsing - not with pain, exactly, but with a kind of absence. Her mouth was so dry it felt sealed shut. Her limbs were distant, her breath shallow and too fast. Her chest ached where her sports bra cut into her ribs.
She dropped her pack. Let it fall heavily onto the grass.
Untied her hiking boots.
Fell to her knees.
Then, finally, she lay down.
The grass received her like a lover. She turned onto her side, curled around the ache in her empty abdomen. Sweat dried on her skin. Flies kissed her exposed arms and legs. She watched a hawk circle overhead, perfectly indifferent.
Just for a moment, she told herself.
Just to close her eyes.
Her lashes were gritty with salt. Her breath slowed. Her body gave up.
The meadow rose and fell around her like a sea.
She dreamt of hooves.
Not the sound of them. The presence. Something watching - not malevolent, but curious. A shape approached her through the long grass. It didn't part the stalks. It moved with them, like wind made flesh.
There was music. Faint, off-rhythm, a whistled tune. The smell of animals - fur, musk, old woodsmoke. She couldn't move. But she didn't want to. Her body was heat and weight and thirst and the unbearable nearness of something just beyond knowing.
A shadow knelt beside her.
She thought she saw horns.
She awoke with something in her mouth.
Water.
Cool, mineral. It flooded her tongue, pooled beneath it. She coughed - reflexive, grateful - and swallowed. The clay rim of a vessel pressed against her lips again. She drank. A thread of water escaped down her chin, soaking into her shirt.
Hands cradled her neck. Strong and yet gentle.
She blinked. Light haloed her vision, a white film. The sky was gone. Overhead now: rough granite, furred with moss. The air had changed - damp, earthen. Smelled of lichen and smoldered leaves.
A voice, soft and oddly formal:
"Don't sit up. You fainted. You were overheated, dehydrated."
She turned her head.
He crouched beside her, not touching her now. Watching. His clothes were simple - a linen shirt, the sleeves stained with grass, loose trousers. Thick ginger curls fell forward over his forehead, unruly and half-wild. His eyes were grey, piercing yet charismatic. He looked young, but not in the modern way. He had an agelessness to him. Like a statue softened by time.
"I found you in the grass," he said. "You weren't waking. I carried you here."
She sat up slowly. Her muscles screamed. Her tongue still felt thick.
"You carried me?"
"Yes."
He said it like it was nothing. She looked around.
The cave - if you could call it that - was shallow but dry. Someone had swept the dirt floor smooth. A shelf carved into the stone held several clay jars, a wooden bowl, a painted mug. Piles of books on the floor.
It wasn't a shelter for a camper. It was a dwelling.
"You live here?" she asked.
He nodded, but said nothing.
Outside the mouth of the cave, she could see the meadow. It shimmered now, golden in the late light. Had it really only been a few hours?
"You have a name?" she asked.
He hesitated. "You can call me Thane."
It didn't sound like a name so much as a role.
"I'm..." She hesitated. "Natalia."
He smiled at that. Just barely.
"You don't have to lie."
She flushed. Her real name suddenly felt irrelevant. From a life that belonged to someone else.
He offered her a round of hard bread and something wrapped in leaves. When she opened it, the scent startled her: dried peaches. She chewed slowly. Every fiber of her body awakened around the sweetness.
