Prologue

"At least take the boy. If you have a heart, take the boy."

The woman stood in the doorway, not pushing her way into the cabin that used to reside in snowy woods, now a garden of dirt and sticky residue. The moon created waves in the ash, turning it into an organism waiting for one wrong move.

It was beautiful.

"Fine, I'll take the boy. But there's no room. I'm beyond capacity as it is."
"Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Don't thank me. I'm doing you a favor. You have no idea how much trouble this little shit is going to be."

The woman held her smile weakly. The initial let go was nothing. She knew what had to happen. She knew she didn't have long, maybe until sunrise. Her legacy, whatever that may be, would not die tonight. She felt as if the meaning to her life was this single point in time.

She felt it in her bones, her teeth. She felt it in her lips as they closed for the final time.

George nodded. His beard pushed down against his black and red flannel work shirt, stained and with holes in places. His hair was in a permanent crescent, parted on the right, white as the snow that used to lay on the ground. He took the five year old boy and pushed him inside.

"Mommy!"

A small girl pulled him away by his wrist, whispering that it'd be okay. The boy had tears that continuously fell down his face, but his cries were now silent. George had never seen a child weep in the way the boy did, but pushed his back so he would stumble towards the girl of the same age.

The boy peeked a look out the door, at his smiling mother and then at the bearded giant to his right before looking back at the girl. She had a button nose, with a blue checkerboard pattern dress. The dress had a single pocket sewn across the breast, in which she kept nothing.

George looked at the boy and then at the woman. He blinked slowly, as if to pull in whatever emotion he had developed. His head fell as he closed the door on the stranger, now parted from her flesh and blood. She stared at the door for a long while. The wood was worn and the cracks told their own story. She knew she was this wood, and she could not take care of her son.

She turned around, smile gone. She took a step off of the porch of the cabin and walked towards the never ending maze of broken, charred trees. How they were still standing were miraculous. The woman put her hand to one of the trees, forever warm.

The sun would be up in a few hours. She didn't want to be found this way.