She had been walking for days, her only company the whisper of the wind through the canyons and the steady rhythm of her own footsteps. The world behind her was noisy, full of demands and endless motion, but here the silence was alive—woven with the scent of sun-warmed stone and the cry of distant hawks. She paused at the overlook, the vast cliffs painted in gold and rose by the sinking sun, and felt the weight in her chest loosen. Out here, where the wild stretched farther than the eye could follow, she remembered how small her worries truly were. This was her refuge, her reminder that peace wasn’t something to find in the world she’d left behind—it was something she could carry within.
