The Place Between Worlds

The sky had no color. Just weight.Heavy and unspoken, like a secret pressing down on every roof, every lung.

Vince felt it before the others spoke of it—not in words, but in how their eyes moved.Less watching the snow. More watching the spaces between.

The air had changed. Not colder. That would've been easy.This was a stillness with teeth.

He stood by the edge of the half-wall shelter, cane in hand, watching the distant line of trees. The branches didn't sway. They leaned, braced. Birds were gone. Even the scavengers.

Behind him, the village moved slower. Not from weakness—but caution.They'd seen storms before.

The elder women tightened reed bundles at the doors.Branik walked the outer ring, testing poles with his shoulder.Maela set stones around the fire pit, stacking them closer, tighter.No one told them what to do. No orders. No arguments.

Just silence. And movement.

Eldan approached from the south end, shoulders dusted with fresh powder. He knelt beside Vince, traced a slow shape on the snow: a swirl, then a downward spike.

"Storm," he said.

Vince nodded once. "Bad?"

Eldan hesitated. Then drew three dots.One. Two. Three.

The third he circled twice.

"Big," he said.

Vince exhaled through his nose. The breath vanished in the cold.

No time for debate. No energy for panic.

Just choices.

He turned his back on the trees and walked toward the shelters—slowly, deliberately, pressing weight into each step. He passed the smaller huts, the smoke holes patched with bark and thatch. The footprints in the snow were soft-edged now, half-frozen, like memory itself was losing its shape.

A child peeked out from behind a fur curtain. Vince didn't stop. Just raised a hand—steady, two fingers—wait.

He passed Anelka near the storage pit. She handed him a wrapped cloth bundle. Dried roots. Too few. He nodded, didn't speak.

Everything in him wanted to shout—to call a meeting, to demand a count, to send someone running.

But they already knew.

They had seen it in the sky.

The storm wasn't coming.

It was already here.

Only quiet now remained.

The kind of quiet that came before something broke.

Snow whispered against the outer walls, soft but steady. The kind of sound that promised more behind it. Vince sat with his hands wrapped in fur, legs folded, eyes half-lidded—not from sleep, but from thought. The low fire cracked. A dry stick shifted, and sparks rose like embers remembering flight.

The food baskets had been weighed. Twice. Once by Eldan, once by Maela. Neither had spoken after. The root bundles had shrunk too far. The dried leaves were brittle as paper. Mushrooms, thin. Game meat—gone. One storm more would break them.

A meeting, silent and slow, took form in the main shelter.

Branik. Maela. Rhosyn. Brik. Ferren. Eldan. Vince.

No children. No mothers. No soft hands tonight.

Maela stood by the storage wall, her scarf wound tight in one fist. Her mouth moved, but she didn't speak at first. She let her hands do it. Swift, sharp sign.We move. Hunt again. Far. Risk. But food.

Brik nodded beside her, adding a gesture for strength, for blade. Rhosyn echoed the motion.

Branik crossed his arms and signed flatly: Storm worse now. No trail. No sound.

Eldan sat low to the fire, shoulders hunched. His voice came quiet, only when the silence stretched thin.

"We leave, we lose," he said. "We stay... maybe not."

Then he signed slowly, for Vince: Your choice.

Vince didn't answer right away.

He let the cold speak first.

He let the fire settle.

His hand curled over his knee, fingers twitching with thought.

And then—Naples. A memory. Not prison. Not death.

But a boy. Thin coat. Holes in his shoes. Streets wet with sleet. His aunt's voice, sharp but kind, whispering over a pot of near-empty broth: "Don't beg from the wind. It never gives what it takes."

He remembered lining his shoes with paper. Remembered the frost turning his breath to ghosts. Remembered the quiet hunger, the days when nothing came but wind and smoke and waiting.

His fingers moved—slow, deliberate.

No. No hunt. Not now. Not this storm.

Maela took a step forward. "We starve, then?"

Vince shook his head. Not anger. Not denial.

Just gravity.

"We ration. We hold. We wait."

She made a sound in her throat. A breath caught between defiance and fear. But she didn't argue.

Then Vince spoke, voice quiet and deep, each word drawn like a knife from memory.

"You don't gamble when the house is burning."

Eldan repeated it aloud, the rhythm odd on his tongue, but the message clear.

Brik nodded.

Branik didn't move.

Even Maela stood still.

Vince looked at the fire. "We survive this," he said, not as a hope. As a command.

And the others listened.

Not because he shouted.

But because he didn't need to.

That night, the wind rose like something waking from a long sleep.

No sudden scream, no blizzard's roar. Just the slow inhale of cold, the long breath before collapse.

Inside the central shelter, bodies packed close. Old reeds creaked. A patch of thatch gave a soft rattle with each gust, like bones whispering. The air held the scent of smoke, old wool, and quiet panic.

Ferren collapsed just past dusk, his hands still red from hauling frozen bark, his boots soaked. He didn't speak as he fell — just crumpled like a tree finally giving to rot. Rhosyn was beside him in moments. She didn't cry out. Just pulled off her own scarf, laid it beneath his head, and poured her last pinch of dried herbs into a cracked bowl of hot water.

She offered it like a blessing. He drank without opening his eyes.

Across the room, Anelka moved quietly. She didn't speak, didn't explain. She just lit the smallest fire — just enough to keep the frost from claiming fingers and toes. Shadows danced across the reed walls like ghosts trying to come home. The children didn't speak. They had learned the weight of silence.

Branik stood near the edge, arms crossed, jaw tight.

Vince rose without a word and nodded to him.

Together, they stepped outside.

The wind hit like a warning.

They walked the perimeter — slow, methodical, like men checking a grave's edge. No words. None were needed. Every gust stung. Every crunch beneath their boots might've been something cracking — ice, bark, hope.

When they finished, Branik grunted. A short, sharp sound — not approval, not complaint. Just acknowledgment. Vince returned it with a nod.

Then he stepped back into the shelter.

The warmth was thin. The breath of the fire barely reached the back wall. Still, they huddled close. Mothers with children. The injured. The stubborn. The hopeful.

Vince didn't go to the center.

He took his place near the door.

Wrapped in furs. Back straight. Eyes fixed on the dark beyond the flap.

No one asked him to.

But he stayed.

Guarding.

Watching.

Remembering the beast in the snow, and the way silence had teeth.

The wind howled louder now — like breath in a dying lung, wheezing through broken ribs of trees. Snow began to stack against the outer wall, soft at first, then heavier. It piled like regret.

And still Vince did not sleep.

Because some storms don't want to be survived.

They want to be witnessed.