He didn't answer right away. For once, he actually paused.
"This," he said finally, softer now. "Talking to you, walking with you, just getting to look at you... moments like this. That's how I treat myself. Being with you is a privilege."
His gaze drifted briefly to the lake, the trees, the quiet around us, then back to me and added,
"Just sharing the same space as you, April... it feels like something I got lucky to have. It feels like warmth I can rest in."
I didn't know then how tightly I would hold onto those words, or how much I would come to need them later.
Chapter 19: Ash and Altitude
The call came just after dawn.
"Station Four, possible ignition on the north ridge. Likely lightning residue from last night's storm. Small fire, but unstable terrain. Hartley and Moss are tied up on search and rescue—hiker off-trail near the falls. You're closest."
I was already pulling on my gear before the radio finished speaking.
The north ridge wasn't just a reported fire zone that morning. It had become a dual emergency site after last night's storm—lightning had ignited dry brush along a slope I had already flagged as structurally unstable, and the drainage corridor beneath it had a history of partial collapses during heavy rain. Station Four sent me in not only to contain the fire but to assesswhether the ridge itself was at risk of failing and cutting off the only access route to the hikers near the falls.
Smoke met me before I even saw the fire. There was a thin and uneasy thread rising from the brush. The wind carried it across the slope in uneven breaths, and beneath it the ground felt wrong. It was soft in places it should have been firm and hollow in places it should have been solid.
By the time I reached the access point, the fire had already begun to spread in slow, deliberate pulses through dry brush left brittle by weeks of neglect. It wasn't large yet, but it didn't need to be. The ridge itself was the real problem and the slope beneath it holding tension like something waiting to give up.
I radioed in my position and began cutting a fire line alone, settling into the steady physical rhythm of the work. For a few minutes, it was only heat, smoke, and movement. Then the ridge stopped pretending to be stable. It shifted first in sound, a deep low groan rising from beneath the surface as if the land were adjusting its weight. After that came the sensation, subtle at first, of movement where there should have been stillness.
And then it broke.
The ground beneath my boots fractured in uneven lines, the soil giving way in sections that collapsed into each other like a structure forgetting how to hold itself together. I tried to step back, but the slope had already decided otherwise. The world tilted sharply, violently, and for a moment there was nothing stable enough to hold onto—not earth, not air, not direction.
I remember the feeling more than the sight: the sudden absence of control, the way my body understood before my mind didthat I was falling into something that had already begun to move without me.
And then the fire changed. It wasn't just smoke anymore. It was heat rising from below the surface, drawn upward through exposed pockets in the collapsing ridge.
I tried to move, but the ground kept refusing me. That was when I heard him.
"April!"
Ellis.
I turned my head through smoke and dust just in time to see him coming down the slope with urgency that left no space for caution. His voice cut through the noise before anything else could register, sharp and strained as he called my name over the collapsing ridge.
"Don't move," he said when he reached me, already dropping beside me and bracing a hand on my jacket to steady me against ground still breaking beneath us. "Stay with me. Just stay with me."
He wasn't there by chance. Ellis had been deployed earlier that morning on a search-and-rescue operation for a missing hiker last seen near the falls. When radio updates confirmed the hiker's route intersected the drainage system feeding into the north ridge, the SAR team was pulled into the same emergency zone, overlapping directly with the wildfire response I was leading. That shift brought him onto the ridge at the same time the fire crews were holding the lower perimeter, waiting for my assessment before committing equipment into unstable ground.
Behind him, I could see firefighters and rescue units moving in controlled formation through the smoke, holding position at the edge of the slope while Calloway coordinated from below, ready to advance only if the terrain held.
Ellis kept his focus on me, his grip steady even as the ground shifted again.
"I've got eyes on both teams," he said quickly. "Fire crew's holding the base line, SAR is closing from the west. You're not alone up here, April. Just stay with me until they can move in."
Then the ridge gave up.
The earth beneath us fractured with a sound that felt too deep to belong to anything living, and the slope collapsed in sections that dragged everything downward with it. One moment there was ground, the next there was nothing but sliding debris and smoke.
Ellis tried to pull me back, but the movement of the land broke the space between us faster than he could close it. I remember the sensation of falling not as a single drop but as a series of losses, each foothold disappearing before the next could form. The ridge wasn't just collapsing outward; it was swallowing itself, and I was inside it when it did.
I hit ground that was no longer really ground. It shifted under me immediately, dragging me into a shallow pocket between broken rock and torn earth. For a moment I couldn't move at all. The pressure of the slope above me, the heat from the fire still feeding through exposed roots, the sound of collapsing stone all around me made it feel like the world had narrowed into something I couldn't breathe inside.
