Chapter 22 A Silent Pact

• The foxes followed her.
• Not too close, not too far. Just enough for her to feel their presence behind her, their faint paw prints dotting the snow in a winding trail as Lucy made her way back toward her house. The streets remained empty, the thick snow dulling the sound of her steps. She kept glancing over her shoulder, half-afraid that at any moment they’d vanish back into the frost and shadows. But each time she looked, there they were.
• The injured one limped, a stiff hitch to its gait, while the other trotted beside it as if guarding its weaker companion. There was a strange, fragile comfort in that sight. Lucy hadn’t realized how badly she needed it — to witness something alive still moving through this dead, frozen world.