Golden Hour Ghosts

Dust motes danced in the last light, same as the memories. This field… it wasn’t always gold. Just like him.
He found me amidst the wreckage of a life I barely remembered—a ghost haunting abandoned markets, scavenging for scraps of hope. He didn't flinch at the scars etched onto my soul, or those hidden beneath layers of worn cloth.
His hands, calloused and strong from rebuilding what was broken, now traced patterns on my skin with a tenderness that felt… wrong. We both carried too much ruin within us to deserve something gentle.
But he’d leave little things – a salvaged bloom pressed between the pages of a waterlogged book, a chipped ceramic bird placed near my sleeping pallet. Small embers in the vast darkness, reminders that beauty still existed.
Last night, he held me while I wept for everything lost, his touch a quiet promise against the howling wind. It wasn’t forgiveness I needed, or redemption. It was just… warmth. And maybe, just maybe, a flicker of something new.

Editor: Rusty Cog