THORNE POINT OF VIEW

The forest had never felt so quiet.

Not the peaceful quiet of a calm morning, but the kind of silence that settles after a storm has passed, heavy, watchful, as if the world itself was waiting for something to happen. For weeks, the small hut hidden deep within the woods had been both my refuge and my prison. The old man’s smoke curled lazily from the crooked chimney, drifting upward into the tall canopy of trees that shielded the clearing from the outside world.

Inside ...