To be, or not to be: That is the question-Band Of Brothers

It sits like a shadow, heavy and still,

A quiet echo that refuses to chill.

Each step forward it pulls you back,

A whisper of choices, the roads you lack.

But guilt is a teacher, not a chain

A chance to grow through the pain.

Let it guide, but not consume,

For even in regret, Flowers bloom.

-Poetic Solace 

Three days had passed since their small group set out into the forest.

The air had grown dry with the lack of moisture, heavy with the scent of crackling wood and pine. The distant calls of birds and the rustling of unseen creatures filled the silence around their makeshift camp. Kiran had taken to this place better than she'd expected.

As a child, her parents would sometimes take her and Zineb to the Moroccan countryside, to a place called Skoura. It was nothing like the towering streets of New York City or the sweltering heat of Georgia, yet it held its own kind of vastness.

Her grandmother, Mama Mbarak, owned a single-story house there—a kasbah in Darija or tighremt in Amazigh—but she rarely stayed put. She belonged to the land, traveling with a nomadic group from the Souss tribes, following the rhythm of the seasons. Kiran had only glimpses of those days, fragmented memories of golden seas and endless skies.

"Your blood likes to run free," Mama Mbarak would say, voice warm with knowing. "But the road is long, and haste leaves the traveler lost."

And perhaps she was right. Out there, beneath a vast and indifferent sky, Kiran had learned the harsh truths of survival—how to track water, how to move with the land, how to hunt when the earth seemed barren. She still remembered the slow, steady sway of a camel beneath her, the creak of leather and rope, and the wind carrying the scent of dry earth and distant rain.

Even though this forest was nothing like the desert, it held the same lonesome peace.

The men had grown on her, and maybe her on them or so it seemed. They followed her lead and treated her with respect, even when she wasn't entirely sure of herself. Of course, she never showed it, but the inkling fear of being seen through never quite left her. They obeyed her commands—though there was a running joke about her youth.

Still, it surprised her. How they listened.

But what surprised her even more was Winters' growing absence.

She had noticed it first in the way a pale, sickly color dragged across his face the day after they'd set out. He had looked drained when he turned in for the night—tired, sweating—so Kiran had quietly taken his watch on top of her own. There was no point in worrying the others if it turned out to be nothing.

But today, he looked worse.

As if his body was tearing at the seams.

He still commanded them—moving camp, finding the riverbank—but the moment the words left his mouth, he withdrew. His eyes had that faraway look, the kind that unsettled something deep inside Kiran. He hadn't said anything. Not to her, not to anyone. But she was sure they had all noticed.