I felt it when she first took me to the forest: she belonged here. Alma adored the multi-stemmed alders growing by the green water, the ivy strangling gnarled oaks, the rotten smell of decayed wood, and the compelling silence that hung like mist between the trunks.

            “I love being here,” she said, that first time, when we explored every detail of each other's bodies like a complex map of a medieval city. “But I also feel that it's best not to stay here for too long.”

               She was right. Every twig that cracked beneath our feet, every plant we trampled, every gulp of oxygen-rich forest air we breathed, felt like a dishonor to this place, which was so much older than us.

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