Eventually they came to a clear pool with a fallen log in it, and Mara could see through the water where trout hovered in the shade of the log. In another life, she would have loved to sit there on a warm evening, fishing and enjoying the solitude, watching clouds slide over the trees. Instead they sat to eat. Ashley unwrapped the bundle of smoked bear, took a piece, and handed the rest to Mara. Two of the strips were stuck together, and when Mara pulled them apart, she saw they had started to mold. She closed the bundle quickly.

The pool was as good a place as any to camp, and maybe the best they would find for the night. The moss around it was thick and cool. Mara rinsed her feet in the water, and tendrils of blood and dirt swirled through her fingers. She washed Ashley’s, too, rubbing her soles and blistered toes. Ashley didn’t wince. She stared blankly at the water. Then she curled in a ball, slowly, without a word.

Mara lay behind Ashley on the moss, put an arm around her. Something crawled on her leg, and she brushed it off. A few mosquitos buzzed around her face. Dusk. Somewhere people were switching on their lights. Putting leftovers back in the fridge. Lighting candles and drawing a bath.

She wished desperately that they had a bed. A king bed with white sheets and a fluffy down comforter, the kind that swallowed you, and way too many pillows, so many that they got in the way. She missed the gentle warmth of a comforter. It was nothing like the pulsing heat of a fire or the scratchy padding of straw, and struck her now as miraculous. What did it take to make a comforter? Growing cotton for the cloth, spinning and weaving it thread by thread into a fine, fluid thing, gathering the down from geese, and all those minuscule stitches holding it together. You could go into any store and find a stack of them, packaged, ready to buy with a plastic card. As if humanity had a surplus of comforters, handing them out anywhere but here. And mattresses? Mara didn’t even understand mattresses. What was foam? Leave me here for a decade, she thought, for a lifetime, and I’ll never make anything half as extraordinary.

If they were in a hotel, they could sit on an extraordinary mattress, under a warm and downy comforter, and order room service, and someone would prepare a meal and bring it right to the door. Maybe even to the bed if they asked for it. They could lean on fluffy pillows and eat spaghetti with a fork and watch television that wasn’t about them. Mara hoped she might dream about being in a hotel, but her dreams were empty. She woke to Ashley squeezing her arm.

“Do you hear that?” Ashley whispered.

Mara heard the usual sounds. Movement in the dark.

“There’s nothing.”

“No. It’s big.”

“Are you sure?”