Chapter 5 Shared Ground

We stayed longer than we meant to.

The sun had shifted by the time I noticed it, light thinning through the trees as the afternoon wore on. The forest didn't press in the way it had at night. It felt almost companionable now, like it was listening rather than watching.

I sat back against a low stone, knees drawn up, while Oisín remained where he was, close enough that I could feel his presence without having to look at him. There was an ease to it that surprised me. We had no history to lean on, no shared childhood, no expectations to meet.

"That's why people talk," I said eventually. "Because there's nothing else to do."

Oisín gave a faint, noncommittal sound.

"The town's small," I continued. "It feeds on itself. Everyone knows who you are before you've decided it for yourself."

He glanced at me then. "And who are you meant to be?"

I smiled, though it didn't quite reach my eyes. "Someone agreeable. Someone who doesn't cause trouble. Someone who stays."

The last word lingered.

He looked back toward the trees. "They don't like people who leave either."

"No," I said. "They like people who want to leave even less."

That earned a short breath of laughter from him-surprised, as if it had escaped without permission.

We talked then, not about anything important at first. About neighbours who pretended not to see one another in the street. About the way the priest spoke as if guilt were a shared language. About how everyone swore things were better now, because the country was free.

"Independent," Oisín said, tasting the word. "That's what they call it."

I nodded. "My father says it like he's convincing himself."

"Mine used to," Oisín replied. "Before he stopped talking much at all."

Silence settled again, heavier this time but not uncomfortable.

"When I was younger," I said, "I remember the adults going quiet when the radio came on. Especially if it was about the North."

His jaw tightened slightly. "Same."

"They'd lower their voices," I went on. "As if we couldn't hear them anyway. As if not saying it aloud would keep it from crossing the border."

"And now?" he asked.

"Now they pretend it's not their problem," I said. "That it's contained. That violence knows where it's meant to stay."

Oisín picked at the dirt with his fingers. "Violence never stays where it's told."

I studied him then, really studied him. The way he carried himself like someone used to watching for danger. The way his eyes tracked movement without effort. Protective, always. As if the world were something that had already proven itself unreliable.

"Do you ever think," I asked quietly, "that all of it seeps into the ground?"

He looked at me sharply. "What do you mean?"

"All the unrest," I said. "The wars, the famines, the grudges no one admits to carrying. As if the land remembers even when people pretend not to."

He was silent for a long moment.

"My father said that too," he admitted. "That the land holds on to things. That it knows who's loyal to it and who isn't."

I felt a strange warmth spread through my chest at that-not comfort exactly, but recognition.

"I don't want to stay," I said suddenly.

The words surprised me with their force.

Oisín didn't look shocked. He only nodded, as if I'd finally said something honest.

"I don't think I do either," he replied. "But leaving doesn't always mean escaping."

We sat there, two people shaped by the same place in different ways, bound by something neither of us had asked for. The forest hummed softly around us, alive with small sounds, indifferent and attentive all at once.

When Oisín finally stood, he offered me his hand without hesitation.

I took it.

For a brief, disorienting moment, it felt like the ground steadied beneath us-as if the land itself approved of the connection.

I didn't mention it.

Neither did he.

And that was how I knew this was becoming something more than coincidence.