📗 PART 4 – “Echoes by the Fire”
The fire had burned low by noon.
Agnes hadn’t moved from the rug. Her legs were stiff, her back ached, but none of that mattered.
Not while Bear still breathed.
His chest rose, slowly. Fell, slowly.
Each breath a little shallower than the last.
She reached out and placed her hand on his ribcage.
“Still with me, old man?”
He didn’t lift his head.
But his tail thumped once—barely audible against the woven rug.
It was all the answer she needed.
There was no vet visit this time.
No medicine. No more phone calls.
Bear had fought his last fight.
Agnes knew it.
And more than anything, he deserved peace.
She’d seen enough death in her time to know when a body was ready to go.
But Bear didn’t look afraid.
He looked… tired.
The kind of tired that comes from giving everything away and holding nothing back.
She stood with a grunt, walked into the kitchen, and made a bowl of broth.
Not too hot.
She crushed up a piece of jerky and stirred it in—his favorite kind, hickory smoked.
She placed it beside his mouth.
“One more for the road?”
He sniffed, gave a soft whine, and pushed his nose against her palm.
Didn’t eat.
Didn’t need to.
Agnes left the bowl. Maybe later.
She sat back down and stared at the wall above the hearth.
Old pictures hung there—faded, cracked with time.
Earl in his uniform. Their son, Danny, before the accident.
A photo of Agnes herself, young and grinning, in a red flannel coat Bear had once chewed a hole through.
The silence stretched.
It wasn’t cold.
But it wasn’t warm either.
Then something strange happened.
Not loud. Not sudden.
But soft. Familiar.
Bear let out a sound—not a bark, not a growl—more like a breath of memory.
A sound she hadn’t heard in years.
The same sound he made when he first curled up beside her bed after Earl’s funeral.
The sound of knowing she needed him more than she admitted.
She leaned in, pressed her forehead to his.
“You can rest, Bear. You’ve done enough.”
Tears came slow. She didn’t fight them.
Not this time.
Outside, the snow was still falling.
Inside, the blanket rose and fell, gently, gently…
Until it didn’t.
Agnes didn’t cry out.
She didn’t scream or beg.
She just sat with him a while longer.
Fingers tangled in his collar.
Eyes closed.
And for the first time in a long time, the cabin felt empty.
Eventually, she rose.
She folded the blanket back.
She smoothed down his ears, just the way he liked.
Then she reached into the drawer beside the stove and pulled out a small wooden box—the kind Earl once used for tackle.
Inside was Bear’s first collar. A broken whistle. A strip of ribbon from the kittens he saved.
She added a tuft of fur. One final keepsake.
Then she lit the lantern by the window and waited for the light to carry.
Because if there was anything Bear had taught her,
it was that some souls deserve to be remembered by firelight—
not silence.