Silas took the long, winding road down towards Canyon Lake, which stood at the bottom

of the mountain. The drive was quiet and he left his windows rolled down, feeling the

warm breeze of the summer night on his skin as the wilderness on either side of him

bustled with fireflies.

Every so often, he’d see a deer ambling along on the side of the road. They’d stare now

and then as his rickety truck went by, and some of the braver ones would make noises,

as if to scare someone off the road. The new bucks, Silas knew, would have the stumps

growing, marking the younger deer from the older ones, which were nowhere in sight.

Time had taught the older deers that humanity was particularly cruel to those who had

survived long enough to see the horrors it was capable of.