Twenty-five years ago, I self-published The River of Rain, a philosophical exploration of freedom, human nature, and the modern world. To mark its anniversary, I’m releasing a fully revised edition, one chapter every Wednesday. This is the novel as it was meant to be. Continued from Chapter 7.
Using his sense of direction, Victor cut back through the woods and reached the cave in less than half an hour, just as the sun began to drop. The cold worked against him the whole way, needling through his cloak. By the time he arrived, his face was flushed from it.
Ariana was where he had left her.
Relief came quickly, quiet and steady. She was sitting up now, wrapped in layers of blankets, her shoulders hunched against the chill.
“What is it?” she asked, studying him. Something in his expression had given him away.
“Nothing,” he said. At least nothing he meant to share. If she knew how close the police were—how close everything he had left behind might be—what would she do? The thought stayed with him as he climbed up and sat beside her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better,” she said, though a cough followed the word. “That pine soup did the trick.”
He let out a short laugh at the first thing she’d said that sounded like a joke. It lingered a moment longer than it should have. Still smiling, he looked at her, searching her face, wondering if what had passed between them the night before still held any weight.
He rested a hand on her knee, through the blankets.
Something in her shifted. Her expression pulled away, distant, uneasy.
“Do you like me at all?” he asked. His voice had changed without him noticing—quieter, tighter. His chest felt too small to hold his breath. He wanted her to say yes. Needed it, in a way he didn’t understand. She was everything he had once turned his back on, everything he had tried to leave behind.
She answered softly, almost as if she were speaking from somewhere else.
“As a friend.”
The words landed clean and final.
For a moment he didn’t move. Then something gave way inside him, sudden and complete. The forest had worn him down, tested him in ways he thought would break him, and never had. This—just this—did.
He pushed himself back, unsteady, his footing slipping on the stone. He slid down the limestone wall and hit the ground a few feet below. The air left him in a rush.
Where was Ingram?
The thought came sharp and unbidden as he pulled himself upright, his legs unsteady beneath him. He leaned against the wall, trying to steady the tremor in his hands.
Where was that bird?
Ariana saw it the moment the words left her—the way Victor’s gaze emptied, as if something had stepped out of him and not come back. The pain was there, plain as anything, and stronger than she expected. Didn’t he understand? she thought. They could never be anything more. How could he not see that?
And yet she felt it too.
She felt it when he slipped from sight and slid down the rock. She felt it in the low, strained sound that followed. From the beginning … before she trusted him, before she even understood him … there had been something else beneath it all. A pull she hadn’t named. The night before had made it real, stripped it of excuses. That was why she had said it. As a friend. It was the only shape she could give it, the only safe one.
He didn’t belong to her world. That alone should have been enough.
But the truth unsettled her more than the thought of him ever could. She did like him. Not the way she had meant to say, not in any way she could explain without unraveling something in herself. The realization came on sudden and clear, like a light flaring in a dark room. For the first time, she saw a part of herself she hadn’t known was there.
She didn’t like what she saw.
Victor shut his eyes and pushed forward, as if he could outrun the feeling. It shouldn’t hurt like this. He tried to reason it down, to break it apart. What did she matter? What could she possibly mean to him?
The more he pressed it away, the harder it surged back.
His knees weakened. For a moment, it felt as though the ground might give out entirely. He wanted something to shatter—anything. The world, himself, it didn’t matter. Let it all come down. Let them find him. Let the police drag him out, beat him, end it—
The thought struck and held.
The police.
It snapped him back, sharp and sudden. His senses cleared, one by one. Strength returned, not steady but enough. The idea of them finding this place—his place—after all this time hardened something in him. The pain shifted, thinned, and then gave way to something else.
Anger.
He forced her from his mind. There would be time for that later, or none at all. It didn’t matter. What mattered was what was coming.
He straightened against the stone, breath settling into something usable again.
He would be ready.
Whatever came, he would meet it. Even if it ended him, it would not take him without a fight.
Ariana watched Victor change.
He moved through the cave with a hard, driven focus, as if something had taken hold of him and would not let go. He built crude barricades near the entrance, dragged stones into place, sharpened lengths of wood into stakes. He worked the shafts down to points, bound them, tested their balance. Arrows? It looked less like preparation and more like a final stand.
What unsettled her most was how quickly it happened. A short while ago he had been unsteady, hollowed out. Now he moved with a cold precision, almost mechanical. He did not pause, did not speak. He simply worked.
As the hours passed, something in her shifted as well.
The fear she had carried since the beginning thinned and then slipped away, replaced by something steadier. Respect, first. Then a reluctant admiration. She watched the way he handled each task, the quiet certainty in his movements. Even his rough, worn appearance no longer struck her the same way. It was as if, in recognizing something new in herself, she had begun to see him differently too.
She drew the blankets closer and let the thought settle.
Enough of the hesitation, the half-answers. She would stop holding herself apart. Whatever this was—however strange, however wrong it might seem—it was real. She allowed herself a small, private smile. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt something close to peace.
Victor wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to make out his work in the dim light. The cold wind found its way into the cave again, but it no longer bothered him. The labor steadied him. In a few hours he had done what might have taken a day.
He pushed everything else aside.
The girl. The pain. None of it mattered now. Tomorrow the police would come—he was certain of it. A search party, maybe more than one. Ten men, twenty. It made no difference. He would be ready for whatever came through the trees.
The thought settled over him like something inevitable. It brought with it a strange kind of clarity. For the first time in years, he felt fixed in place, as if the path ahead had already been chosen. If this was how it ended, then so be it. At least it would mean something. At least it would not pass unnoticed.
He let the thought go before it could take root.
Sleep mattered more.
He climbed the rock face to the plateau where he usually lay, intending to keep his distance. In the morning, he would tell her to leave—to run while she still could. The cave had gone dark, the fire burned low. He felt his way along the wall until he reached the straw.
Something shifted beneath his hand. “Ariana?” he whispered, leaning closer.
Her face caught what little moonlight filtered in. She was smiling. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” she asked, lifting the furs in quiet invitation.
Victor stilled, his breath catching, his eyes widening before he could stop it.
Continued in Chapter 9…
M.A. Kleen 
What are your thoughts?