The next morning, Mara didn't wait for dawn. She lit the stove before the sky had changed from charcoal to blue and carried her steaming tea up the cliff path. The wind was sharper today, the kind that tugged at the hem of your coat like a warning. She climbed anyway.
At the lighthouse, she stood beneath the blinking beacon and watched the horizon breathe in darkness.
She wasn't waiting for a signal this time. She was waiting for a person. A voice.
Theo.
The man in the snow.
His message had looped once again that morning, barely audible through the weather static. But it was real. She wasn't imagining him. And that was both exhilarating and terrifying. Someone else was out there, still fighting, still human, still listening.
Mara walked back home slower than usual. Her legs felt like glass rods, fragile with anticipation. She spent the morning fixing the broken hinge on her greenhouse door and planting early spinach in Cal's old wooden planters. But her thoughts stayed on the voice.
By late afternoon, she sat again at the shed's workbench, an envelope in hand, though she no longer needed to write on paper to record. Still, she wrote. Maybe one day, she'd meet this voice. Maybe she'd hand him all the letters and say, "Here. This is everything I was, before I knew you existed."
In the Arctic compound, Theo was burning the last of the lamp oil when her reply came through.
The voice was stronger today. Less static. Maybe the atmosphere was shifting. Maybe the solar interference was dying down. Or maybe—just maybe—the world wanted them to connect.
"If you hear this — tell me your name. Tell me where you are."
He smiled.
He hadn't smiled in weeks.
He walked to the console, fingers stiff with cold, and pressed RECORD.
"Mara. My name is Theo Arlen. I'm... well, technically I'm a climate analyst, or I was, before all this. I'm at Outpost N-23, somewhere north of Svalbard. The last plane never came, and the others evacuated.
I stayed. I thought I had more time.
I didn't think anyone would still be speaking into the dark.
But you were. You are."
He paused, then added quietly:
"Thank you."
The messages became daily. At first short, then longer. At first practical, then personal.
Mara told him about the town: how the people in the valley below had started using barter to survive; how the church bell rang every Sunday even if no one went inside. She described the community garden, the twin girls who tried to charge rocks as batteries, and the way foxes had reclaimed the supermarket loading dock.
Theo told her about the auroras — how they danced like green fire across an otherwise colorless sky. He described the loneliness of a place where even his own breath sometimes startled him, and how he had named the generator Francine because it hummed in B-flat.
They told each other about childhood memories, favorite books, irrational fears, and places they wanted to see if the world ever came back.
Each message stitched something back together inside them.
Two weeks later
Mara sat by the window, sunlight pouring across her kitchen floor, half-listening to Theo's latest message.
"I had this dream last night," he said, his voice crackling gently. "You were standing on the edge of a field. It was full of wild sunflowers, even though I've never actually seen sunflowers in person. But you were there, holding something. A letter, I think. And I wanted to run toward you. But every time I stepped forward, the field just got longer."
He hesitated.
"I woke up smiling, anyway."
Mara laughed softly, brushing tears from her cheeks. He never said anything too obvious — no declarations, no confessions — but something in his voice was starting to echo where Cal's once had. Not the same pitch, not the same tone. But the same... presence. The same anchor.
And it scared her more than she expected.
The next morning, the signal didn't come.
She waited. All day.
Nothing.
No message. No click. No static hum.
Just... quiet.
Mara spent the night pacing the shed like a storm trapped in a bottle. Her mind ran through every worst-case scenario: the generator failed. The station collapsed. He got sick. He fell asleep and didn't wake up.
She tried to rationalize it. One missed message didn't mean anything. Maybe a storm. Maybe interference. But her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
The following day, still nothing.
She sent her own message anyway:
"Theo... I'm not sure if you can hear me. I hope you can.
You didn't check in today. Or yesterday.
Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe it's nothing. But if it's not—if you're hurt or sick or… worse—please know you've changed something in me.
I don't know how much longer I'll keep broadcasting without you.
But I will try."
Miles away, Theo was alive.
But he wasn't at the station.
And the reason had nothing to do with storms or power failures.