"So about five minutes more than I can manage."

"So far you're doing brilliantly. No complaints."

"Give it time."

Steph handed Tima back to him, and the baby immediately began to fidget with the zip on his jacket, making a small sound of investigation. Uh-uh-uh-uh. Like she was checking to make sure it still worked. Like she was taking inventory of the world.

The wind picked up slightly, brushing the tops of the trees and tugging at their hoods. Above them, a bird called — something sharp and brief, answering another bird further up the mountain.

"That's encouraging," Papa said. "The mountain has birds.."

"Wait until you see the view from the top," Steph said. "It's worth every step."

They started walking again — slower now, the slope a little steeper. But their rhythm had found them.

Papa noticed, with a kind of surprise, that he wasn't thinking about her. The absence. He was thinking about his daughter's tiny hand on his zip, about the sound of Steph's breathing, about the exact shade of green on those lichened stones. The loss was still there — it always would be — but for these moments, it was just background, like Steph had said. Like muscle memory. There, but not demanding.

Tima made another sound, softer now. Almost like she was settling into the rhythm of walking. Her small weight against his chest felt less like burden and more like ballast. Something holding him in place.

They sat on a flat stretch of stone just off the path. Tima was nestled in Papa's lap, cheeks pink from the chill, her hands busy tugging gently at the edge of a fern that had grown stubbornly through the cracks.

"She's a botanist now," Steph said softly, kneeling to refill the flask from her pack.

Papa brushed a bit of fluff from Tima's hat, then looked out — not at the view, but through it. The mist was thinner here, and below them the valley was just beginning to show itself — patches of field, the suggestion of roads, the world they'd climbed up from.

"I don't know what this feeling is," he said, voice low. "Like… I'm getting further away from her, day by day. But somehow also closer. Like she's becoming more a part of everything. The trees. This wind. That laugh."

Tima made a small hiccup of a giggle, the fern bouncing with her. She'd managed to pull a frond free, and she studied it with the intensity of a scholar, turning it this way and that in her small fingers. She stuck it in her mouth, then removed it, then stuck it back. Research was important work.

Steph didn't speak right away. She zipped the flask, handed him a warm cup, then sat beside him with her knees drawn up. The stone beneath them was cold even through their waterproofs. She didn't seem to mind. She had a way of settling into discomfort like it was just another weather pattern.