What Was Left Behind, I

Weißer Hirsch was quiet.

Even the wind made little sound. Pines rose in slow, deliberate lines along the hills, their needles muting everything beneath them. The retreat village had once been a Roman outpost, or so a rusted sign near the station claimed. Now it served as a place for recovery—old men with weak lungs, children with crooked spines, windows who spoke to no one.

I stepped off the cart and onto the stone path that led toward the chapel. The driver tipped his cap and turned back down the hill. I hadn't told him where I was going. I hadn't needed to.

The streets weren't streets at all—just paths carved between homes and sanatoriums, all half-hidden behind fences draped in ivy. No one looked directly at me, but I could feel the weight of eyes from behind lace-curtained windows.

I asked a woman sweeping the steps of a bakery if she knew anyone named Clara Weiss. She didn't blink.

"She helps out at the orphanage," she said. "White building, near the edge of the forest. You'll pass the chapel on your way."

I thanked her and kept walking.

I walked until I found the orphanage. It was smaller than I expected. A whitewashed building with a wooden cross set above the door, nestled beside the edge of the forest. A woman swept the entry steps. She glanced at me, then looked away without a word.

"Excuse me," I said. "I'm looking for someone."

Her broom paused. "We don't take walk-ins."

"I'm not here to place anyone," I said. "I'm looking for a volunteer. A young woman. Clara Weiss."

She studied me. Not suspicious. Not curious. Just tired.

"She comes in the mornings. Not always. Some days she's at the retreat center."

"Do you know where I could find her now?"

A pause. Then she pointed toward a narrow road winding behind the chapel.

"She usually walks that way. Through the orchard."

I thanked her and moved on.

The path was softer here. Less cobbled, more dirt and pine needles. My boots left no echo. A breeze carried the smell of dried herbs and distant woodsmoke.

And then, just beyond the curve in the trees, I saw her.

She stood near a broken fencepost, her hair pinned back, sleeves rolled to her elbows, as she tended a row of winter dulled plants. She was speaking to one of the sisters—a short, round woman with a basket of roots.

I couldn't hear what was said. But I heard her laugh.

The sound reached me before I was ready.

I stepped off the path.

She didn't see me. Not yet. I didn't move closer.

But I felt something shift. Not inside me—between us. A tension in the thread that I ran beneath my ribs. A pull.

I took one step back.

The thread tugged forward.

Clara turned her head, eyes brushing over the space where I stood. Just a glance. Nothing more.

But she paused.

And in the moment, before she turned back to the sister beside her, I saw it in her expression—

Recognition.

Even if she didn't yet know from where.