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00. DAY 237
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EVERY DAY THAT PASSED, Meg's guard slipped down a little. She could feel it, knew that it was a bad thing, but also that it was simply inevitable. You don't see a man for a while and you can safely—figuratively speaking, that is—play invincible.
The ranger post had clearly been uninhabited for a few years by the time they reached it, a week ago to the day. There was a fireplace with an abandoned bird's nest in it, and a sofa had been left untouched despite the rest of the furniture being turned upside down and ransacked. A set of scratches was etched into the wood in the backroom where Meg assumed a cot of some kind might have been, once. Now, the backroom was empty and contained only a small table with the drawer pulled out and spit in half down the middle.
It didn't matter that the fireplace didn't work, anyway. They wouldn't be lighting a fire—the snow made everything wet, and that meant all the wood would smoke and act as a signalling beacon to any idiot within a hundred mile radius of the cabin.
Instead, Meg set up the sleeping situation the way she usually did. The canvas tent was pitched over the couch, a set of whatever bedding she scavenged from a cupboard over the top with Tuna and Meg asleep inside.
By day six in the ranger post, Meg was no longer waking from a short nap with a racing heart, ears pricked up to listen for signs of intruders. She even let Tuna come with her when she went out for food. They hunted a couple of hares, but this late into Fall, as Winter took its first breaths, it was difficult to find anything that wouldn't be a hassle to lug back to the cabin.
