When Everything Fell Silent | Paul Lahote

Paul Lahote - Female reader

In my heart, the rain never really stops.
It only changes its rhyth.
Some losses arrive like a storm-loud, violent, impossible to ignore. Others seep in quietly, settling into your bones until you forget what it felt like to be warm. I learned that grief doesn't ask for permission. It takes, and it leaves behind a silence so heavy it reshapes you.
I came to La Push thinking I was running away. From memories. From empty rooms. From a life that no longer made sense. What I didn't know was that this place-the forest, the ocean, the people bound to it-had a way of seeing straight through you.
I didn't come looking for salvation.
I didn't believe in fate, or destiny, or the idea that some connections are written long before we understand them. Some fires don't ask to be lit.
They simply burn.