Even with his eyes closed, he sensed daylight. Lying perfectly still, he listened. Birds twittered and squirrels chattered, wood shifted with a soft thud in the stove. A pan scraped across a burner. The slight, not-unpleasant odor of propane mingled with the soft, sweet breeze floating over him. Forcing his eyelids open, he saw rough-hewn log walls and an open door. Turning his head, which hurt as if the very devil himself had set up residence in it, he glanced around the one-room cabin not unlike so many others common to Alaska’s wilderness. A barrel stove in one corner, his clothes draped across a rope strung over it. One multi-pane window above an aged wood table where the sunshine streamed in. Turning a bit farther, he found his angel. Standing in front of a two-burner stove, which looked older than the hills themselves, she was a tiny shape under exceptionally baggy, faded blue jeans and flannel shirt in colors of light blue, pink and white. Hair the color of cherry wood, curly and wild, fell to her shoulders.
