You come back from the far pasture with the sun still hanging low and mean over the scrubland, turning every fence post into a black spear on the ground. Your horse, Relámpago, moves with the tired patience of an old friend who knows the road better than you do. The dust sticks to your boots, your shirt, your throat. Out here in the north, the land teaches a man how to keep going even when his heart stopped wanting to.
Since Elena died three years ago, that is mostly what you have done. You wake before dawn, you feed cattle, you mend what breaks, you eat whatever is closest to your hand, and you sleep only when your body knocks you unconscious. Your family ranch sits between dry hills and stubborn mesquite, an inheritance of hard earth and harder silence. It used to feel like home. Now it feels like a place where grief clocks in before sunrise and never leaves.
