The angry gouges into the earth that the tornado had made an entire year ago were no longer the bare, naked streaks of ripped apart dirt they’d been before. Enough time had passed that grass and wildflowers had grown over the path of destruction and in that, there was something beautiful. It was the same lesson he felt life was constantly shoving under his nose and forcing him to keep seeing. There was always good, even when he was certain there could only be bad.

He turned his cheek to glance down his body, looking over the pink-scarred skin that ran up the length of his back hip and leg, then huffed a small amused breath before rolling his eyes and looking forward again. Zevulun supposed if he could come back from a wildfire started by lightning, a bear attack, a tumble down into a ravine, and a tornado literally attempting to tear his home into two…

Well, there wasn’t much he couldn’t come back from.

Zevulun started to walk, pace slow as he trailed in the bottom of the little valley the tornado had carved through what had once been a large hill.

Though, he supposed, even if he could come back from all of those things, continuing to survive didn’t lessen the heaviness of his heart. No, that still sank rather firmly down, only lifting briefly when he was among his family and able to distract himself by what was happening presently. When he was alone (as he was now) his mind would wander, and it unfortunately had many, many sorrowful, worrisome places to go. Too, if his mind couldn’t find itself distracted by current troubles, the litany of past tragedies and lost lovers was long enough to keep him occupied for days.

In those moments it was best to do as he had learned to do over the past few years. For every dour thought that rose in his head, he was quick to latch on to something that could argue hope. It had been that very strategy that had seen him clamber from the ravine and take back the Prairie just a few years back, and it was the one that kept him bound to his home now, no longer leaving its borders to travel anywhere else. He had everything he needed here.

Large roots snaked and protruded from the ground in the hillside to his left. He came to a slow stop and glanced over at it as he had a few times now as he walked this path. It was one of the many trees that’d been uprooted, only this one was still half-caught in the dirt. Zevulun had enjoyed bringing his new children over to show them what a tree looked like in the ground, and he smiled then, thinking along the same lines as where his thoughts had been this afternoon.

Even something as tragic as a tree being uprooted and dying, roots exposed and unable to drink… to Zevulun, it had become a teaching moment for his children so they could better understand this world they lived in. He smiled briefly, but there was still something sad to the blue of his eyes that the smile couldn’t quite shake away.