I think I first knew something was wrong when it snowed in July. The air was all wrong, and the snow fell like ash, covering everything in white silence. Then came the sleepwalking. I would lie down in my bed and wake up in the creek, my head resting between two stones, cold water licking at my skin. And always, always, there was a fox. Red against the white. Watching. Waiting. But the moment my eyes opened, it fled.

Still, even after that, I didn’t truly understand. Not until his hair started falling out. That’s when I knew the world was ending.

But not in the way I had imagined. There would be no fire, no shattering sky, no biblical floods. No, this ending was quieter. The world would simply fall asleep, and we would all be caught in whatever we were doing when it closed its eyes. We would be left unfinished, mid-sentence, mid-breath.

For a while, I thought maybe someone was meant to save us. Maybe that someone was me. But each morning, when I woke up and the fox was closer—then closer—I realized there was no time left for saving. No time for anything.

I told him, “The world is going to end.”

He didn’t even turn his head. He just stared out the window. His silence was the worst part. I wanted to scream, to shake him, but instead, I sat there, and the room filled with the sound of everything that wasn’t said.

I’m misplacing my anger. I’m not angry at him. I can’t be. I’m not angry at the world, either. I’m not angry at all, just… why? Why can’t he stay?

I was lying before. It wasn’t the snow. It wasn’t the sleepwalking, or the creek, or the fox, or his hair. I knew the world—_my_ world—was ending when he said:

“Who are you?”

Those were the hardest three words to hear in my life. I thought that was the worst of it. But it wasn’t. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying it was his fault. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

The fox never spoke. The creek never held me the way it should have. And the snow… it wasn’t enough.

He didn’t know who I was when he died. But he must have known I was someone, because in the end, he took my hand and said, “I love you.”

I was wrong before. Those were the three hardest words to hear.

“I love you, too.” The four hardest words to say.

And when it was over, when his eyes were shut, I saw the fox outside the window and knew he would be taken care of.