They never said her name.

Not when she was pushed to the front of the general store like a sack of feed. Not when her father’s spit hit the dust, darkening it the way shame does, fast and stubborn. Not when the men on the porch leaned back in their chairs, boots hooked on railings, laughing like cruelty was a hymn everybody knew by heart.

They called her the heavy one. The extra mouth. The burden.

But her name was Clara Rowan, and if anyone had asked her, she would’ve said she liked sewing because the needle made order out of frayed things. She would’ve said she sang when the chickens were the only audience. She would’ve said she believed, stubbornly, in stories where love wasn’t a prize you earned by shrinking.

No one in Elmsfield, Kansas asked.

Elmsfield believed in trade. In ledgers. In who owed who. In the kind of righteousness that tasted like bitter coffee and left grounds in your teeth.

The winter of 1887 had been mean. Not dramatic-mean, the kind that makes poets write, but practical-mean, the kind that makes flour precious and kindness scarce. Clara’s father, Harlan Rowan, had borrowed money to keep their farm alive through the frost. Then he’d borrowed again to keep his pride from cracking. By January, his debt had grown so tall it cast a shadow across the entire property.

And when the man from the mine came to collect, Harlan Rowan did what desperate men do when they’ve run out of honest options.

He offered his daughter.

“Take her,” he said, loud enough for the whole porch to hear, as if volume could turn wrong into necessary. “She’s yours now. I can’t feed her and I can’t pay you. This is what I got.”

Clara stood beside him, cheeks burning. She kept her hands folded so no one could see how they shook.

The man from the mine wasn’t the sort Clara had imagined would claim her like a broken tool. He wasn’t broad-shouldered and grinning, eager to boast about the bargain he’d gotten. He wore worn buckskin and a simple coat with a tear at the cuff that had been mended carefully, not hastily. A blanket was rolled over his shoulder. A satchel rested at his feet.

He carried no rifle. No pistol. Only a knife at his belt, plain as a kitchen blade.

His face was quiet, unreadable. His hair was dark, braided simply, and his eyes were the kind that didn’t flinch when other people tried to make a sport of you.

The town called him something too, though they said it like they were spitting out a seed.

“Lakota,” one man muttered, as if the word itself was a dare.

“Looks like he’s got no band with him,” another said. “Just wandering. Like a stray dog.”

Clara didn’t know enough about the world to know the proper shape of that story, only that the way they said it made her stomach turn. Like they wanted the stranger to be less than a person so it would feel safer to treat him like one.

The stranger’s gaze moved once, slow, across the porch, across the faces that had already decided what he was worth. Then it settled on Clara.

Not on her body first. Not on the way her dress pulled tight across her hips, or the way her cheeks were rounder than the girls who giggled behind their gloves.

On her face.

On her eyes.

Like he was reading something written there.

Harlan shoved a length of rope forward, the kind used to lead mules. He didn’t place it in the stranger’s hand. He pressed it into Clara’s.

“Here,” he said, rough. “You’ll walk behind him. Like you ought to.”

The laughter spiked, sharp as cold air in lungs.

Clara didn’t cry. Not then. She could feel the tears waiting, hot and furious, but crying in Elmsfield was like bleeding in front of wolves. It only made people lean closer.

The stranger took the other end of the rope, not pulling, not jerking. Simply holding, as if he understood what it meant that she’d been given the tether.

He turned without a word.

And began walking toward the horizon.

Clara followed because there was nowhere else to go.

Behind her, her father muttered, almost kindly, as though he were explaining a weather change.

“You were never a wife anyway.”

The words struck the back of her skull like thrown stones.

She kept walking.

The town thinned out behind them. Laughter grew distant, then became only the creak of porch boards and the cluck of a lonely chicken. Dirt road turned to scrub. Wind pulled at Clara’s sleeves as if trying to peel her out of the life she’d known.

They reached the edge of Elmsfield before Clara dared to speak.

“You don’t have to take me,” she whispered. Her voice sounded small in the open air, like a bird trying to shout. “I’d understand. If you… if you changed your mind.”

The stranger stopped.

He turned, and when he looked at her, he didn’t look like a man who’d just purchased something. He looked like a man who’d been offered a choice and refused the shape of it.

“I don’t take,” he said.

His voice was low, steady. Not harsh. Not soft. Certain, like the ground underfoot.

“I choose.”

Clara blinked. The words didn’t fit anything she’d lived through.

He lifted his chin slightly, pointing with two fingers toward the sky where a hawk circled once, then caught a current and rode it east.

“That’s where I’m going,” he said. “If you want, you can come too.”

Clara’s mouth opened and no sound came out.

Was this another test? Another cruelty in a new costume? She’d been the punchline long enough to suspect every kindness had teeth.

But his face held no smile, no wink, no invitation to the porch men to laugh again. His eyes held only a calm that felt unfamiliar, like stepping into a room where nobody had yet decided what you were worth.

She swallowed, hard.

Then nodded.

They walked until the town disappeared behind them, swallowed by dust and distance.

For the first time in her life, silence didn’t feel like punishment.

It felt like space.

Space to breathe. Space to begin.

By sundown, they reached a ridge where cedar trees leaned like watchers against the pale sky. Snow lay in pockets, stubborn and gray, and the wind carried the scent of sap and cold stone.

The stranger built a fire with practiced hands, not rushing, not showing off. He didn’t ask Clara to gather wood, didn’t order her to do anything at all. When the flames caught, he unrolled his blanket and handed her a thick fur pelt that smelled faintly of smoke.

Then he offered her dried meat and a strip of cornbread wrapped in linen.

“Eat if you wish,” his nod seemed to say, though he used no words.

Clara sat cross-legged, unsure what to do with gentleness that didn’t demand repayment. Her stomach growled, loud, and she felt heat rise in her face, expecting mockery.

None came.

The stranger only set a flat stone near the fire and gestured toward it, showing her where to warm her hands.

That was the first kindness.

The second came when he finally spoke again, staring into the fire like it was telling him old truths.

“I am called Thalo,” he said.

The name landed in the air like something carved, deliberate.

Clara tasted it silently. “Thalo.”

He nodded once.

“I left my people two winters ago,” he continued. “Some say I am ghost-walked. Some say I carry bad luck.”

Clara’s gaze flicked to his face. “And what do you say?”

A pause. Then a shrug, small, honest.

“I say I am still walking.”

It made sense to her in a way logic couldn’t explain. Clara had been walking her whole life too, only in circles around judgment, around hunger, around the way people saw her body before they saw her soul.

Tonight, none of that followed them here.

Stars came out one by one like tiny bells hung in the dark. The fire popped, sending sparks upward, brief bright prayers.

Clara cleared her throat. “My name is Clara.”

Thalo repeated it softly, as if tasting the sound.

“Clara.”

It was the first time in years her name hadn’t felt like a joke waiting to happen.

She swallowed again, and the question she’d been holding all day finally pushed its way out.

“Why did you choose me?”

Thalo didn’t answer right away. He watched the flames, as if asking them whether he had the right to speak.

Then he said, “Because when they laughed, you did not cry. When they handed you off, you stood tall.”

His eyes lifted to hers, steady.

“That is not shame,” he said. “That is strength.”

Something in Clara’s throat tightened, painful and bright. Praise was a language she didn’t know how to speak back.

She stared at the fire and blinked fast until the world stopped shimmering.

Thalo rose and walked a little way into the trees. Clara’s heart thudded, old fear whispering that this was the part where she was abandoned again.

But he returned carrying a pine branch layered with snow. He laid it near her like a pillow, then sat down on the opposite side of the fire, arms crossed, eyes closing.

No demands. No expectation.

Only peace.

Clara curled into the fur, cheek against pine needles, and for the first time since childhood, her body didn’t feel like a burden.

It felt like hers.

In the morning, the scent of sweet smoke woke her. Thalo was already up, whittling a branch with quiet focus. A pot of water steamed beside him.

No barked command to rise.

No impatience.

Only room to exist.

Her stomach growled again, and Thalo handed her cornbread warmed near the coals. His gaze stayed respectfully away, as if hunger wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

As Clara ate, she watched his hands. He carved with a kind of tenderness that didn’t belong to someone the town had described as dangerous. The blade moved sure and gentle, coaxing shape from wood.

“What are you making?” she asked.

Without looking up, he answered, “A shape that tells the truth.”

She frowned. “About what?”

He glanced at her then, eyes dark and calm.

“About you.”

Later that day, they traveled along a creek half-capped with ice. Thalo stopped near a stand of cottonwoods, and Clara followed his lead, dismounting. Her thighs ached from riding. The cold made every joint feel older than it was.

Thalo noticed her wince. He nodded toward a log, offering rest like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Clara sat, exhaling, and that was when Thalo placed the carving in her lap.

It was a small figure of a woman, round and sturdy. The woman’s arms crossed her chest not in shame, but in defiance, like armor. The face was rough, unfinished, but unmistakably Clara’s.

Her breath caught.

“Why?” she whispered, fingers hovering as if touching it might make it disappear.

Thalo sat beside her, eyes on the creek.

“So you remember,” he said.

“Remember what?”

“That they gave you away,” he said slowly. “But the earth never did.”

He lifted his hand, palm open, toward the land around them. Hills. Trees. The long, patient line of the horizon.

“Nothing in nature begs to be small,” he said. “Not rivers. Not bears. Not the hills. You were made for space.”

Tears rose, hot and angry. Clara hated them for betraying her, but this time they weren’t born of humiliation. They were born of something she’d almost forgotten existed.

Relief.

“You believe all that?” she managed.

Thalo turned, meeting her eyes with solemn certainty. “I believe in what stands tall when others kneel.”

Clara clutched the carving to her chest like it was a promise.

The wind shifted then, carrying a scent that didn’t belong.

Smoke. And something sharper.

Thalo’s posture changed in an instant. He stood, head tilting slightly as if listening to the land itself.

“Someone is close,” he said.

Clara’s pulse jumped. “Who?”

Thalo didn’t answer. He kicked snow over their small fire, dousing it, and motioned for her to crouch low behind the log.

Clara obeyed, the carving pressed against her ribs. Her breath came shallow.

Voices drifted through the trees.

Male. Laughing. Unkind.

Two men emerged from the brush, boots crunching over old snow. One dragged a sack that left a dark wet trail. The other had a pistol loose in his belt and jerky in his teeth.

“Ain’t no one out here but ghosts and fools,” the one with the pistol said, chuckling.

“Bet that big one ran off with the mule again,” the other replied, and they laughed like the world owed them entertainment.

Clara’s stomach turned. She recognized that laugh. It was the same one from Elmsfield’s porch.

She glanced for Thalo and saw only shadow.

Then he moved.

Not fast the way men show off their speed, but fast the way a storm changes direction. Silent. Precise. He slipped behind a birch, blending into bark and winter light.

The men came closer. One sniffed the air, narrowing his eyes.

“Smoke,” he said.

The other turned, gaze sliding toward Clara’s hiding place.

“Well now,” he drawled, grin widening as he spotted her. “Ain’t that a prize.”

Clara rose, not because she was brave, but because she refused to be hunted like an animal.

“What you doing out here, sweetheart?” the man with rotted teeth asked. “Snow ain’t no place for a—”

His words stopped.

Thalo appeared behind him, blade pressed gently but firmly to his throat.

“Walk away,” Thalo said.

His voice was low thunder. Not angry. Final.

The second man reached for his pistol.

Too slow.

Thalo kicked his wrist with a clean motion, sending the gun tumbling into the snow.

“Next time,” Thalo said, “reach for your life, not your weapon.”

The men froze, then scrambled back, slipping over ice and pride, dragging each other into the trees without even a parting threat.

Clara stood trembling. The world seemed too loud after such quick silence.

Thalo retrieved the pistol, opened it, emptied it, and tossed the pieces into the creek like it was trash.

Then he turned to her. His jaw was tight, but his eyes stayed gentle.

“They will come back,” he said.

Clara nodded, voice thin. “Then we leave.”

Thalo’s gaze sharpened. “Not just leave,” he said. “We move like ghosts.”

That night, they rode hard through thicket and hollow, crossing creeks where moonlight flashed like broken glass. Thalo barely spoke, but his hand hovered near her stirrup whenever her exhaustion made her sway. He steadied her without touching more than necessary, offering support without claiming ownership.

When they finally stopped beneath a rocky overhang near dawn, Clara slid off her horse and nearly collapsed. Thalo built a fire without flint, coaxing sparks from stone and patience. Clara didn’t ask how. She was learning that questions weren’t always required for trust.

She stared at him across the flame, eyes gritty with fatigue.

“You knew,” she said softly. “You knew danger was close.”

Thalo nodded. “The land speaks before men do,” he replied. “It said trouble was walking nearby.”

Clara’s throat tightened again. “Why did you stay? You could’ve run.”

Thalo looked at her long enough that the silence became a doorway.

“Because the world already ran from you once,” he said. “I do not intend to do it again.”

Something inside Clara shifted, slow and deep, like thawing ground.

By the second week, her body was sore in places she hadn’t known could ache. Her hands blistered from gripping reins. Her thighs were raw. She had days where she wanted to sit down in the snow and let the cold have her, simply because exhaustion felt easier than hope.

But Thalo moved beside her like a steady star. Never pushing. Never leaving her behind. Teaching her to read river bends and bird patterns, to recognize thin ice by the way it held light, to find shelter by following elk trails.

He never asked for her story.

Not once.

And somehow, that made her want to tell it.

One night, under pine needles that whispered like old women gossiping, Clara finally spoke.

“My father used to count my meals,” she said quietly, staring at the fire, “by what the animals didn’t eat.”

Thalo didn’t interrupt.

“He had hogs,” she continued, voice tight. “I was… bigger than them. So when food was scarce, I got what they left.”

She hated the way the words sounded out loud. Like confession. Like proof.

Thalo’s gaze stayed steady. No disgust. No pity.

“When he got sick of looking at me,” Clara went on, “he traded me once before, to a man who couldn’t have children. That man said my voice scared the baby goats, so he tied me to a cart and left me in the snow.”

Her voice cracked. The memory was a bruise that never faded.

“You found me after that,” she finished, barely audible.

Thalo reached into his satchel and placed something in her hands.

A small carving, rough but graceful.

A bird.

“The wren,” Thalo said. “Smallest bird in the valley.”

Clara’s fingers trembled around it. “Why give me this?”

Thalo’s voice was firm, as if he refused to let her misunderstand.

“I did not carve it for you,” he said. “I carved it of you.”

Clara frowned, confused.

“The wren’s cry stops eagles mid-flight,” Thalo explained. “Not because it is bigger. Because it is true.”

Clara stared at the bird, seeing herself for the first time not as a burden, but as something capable of being heard.

“Why don’t you talk more?” she asked, a softer question.

Thalo glanced at the fire. “Because most people fill silence with noise or lies,” he said. “You fill it with truth.”

The wind shifted. Something inside Clara shifted with it.

A few days later, they found an abandoned cabin tucked in a grove where the snow didn’t reach the windows. The roof sagged but held. The chimney was cracked but fixable.

Clara stood at the threshold, heart stuttering.

“Can we stay?” she asked.

Thalo looked at her, then nodded.

Inside, Clara swept dust with her shawl. Thalo repaired the chimney with stones and clay, hands steady and patient. By dusk, they’d made it something close to home.

That night, Clara woke to a low growl outside.

Her hand went to the fire poker, but Thalo was already at the door, bow in hand. Two lean dogs prowled near the woodpile, eyes catching firelight.

Thalo stepped forward and spoke in Lakota, the words low and sharp. The dogs froze as if the sound carried an authority older than fear.

One lunged anyway.

Thalo didn’t flinch. He whistled, a wild, cutting sound, and the dogs turned and ran into the trees.

Clara stared at him. “What was that?”

Thalo didn’t look back. “Something my mother taught me,” he said. “Fears are loud. Authority is quiet.”

In the morning, Clara found a thick fur pelt laid across her blanket. It hadn’t been there before. Tucked inside was a tiny woven strip with her name stitched in red thread.

CLARA.

She ran outside to the creek where Thalo was fishing.

“You did this,” she said, holding it up like evidence.

Thalo didn’t deny it. “The women in my family did not wait to be rescued,” he said simply. “They made. They named. They stood.”

Clara’s voice dropped. “Then let me learn. Let me help.”

Thalo handed her the fishing rod. Their fingers brushed.

He didn’t pull away.

By sunset, Clara caught a fish the size of her hand. Thalo said nothing, but the faint flicker in his eyes felt like pride.

For the first time, Clara realized she wasn’t waiting to be taken anywhere.

She was already arriving.

Spring cracked the snow with slow rhythm. The creek ran louder. Birds returned and stitched music into the woods. Clara’s breath came easier. Her shoulders sat less hunched. She found herself humming while stirring stew, the way she used to hum when she still believed in gentleness.

Thalo carved figures at the hearth. Animals mostly. But one night, Clara saw him shaping something different. A woman, rounder than most, braid down her back.

Clara didn’t speak. She only watched, heart full and frightened, like happiness was a deer that might bolt at any sudden movement.

Then the wind changed again.

Clara stepped outside for kindling and saw three riders cresting the ridge.

White men. Ranch hats pulled low. Horses pacing slow like they owned the distance.

Clara didn’t wait to be brave. She ran inside.

“They’re coming,” she said, breathless.

Thalo stood at once. No panic. No questions. He took his bow and stepped outside.

They didn’t hide.

They stood in front of the cabin as if it was a claim neither of them would surrender.

Clara stayed just behind Thalo, gripping a kitchen knife so hard her knuckles went white.

The riders approached. The tallest grinned, the kind of grin that had never built anything in its life.

“Well,” he drawled, “ain’t this something. Fat girl from Elmsfield playing house with a—”

He didn’t finish the insult, but Clara felt it anyway, sharp as a slap.

“My father gave me away,” Clara said, voice shaking but steady enough to hold. “You don’t get to take me back.”

The man laughed. “Sweetheart, you were never meant to last this long.”

He reached toward his saddlebag.

Thalo’s bow was already drawn, arrow aimed at the center of his chest.

“You’d shoot a white man?” the leader hissed, suddenly unsure.

“Not if you leave,” Thalo said calmly. “If you stay, I do not miss.”

The other two men shifted, uneasy. One of them muttered, “Ain’t worth it,” and pulled back on his reins.

The leader’s eyes snapped to Clara, spiteful. “You’re nothing but shame, girl,” he spat. “You’ll die angry that no one wanted you.”

Clara stepped closer, until she was beside Thalo, not behind him.

“Then you can die angry,” she said, voice gaining heat, “that I stopped being yours to break.”

The men left in a storm of dust and wounded pride.

When the sound of hooves faded, Clara’s knees gave out. She sank to the ground, shaking.

“I thought they’d take me,” she whispered.

Thalo crouched beside her. His hand hovered, then rested lightly on her shoulder, a touch that asked permission even as it offered comfort.

“They cannot take what is already free,” he said.

Clara lifted her face, tears streaking her cheeks. “Am I free?”

Thalo nodded, eyes steady. “As long as you stay by choice.”

That night, Clara lay awake listening to the creek and the wind, and understood something she’d never been taught: protection wasn’t the same as possession. Safety didn’t have to come with a cage.

The next day, Thalo took her higher into the hills. They climbed to a ridge where tall grass bent in the wind like it was praying. Below lay a wide basin, quiet and sacred, where the buffalo had once roamed.

“This was my mother’s place,” Thalo said softly. “She brought me here before her last winter. She said the wind up here tells the truth.”

Clara sat beside him on sun-warmed stone.

“What does the truth sound like to you?” she asked.

Thalo paused, then said, “That you are more than what was done to you. That you are not someone’s punishment.”

Clara’s breath hitched. “They said I was shameful to look at,” she whispered. “That no man would want me unless he was broken too.”

Thalo didn’t look away. “Then let them stay blind,” he said. “You are a woman of strength, not apology.”

Clara turned her hand over on the stone, palm up, and Thalo placed his calloused hand in hers.

“Why do you live alone?” she asked.

“Because I wanted to be loud in ways that do not hurt,” he answered. “To live without needing to prove anything.”

They sat until dusk bruised the sky purple.

On the way down, Clara stopped, heart hammering.

“Thalo,” she said.

He turned.

“If I asked you to keep me,” she said, voice trembling, “not protect me, not save me, but keep me… would you?”

Thalo reached into his shirt and pulled out a small red cloth pouch, worn soft by time. From it, he took a thin ring carved of bone.

“This was my father’s,” he said. “I have never offered it.”

Clara’s fingers closed around the ring like it was warm.

“Then I would like to wear it,” she said, “not as proof I’m yours. As proof I chose you.”

Back at the cabin, there was no preacher. No witnesses except the fire and the stars. No paper to bind them in ink.

Only promise.

Clara slid the ring onto her finger. Thalo watched as if witnessing something sacred.

“This home is yours now,” he said.

Clara’s voice was steady. “Then let it be a home we build together, not one we hide inside.”

In that moment, she was no longer the girl discarded like a curse.

She was a woman seen.

The days that followed were stitched with slow grace. Meals cooked side by side. Wood chopped in rhythm. Laughter that began low and grew easier each morning. Clara no longer flinched at her reflection. Thalo never asked her to change. He simply made space for her voice.

One morning, Clara found an old shawl folded by the hearth, embroidered with Lakota symbols. Thalo’s gaze softened when he saw her touching it.

“It is for you,” he said. “If you wear it, the wind will carry your name across these hills.”

Clara wept, not because it was beautiful, but because it was the first gift she’d ever received that wasn’t pity wearing a polite mask.

Not long after, an elder from a neighboring band visited, greeting Thalo with a clasp of forearms and a look that held history. The elder looked at Clara and spoke in Lakota. Thalo translated gently.

“He says he sees in you a woman who returns light,” Thalo said.

Clara lowered her eyes. “I’ve only ever brought shame.”

The elder touched her cheek lightly, reverent. He spoke again, and Thalo translated.

“No. You carry storms,” he said. “And storms are how rivers are reborn.”

That night, Clara dreamed of Elmsfield. But it was different. She wasn’t begging at the porch steps. She wasn’t swallowing insults like dry bread.

She was walking through the town with her head high, seeing the people who had mocked her as small, not because she wished them harm, but because she finally understood: their cruelty had never been about her size. It had been about their hunger to feel larger than someone else.

The next day, Thalo took her to a quiet circle of stone deep in the forest, moss thick like memory.

“This is where we say what must be let go,” he explained.

Clara knelt and pressed her palms to the earth.

“I let go of believing I am ugly,” she whispered. “Of thinking I have to earn love by suffering first.”

She removed her old shoes, the ones her father had handed her before handing her away, and placed them on the stone.

“I will walk forward barefoot if I must,” she said. “But I will walk forward.”

Thalo stepped beside her and placed an eagle feather on the stones.

“I let go of silence that kept me small,” he said.

They left the circle together.

Lighter.

When summer warmed the cabin walls and turned the creek bright and quick, Thalo marked a circle in the earth outside their door with the tip of his knife.

“This is our ceremony,” he said. “Not by papers. By promise.”

Clara stepped into the circle, back straight, eyes clear.

“Then let this be the last day I feel unworthy,” she said.

Thalo smiled, not the half-smile of a man unsure, but the full joy of someone who had waited a long time to offer his life without fear.

Clara wore a simple dress of deerskin, hand-stitched with careful hands. Her hair was braided into two long ropes that swung behind her shoulders like banners of a new country.

After their vows, they returned to the cabin where stew bubbled and a newborn lamb bleated from a woven basket, gifted by a neighbor. Clara lifted the lamb gently, cradling it the way she once wished someone had cradled her.

“You’ll have a name,” she whispered. “Because I finally do.”

Seasons turned. Clara learned to fish and sew and speak her own truth without flinching. She began teaching young girls who visited how to stitch hems and hold their shoulders back when someone tried to fold them into smaller shapes.

She was still soft. Still wide-hipped. Still herself.

And no one mistook her for fragile.

One day, a man from Elmsfield arrived with a letter. His hands kept fidgeting like guilt wanted to run away.

Clara’s father had died, the letter said. He’d left nothing but debts, a ledger, and a note that read: Forgive me if you can.

Clara read it once. Then she held it over the fire and watched it curl into ash.

“I don’t need to carry that man’s name,” she said quietly.

Thalo’s eyes sharpened with something like tenderness.

“No,” he said. “You carry your own.”

Clara looked down at her hands, remembering how they used to shake. Remembering how she’d been tethered like an animal.

Then she lifted her chin.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

When children later asked how their love began, Clara didn’t tell them the ugliest parts first. She didn’t feed them shame like it was the only seasoning a story could have.

She said, “He saw me before I knew how to see myself. And when I whispered who I was, he listened.”

No story ever started stronger than that.

And no woman once discarded like a burden ever stood taller than Clara Rowan did, not because she became smaller, but because she finally took up the space she was always meant to hold.

Loved not in spite of who she was.

Loved precisely because of it.

THE END