Chapter 2 – The Name in the Dirt
The cabin had burned a long time ago.
Its roof had fallen in, and the stone chimney leaned like a tired soldier. The trees nearby were blackened sticks. Smoke no longer rose from the ashes, but the scent of old fire still lingered in the air.
Naomi crouched at the edge of the porch, drawing something in the powdery dirt. Her finger moved slowly, carefully, like she had done this before.
MARIA
Thomas Hale had arrived only moments before, stepping out of the trees. He stopped when he saw the girl. She hadn’t heard him yet. She was small, maybe ten or eleven, with a smudged face and thin shoulders. Her coat was too big, sleeves rolled up. She looked like she belonged to the ruins—sharp-eyed, silent, and ready to vanish.
Thomas cleared his throat gently.
Naomi stood in an instant, turning fast. Her hand reached toward something beside her—a broken blade, crudely shaped, half-buried in a pile of wood. She didn’t grab it. Not yet. But she didn’t relax, either.
Thomas raised both hands. “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
Naomi said nothing.
“I saw your fire from the ridge,” he explained. “Didn’t expect anyone this far up.”
Still, she was silent. Watching. Measuring.
Thomas tilted his head toward the dirt where she’d been writing. “Is that your name?”
Naomi’s lips pressed into a tight line.
He nodded slowly. “Or someone else’s?”
Nothing.
He stayed where he was—no sudden movements. “It’s a beautiful name. Maria.”
Naomi stared at him, her jaw tight. “Why do you care?”
Thomas shrugged. “I’m a teacher. Or I was. Old habits, I guess.”
Naomi said nothing, but her eyes narrowed. Carefully, she knelt back down and looked at the letters again.
“I write it every night,” she said at last, barely above a whisper.
Thomas leaned against a nearby tree. “Yours or hers?”
“My mother’s,” Naomi said, not looking at him. “I think. I don’t remember her face. Just the name.”
Thomas’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at the word again.
Maria.
He remembered that name.
His sister.
But he didn’t say it.
Naomi traced the letters again with her finger. “I write it so I don’t forget. Ezra says names matter.”
“He’s right,” Thomas replied softly.
The wind blew gently through the trees, stirring the ash. The name blurred slightly, but Naomi didn’t panic. She just drew it again, firmer this time.
Behind them, dry leaves crunched under approaching footsteps. A man stepped out of the trees, tall and calm, with silver in his beard and a weathered satchel over one shoulder.
“Ezra,” Thomas said quietly.
Ezra nodded. “She didn’t run?”
“No,” Thomas said. “She answered a question.”
Naomi stood again, her eyes still on Thomas. Ezra gave her a curious look, but didn’t interrupt.
“She told me why she writes the name,” Thomas added. “That was enough.”
Ezra looked from Naomi to Thomas. He didn’t smile, but his eyes warmed slightly.
“She trusts very few people,” he said. “That tells me something.”
Thomas gave Naomi one more glance. “She doesn’t know yet,” he said under his breath to Ezra. “About Maria. I’m not going to tell her. Not yet.”
Ezra nodded once. “That’s wise.”
They walked together through the quiet woods toward the shelter buried beneath the hills—Naomi leading, Thomas following, Ezra watching over both.
No one said much.
But Thomas knew something had shifted.
The girl had written a name in the dirt—and in doing so, had opened a door. Not all the way. Not yet.
But just enough to let someone in.
—
### Expanded Edition: New Scenes
**After Naomi says, “I write it every night.”**
She did not say what Ezra knew—that some nights she pressed her finger so hard into the dirt she felt the grit under her nail beds for days. On nights when the wind took the name away too quickly, she wrote it again, slower, like teaching a younger version of herself to remember.
**After Thomas’s line, “Or hers?”**
Thomas pictured a porch in Lowell, a summer thunderstorm moving upriver, and his sister Maria showing him how to count the space between lightning and sound. The memory arrived like a photograph left too long in the sun—bleached around the edges, bright at the center.
**Before the walk to the shelter**
Ezra crouched by the broken blade and turned it in his hand. He did not scold her for keeping it. Instead, he showed her how to wrap cloth around the handle so it wouldn’t blister her palm. “Tools are stories,” he said. “If you don’t respect them, they tell the wrong one.”
American Prophet 