Dear Neva,

The wind comes down from the ridge, carrying the breath you once left behind. And at last, in the quiet of this night, I pick up my pen.

Spring always begins with a loss.

That was where I found you — in a field of ruined grass, still only a cub, with eyes untouched by the world. You followed clumsily at my ankles, small and fragile, as if the earth itself had not yet decided whether to keep you.

Spring taught me how to call.

I learned to speak your name against the emptiness, to ask again and again for an answer, just to know that we were both still here.

And whenever you answered softly behind me, the world fell silent. But my heart was full of sound.

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By summer, you had become a running wind.

Light poured through the trees and into your fur like a rising tide. You leapt across valleys, chasing every bright and trembling thing. You always wanted to be ahead, always turning back with mischief glittering in your eyes. In your retreating figure, I saw courage. I saw recklessness. I saw, too, the heavy clouds already gathering in the distance.

Summer taught me trust.

You no longer needed me to guide every step. And yet, each time you looked back, it felt as though you had folded my name into the wind.

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Then autumn came.

Leaves fell like rain, and your shape grew longer in the dusk — steadier, quieter, more certain. You were no longer in a hurry to run ahead. When I hesitated, you nudged me forward gently with your brow.

On those long slopes, you became a true source of light, illuminating the depths I could not see through on my own. Darkness withdrew at the sound of your low growl, like a tide called back by the moon.

We sat together by the dry waterline and watched a city lose its color — first into gray, then white, then into the blooming black.

Autumn taught me what it meant to walk side by side.

The decay of the world was no longer something to witness from afar. It became our lesson. And you became my answer.

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Winter’s road was always narrow, and always bright.

Snow fell like silent inscriptions, carving meaning into every footprint. We fought our shadows on the ice. Your roar echoed through the distant mountains, as if it meant to split the sky itself.

I tightened my grip around my sword and heard my heartbeat fall into rhythm with your steps.

That was the season I longed for most, and feared the most. I longed for an ending. I feared the emptiness that would follow it.

Then the final black tide rose from the heart of the earth, vast and endless, like night without a horizon.

Winter taught me farewell.

Every call could have been the last. Every embrace could have been a small shape of eternity.

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And still, the seasons turned.

The world was reborn one morning without a word. Your child emerged from the grass, his eyes clear as newly melted snow, sniffing at the wind with the same innocent curiosity you once had — reaching a paw toward everything unknown.

More than once, I saw you in his stubbornness. I saw the shadow of you chasing sunlight in the way he ran. And when he slept, curled into himself so peacefully, I saw the quiet of you returning from the wind.

I could not help but smile.

I could not help but cry.

Perhaps this is time’s gentlest mercy: that it repeats itself. That love, unfinished, may find an echo in new life.

✦ · ✦ · ✦ · ✦ · ✦ · ✦ · ✦ · ✦

I often wonder how many seasons we truly crossed together.

I remember calling your name at every turning of the year — among ruins where black flowers bloomed, beneath clouds torn open by light, at the edge where snow and tide became one.

And I remember this, too: your answer was never absent.

Near or far, urgent or soft, it always came back to me, like stars being lit one by one in the dark. With every call and every answer, we wove a long rope between us, pulling each other, little by little, back from the abyss and into the world of the living.

The wind comes down from the ridge, carrying the breath you once left behind.

I leave this letter in the mountains.

What I want to say is thank you.

What I want to say is I miss you.

Neva, may you sleep on the quiet mountain peak.

May you run free among the endless clouds.

And when spring comes again,

may we meet once more.