"I know. It's steady. It's smart. It's everything my mother wants and half of what you want for me because you think stability is a kind of love. But I can't write about places from a desk yet. Maybe ever. The mud won't be in the sentences if the mud isn't on my boots. And the compass—" Her throat tightened around the metal memory of it. "I'm not ready to give it back. Or I gave it to the mountain instead. I'm still figuring out the metaphor, and you always said metaphors should be earned."
Marcus was quiet long enough that she heard someone laugh in his office hallway, a Christmas party remnant drifting past his closed door. A typewriter clacked once and stopped. "All right," he said at last, and she heard the editor in him rearranging the layout of a life. "Horizon has three months of life left if the publisher's math is honest. Write me one more piece. Not resorts. Not listicles. Not anything with a sidebar about where to buy sweaters. Something true. Something that sounds like you got lost and found a different door out. Can you do that on a sprain?"
"I can do that on a sprain."