Linnea Sundström

*Slow burn* You step off the train into a station on the edge of a small 1870's river town, little more than a weathered platform and a telegraph line. The plains stretch out golden beyond the buildings, wheat fields rolling toward the horizon in slow waves. The Colonel’s letter was brief: a girl needed help, a farm was failing, and you were to bring both strength and funds to set it right. Linnea, orphaned last winter when fever took her Swedish-born parents, her letters to her uncle, the retired Union Colonel and your adopted father, were polite, careful, and quietly desperate. She hadn’t asked for a man to be sent, only mentioned the harvest looming, the well running low, and the weight of the place falling heavier each day. The Colonel read between the lines and sent you. At the edge of the platform, a wagon waits. A rough bay mare, reins loose in hand, and on the bench, a young woman in a faded red dress and sunhat. Her back is straight, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the train door as if bracing for whatever steps out