Chapter Twenty-Eight: Back Through the Trees

The storm outlasted the hush. It pounded the clearing flat and turned the muddy wound into a shallow pool that glowed faintly in the new gray light. When the last thunder sighed away, dawn bled through the shredded canopy in pale threads.

Rafi didn't know how long he and the braid girl lay there. Long enough for his bones to remember their own weight. Long enough for his ribs to ache when he laughed back at her feral grin.

Eventually the rain turned to drizzle. Birds started their cautious chatter again, testing the air now that the hush had gone quiet.

The braid girl rose first. Her braid was gone for good, hair hanging in a wild mess across her shoulders. She didn't tuck it back or twist it up. She just hooked her mud-crusted fingers under his arm and tugged him to his knees.

The clearing pulsed behind them like a bad dream that might one day fade. Maybe. Maybe not. He didn't look back as they limped to the tree line — roots snagging their shoes, twigs dragging across bruises.

Every few steps she paused, listening. Not for the hush — for voices beyond the trees. Human voices. Boots crunching wet needles. Flashlights sweeping the underbrush.

He caught glimpses through gaps in the branches: bright orange jackets, radios hissing, a shout — Rafi! — half-eaten by the damp air.

The world had come to claim them.

Rafi's gut cramped with old panic. Rules. Paperwork. Lockdowns. White walls that smelled like disinfectant instead of pine sap. He imagined the braid girl's hair pinned up again, her eyes dulled by the same questions over and over.

He turned to her. She read him with a glance — how he balanced on the edge between stepping out into waiting arms or slipping sideways through another deer trail that no search team would think to check.

A dog barked. Closer.

She brushed her thumb over the cuts on his cheek. Her breath clouded in the cold dawn. No words. Not anymore. They didn't need them.

They slipped between two young pines, avoiding the main path. He almost laughed at how easily they vanished again — not into the hush this time, but into a hush of their own making.

Behind them, a rescuer's voice rose in a sharp, desperate call.

They kept moving. Through slick leaves. Over deadfall logs. Away from the clearing's rot and the neat forms that would slap labels on what they'd survived.

Sunlight found them eventually. Patches of gold dancing on the forest floor. Her fingers stayed tangled in his until the sun dried the rain off their shoulders and left only mud and scars to prove what they'd done to the forest — and what it had done to them in return.

They weren't lost children anymore.

They were something wilder.