Chapter Thirty: Found Things

They bundled him in a scratchy wool blanket that smelled faintly of gasoline and antiseptic. Someone pressed a plastic cup of hot chocolate into his hands. He couldn't remember how to drink it — he just let the steam scald his face while voices swarmed around him.

The braid girl sat two feet away on the tailgate of a ranger truck. She hadn't spoken since they'd stepped out of the trees. A paramedic dabbed at the cut on her cheek with a cotton ball soaked in something stinging; she didn't even blink.

Every so often, her eyes flicked sideways to find Rafi's. He felt the same twist every time: relief and dread, knotted so tightly he almost wanted the hush back, just to drown out the fluorescent certainty of this new place.

Adults circled them in waves. Some wore rescue jackets. Others carried tablets and folders bulging with forms that had neat labels at the top — incident reports, medical history, psychological evaluation.

Rafi heard bits of it all:

Found wandering near the break line. Unresponsive but conscious. Hypothermic. Possible trauma.

She doesn't have ID. Same girl as the missing file, you think?

We'll get them to the city for observation tonight. Keep them separated until we know if there was—

The hush might be gone but it left a hollow in his chest. The words clattered inside it like pebbles in a tin can. He wanted to yell that they weren't lost things to catalog. They'd been inside the forest's veins, they'd torn out the hush's throat, they'd crawled back alive — but his tongue stuck to his teeth.

The braid girl finally shrugged off the medic's touch and slid down from the truck. Her blanket dragged behind her like a discarded skin. She came to stand beside him. One hand brushed his shoulder, just once, then dropped back to her side.

A social worker leaned down so close he smelled her perfume, sweet and sharp as pine sap. She asked if he remembered his name, his parents' names, if he knew what year it was. He said yes, yes, yes — but none of it felt true anymore.

When she turned to the braid girl, the girl didn't answer at all. Just stared through her until the woman sighed and clicked her pen shut.

Later, they guided them into the back of an ambulance — not with force, but with the gentle firmness of grown-ups who think they know best. A blanket wrapped tighter around Rafi's shoulders. A bandage taped over the braid girl's scratched cheek.

They didn't talk. They didn't need to. Her muddy hand found his on the stretcher and stayed there as the doors shut out the clearing, the hush, the forest — all of it shrinking to memory under the drone of tires and sirens.

Inside, the hush purred softly, not quite dead. A bruise instead of a beast now. He squeezed her fingers and promised it would stay that way — so long as they stayed this close.