At some hour too early to measure, the forest exhales for the first time in years.
Rafi stirs when the hush's last echoes crackle out of his bones. He blinks up at a sky caught between night's last bruises and the first wash of color — a thin seam of rose-gold that spills between torn branches overhead.
Beside him, the braid girl lies curled against his side, knees drawn to her chest. Her braid is matted with soil and sap, her cheek striped with dried tears. In sleep, she looks younger than him and older at once — a girl and a ghost who chose to be flesh again.
Rafi lifts a hand. It trembles, fingers filthy and raw at the knuckles, but it is his. Not the hush's vessel or echo — just a boy's hand, shaking because it has carried too much fear and fought too hard to let any part of it stay caged.
He lets the morning fill his ears: a bird's cry sharp and unfamiliar, branches settling under dawn wind. No whispers. No hidden heartbeat under the ground. The hush is gone — or maybe buried too deep to reach him now.
He sits up slow. Every muscle protests. His clothes hang off him in tatters, crusted with dried blood and forest debris. The braid girl shifts, moaning soft at the cold air. He places a hand on her shoulder and she stirs awake. Eyes blink at him — clear, heavy with exhaustion but unclouded by whatever secret horrors the hush once fed her.
She tries her voice again. Nothing but a croak comes, so she breathes instead — a shaky sigh that curls in the air between them like a promise: I am here. I stayed.
Together they stand. It takes more than one try. Knees buckle, shoulders lean against tree trunks, breath hitches from pain that feels good only because it isn't hidden anymore.
Rafi scans the clearing — what's left of the hollow has caved in, just a dark sink in the forest floor choked with splintered wood and crushed roots. A scar the hush can't heal.
He touches the braid girl's hand again. She lets him. They don't look back. There's nothing left to find in that hole — no more stolen dreams, no more false lullabies. Only the clean ache of hunger, bruises, and the dawn pressing them forward.
Step by step, they limp toward the brighter break in the trees. Birds scatter overhead. Sunlight drips through needles and hits their skin like a new blessing. The hush's absence is loud at first — every leaf-rustle makes Rafi brace for that old voice, but no echo comes.
What's left is real silence. Honest wind. Honest breath. The hush fed them fear so long they forgot how to listen to their own hearts. Now, each heartbeat feels clumsy but fully theirs.
They pause at the edge of the clearing. Rafi leans against a trunk, chest rising and falling, pulse throbbing at his temple. He watches the braid girl step ahead, lift her chin into the sunbeam slicing through the canopy. Her eyes close. For a moment, she smiles — a cracked thing, but real.
When she turns back to him, she offers her hand. He takes it.
Neither of them says thank you or sorry or I need you. The hush might be dead, but the silence they share now is better than any words.
Together, they keep walking — toward the place where the hush ends and the rest of the world waits, awkward and imperfect but theirs for the taking.
They do not know if the forest will ever be just trees again. But today, they belong only to themselves.