They found the tree at dusk, when the last threads of gray daylight tangled themselves in the highest branches, trying and failing to reach the forest floor. By then, Rafi's legs felt boneless. He carried the braid girl's weight more than once, lifting her over roots that seemed to twist and clutch at her ankles when she was too tired to care.
Then the hush showed them the tree.
It rose out of the underwood like a cathedral built from rot. The trunk was wider than Rafi's old cabin back at the camp. Its bark peeled in ragged sheets, riddled with claw marks older than the hush itself. A hollow yawned at its base — a black mouth promising a shelter that might swallow them whole.
Rafi hesitated at the threshold. He could hear the hush breathe inside the hollow, slow and warm as a mother waiting to rock her child to sleep forever.
The braid girl brushed past him. She did not flinch at the dark. She pressed her palm flat to the splintered bark and stepped inside. Her silhouette vanished so quickly he almost thought the tree ate her outright.
He clenched his fists until splinters bit his palms. Not yet, he promised himself. Not this tree. Not tonight.
Inside, the hollow was larger than any natural hollow should be. The walls curved inward like ribs, slick with sap that glowed faintly where it caught the dying daylight behind him. The hush hummed through the wood in a slow pulse that made the walls seem to breathe.
She sat cross-legged near the back, where roots braided into a kind of nest. Her eyes were open, reflecting the glow like a cat's. She looked more alive here than she had out in the rain.
"Rest," Rafi murmured to himself. He did not dare say it aloud. He did not dare command the hush. But for now, it listened. It sealed them in with quiet warmth. It closed the mouth of the tree behind him with the soft creak of living wood.
He sank down beside her. His shoulders brushed hers. Together they stared at the glowing veins in the hollow walls, tracing every flicker of sap like constellations on dead wood.
Rain fell outside, but no drops reached them here. Thunder crawled the canopy far above, too distant to matter. All that mattered was the breath between them — ragged but alive. The hush rocked them, slow as a heartbeat, promising oblivion if they only asked.
Rafi let his head tip against the wall. For a moment, he let himself drift. He dreamed of the camp — of firelight and stolen bread and laughter that had never lasted long enough. He dreamed of his mother's hands braiding his hair back when he was too small to care how soft he looked. He dreamed of a world without this forest swallowing everything soft inside him.
When he opened his eyes, the braid girl was watching him. Her lips did not move, but her eyes said: We are not gone yet.
No, they weren't. Not yet.
Outside, the hush prowled the dripping woods, restless in the bones of old beasts and the roots that never stopped growing.
Inside the hollowed tree, two children leaned against each other like twin splinters refusing to rot.
And the hush — patient, ancient, insatiable — waited for one more slip, one more crack in the ribs of their will.