The hush shrieks as they tear themselves from its throat. Roots whip at their ankles, gouge shallow cuts across arms and faces, but Rafi hardly feels them. He drags himself forward by elbows and knees, every inch of earth above seeming heavier than stone.
Behind him, the braid girl fights too. She does not cry out again — her voice spent, but her breath rasps steady, a pulse of defiance in the hush's rotting belly. Each time her strength falters, he reaches back blindly until his fingers close on her wrist, pulling, dragging, hauling her inch by bloody inch.
Above them, the hush cracks through the trees. The forest bends and groans, branches shattering under the strain of losing its oldest secret. Leaves spiral down like ash as the clearing splits wider, swallowing moonlight into the collapsing hollow.
The hush lashes out with its final cruelty.
In Rafi's head, it drops him back to the last kitchen table with his mother. Sunlight, the smell of soap, her smile that promised later, later. For a heartbeat, it's all real: her warm hand cupping his cheek, her soft voice calling him baby.
He wants to stay. He could sit forever at that kitchen table, the hush promises. A boy loved and safe, the world outside just a bad dream.
But the hush miscalculates. It forgets that even in that warm kitchen, he always knew something waited to break the door open. He remembers the real end — the empty chair, the last slam of a car door, the ache in his belly when no one came back.
Rafi spits the memory out like spoiled milk. He shoves forward harder, choking on dirt but screaming inside: No more lies.
The braid girl is somewhere else, lost in her own trap. Her body jerks behind him, her free hand clawing at nothing. He crawls back and cups her face between filthy palms. She doesn't see him at first — eyes rolled back, lips working around a wordless sob.
He presses his forehead to hers. Breathes his truth into her skin: We are here. Not there. Not before.
Her eyes snap back. They are storm-grey and alive, wet with grief but no longer drowning. She lunges forward, arms locking around his ribs so tight it hurts. Together, they push through the hush's dying roots, through the collapsing earth, up toward the promise of night air.
Behind them, the hush screams — a long, thin wail that sinks into silence like a stone into black water. No more tricks. No more cradle. Just the forest, groaning as its old secret rots back to dirt.
Rafi's hands break through first — moss and roots giving way to cold night wind. He drags himself free on elbows, sobbing from exhaustion and the shock of the hush's absence. The braid girl bursts out beside him, clawing at moss and needles, coughing up soil and old shadows.
They collapse together on the forest floor. Above, the trees stand bent but no longer whisper. The hush is gone. The silence is just silence again.
For a long time, they do not move. They breathe. They bleed. Their hands find each other's and cling like children gripping the last corner of a nightmare before dawn burns it away.
They do not speak. They don't need to. They have chosen pain and hunger and fear — and each other.
They have chosen to be human.