AJ shifted left. They can't stay any longer, the trio were coming in their direction and being caught by them would only be bad news.
Lily nodded, already easing backward. They began to retreat their footsteps slow and careful.
The fire's glow faded behind them as the undergrowth thickened, and for a moment AJ thought they were going to make a clean get away.
Then Lily's shoulder caught a low-hanging branch. A shower of leaves fell to the ground, loud as anything in the silence.
"What was that?" One of the men spoke.
Neither of them moved. AJ instinctively pressed himself as flat as he could against the earth. The cover provided by the trees and shrubbery suddenly felt much thinner than it had a moment ago.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind them, more than one set, moving closer.
The snap of a branch underfoot, deliberate and unhurried, the sound of people who weren't afraid of making noise because they were the ones in control of the situation.
Lily raised her knife and said nothing. AJ could feel the tension radiating off her as she tried not to panic.
He couldn't help her. He couldn't fight, couldn't shout, couldn't even move fast enough to serve as a distraction. All he could do was hold still and hope.
The footsteps drew closer. Then closer still.
And then something moved in the trees to their left and a voice rang out through the dark.
"That's far enough."
AJ felt Lily flinch before he understood what he was hearing. The voice was calm and flat.
Victor stepped out of the undergrowth with a knife in hand.
Ethan appeared from the opposite side a half-second later.
He didn't say anything, he didn't need to. Walter emerged behind Ethan, leaning on his makeshift cane, and carefully surveyed the scene.
The three strangers stopped. Their eyes moved between Victor and Ethan, calculating. Whatever they calculated, they didn't like the answer. After a long moment, the one with the spear lowered it slightly.
"We're not looking for trouble," he said.
"We aren't either," Victor replied. "Let's go our separate ways."
They did. No argument, no parting words, just a slow retreat into the trees until their footsteps faded completely. Victor watched for a few seconds before lowering his knife.
"You alright?"
Lily let out a deep breath.
"Yes," she managed. "We're fine. Thank you."
His gaze moved past her to AJ, and something shifted in his expression, surprise first, then recognition, then a complicated kind of relief.
"AJ," he said. "You've changed."
AJ shifted right. That was one way to put it.
Walter stepped closer, tilting his head to study AJ's form with interest.
"Remarkable," he murmured.
"We can sort all of this out properly once we're somewhere safe," Ethan said, already scanning the trees. "Those men didn't look like they had anywhere better to be. I'd rather not find out if they change their minds."
They moved upstream along the riverbank, the five of them keeping close and quiet. The forest felt different now that there were more of them, it wasn't as nerve wracking.
Victor and Ethan set an easy pace at the front. Walter walked steadily behind them. Lily stayed near AJ, occasionally glancing down to check he was keeping up.
He was, barely, but he was.
The trees thinned where the river widened, and they found a sheltered spot on the bank where the ground softened into deep moss and the overhang of the rocky slope above offered a measure of cover.
Lily and Walter gathered what they could for AJ, more moss, a handful of pale mushrooms from a fallen log, some fibrous leaves, while Victor and Ethan positioned themselves to keep watch over them.
AJ absorbed what Lily brought him steadily, feeling his form grow incrementally more stable with each addition. The fog that had clouded everything since his transformation was beginning to thin.
Lily was placing a second handful of mushrooms beside him when a voice carried across the water.
"Well, this is a pleasant surprise."
Every hand went to a weapon. On the far bank stood Maria and Sam, clothes ragged, expressions caught between exhaustion and relief.
Maria had started counting heads when Sam sat on the bank and started pulling off his boots.
"Sam, what are you doing..." She asked.
"We're crossing," he said, matter-of-factly, stripping off his shirt and folding it briskly. "It's shallow enough."
"You're just going to..."
"I don't know about you but I don't want to walk around out here in wet clothes."
He bundled everything into a neat pile and threw it across in one clean arc, landing near Victor's feet. Then he waded in without further comment, moving steadily against the current.
Maria stared after him for a moment. Then she groaned, pinched the bridge of her nose, and began stripping down to her underwear herself.
"If anyone says a single word," she announced as she tossed her bundle across, "I will throw them in."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Ethan said, with the smile of someone absolutely dreaming of it.
Maria shot him a look that could have drawn blood and stepped into the river. The water reached her waist, the chill causing her to shiver, but she didn't slow down.
Sam was already on the other side, shaking out his clothes and redressing as though nothing of particular note had occurred.
As Maria climbed out, Lily handed her a dry cloth without a word. Maria took it with a grateful nod.
"It's good to see you all," she said. Her eyes moved briefly to AJ. Her expression didn't waver in the least.
He appreciated that more than he could say. Which was unfortunately the same for everything he wanted to say.
They lit a small fire and shared what had happened to each of them. Lily described the vine forest in overlapping sentences, her hands moving to fill in what words couldn't.
Victor gave his account of the shadow stalkers briefly, in the tone of a man making a report.
Maria and Sam filled in their own gaps, strange flora, the sense of being watched, the fallen tree that had let them cross. When Ethan asked what had led them to that side of the river, Maria gestured at Sam.
"He saw an interesting plant."
"It really was interesting," Sam said, with complete sincerity.
Walter listened to all of it before speaking. "We've all faced challenges," he said quietly. "But we're here now. Together. That's what matters."
No one argued with him.
The sun finished setting as they followed the river south, looking for somewhere defensible. They found it before full dark, a small cave set into a rocky outcrop above the bank, its entrance narrow and easy to cover, its interior dry and deeper than it first appeared.
Sam and Victor checked it over before giving the all clear and entering. Lily and Walter prepared the food, berries, edible plants, and the remnants of something Ethan had caught earlier in the day.
AJ settled near the back wall while the others ate. The day had left him depleted in a way he was still learning to recognise, not physical fatigue exactly, but something similar.
He thought about his abilities. He had been absorbing things since his transformation and could feel the formless stored energy inside him.
His wish had promised two directions, breaking material into energy, and then reconstructing that energy into matter. He'd been doing the first without trying and he hadn't attempted the second.
Tomorrow he would try to explore and refine his abilities, he wanted to be useful to the others as soon as possible.
Victor had settled near the cave entrance, not quite sitting, not quite standing, he was facing outwards, keeping an eye on the surroundings.
One by one, the others let their exhaustion take over and fell asleep.