Floris opens his eyes.
Cold.
His cheek is pressed into mud. Wet. Grit against his teeth. One eye half-submerged in brown water. For a moment he doesn't move. He doesn't understand where he is. The sky above him is pale and distant.
The swamp is silent.
No frogs.
No insects.
No wind.
His thoughts scatter the moment he tries to gather them. Something happened. Something large. Something loud.
He pushes himself upright slowly, mud sliding from his face. The movement sends a dull pulse through his skull. He rests on his knees and presses a palm against his head, breathing through his nose.
Fragments return.
Fire.
Screams.
The sound of something striking wood.
Close by, Alvis sits against a fallen log. Curled in on himself. Head buried between his knees.
"Last night wasn't a nightmare… was it?" Floris asks.
His voice is hoarse. Small.
Alvis lifts his head. His eyes are red. He sniffs once and wipes his nose with his sleeve.
"No." His voice wavers, then steadies. "I had to tell myself it wasn't. Every time I woke up. Oliver… Mr. Hudson… the village…" His jaw tightens. "It's gone."
Floris lowers his gaze.
He tries to order the memory — to place events in sequence — but they won't stay where he puts them. It all happened too fast. The impact. The ground leaving his feet. The heat.
"Do you think anyone made it out?"
"If they did," Alvis says, "they're far from here." He swallows. "I could still hear them. Even when we were running. Even when we were far enough that I couldn't see the flames anymore… I could still hear them."
Floris nods once.
"I know," he says quietly. "I heard them too."
Silence stretches between them.
"Maybe we should've gone to the lake when we had the chance," Alvis says. The words sound like something he's been holding in all night.
Floris looks at him. Then away.
"It wouldn't have mattered." His voice is steady, though his chest feels hollow. "Those things were coming. With or without us there. At least we fought."
Alvis nods. Slowly.
"I guess that's true."
He hesitates.
"What do we do now?"
Floris glances over his shoulder — just once — toward where Two Creeks used to be.
Smoke rises in the distance. Black. Thick. Not cooking fires. Not hearth smoke. Ruin smoke.
He looks down.
"There's nothing to go back to," he says. The words feel strange in his mouth. "And I don't… I don't want to see…"
He stops.
He exhales, steadying himself.
"I don't want to see the bodies."
Alvis doesn't answer immediately. When he does, his voice is lower.
"Neither do I."
A breeze stirs the reeds.
One frog croaks.
Then another.
The swamp resumes.
As if nothing happened.
Floris reaches for his spear and plants it in the mud. He shifts his weight to stand.
The pain is immediate.
Sharp. Blinding.
He drops back down with a grunt, clutching his side.
"My ribs," he forces out through clenched teeth. "I think they're broken."
Alvis moves toward him. "You're lucky that's all it did."
Floris remembers the tail.
The force of it.
The way the air vanished from his lungs before he ever hit the ground.
Others hadn't been so fortunate.
Their deaths were quick.
His might not be.
He grips the spear again and presses it deep into the mud until it finds something solid beneath. He uses it to lever himself upright. Every breath feels wrong. Shallow. Controlled.
"We can't stay here," he says.
Alvis nods.
He steps under Floris's arm and takes some of his weight.
They don't look back again.
They walk.
There is no direction. Only distance.
Each step sends a dull throb through Floris's side. He keeps his breaths short. Measured. Anything deeper feels like tearing cloth beneath his skin.
The swamp feels different now.
Not hostile.
Not welcoming.
Indifferent.
They hear new sounds as they move — animal calls that don't match the patterns they know. Lower. Rougher. Distant splashes that carry too far.
New is rarely good.
When night falls, they do not light a fire.
They eat what they can gather — berries, roots, anything that doesn't require smoke.
Floris finds willow along a bend in slow water. He strips the inner bark carefully, discarding the outer layer. He chews slowly. Bitter. Fibrous.
Later he pulls marsh-root from softer ground and washes it in shallow water before biting into it.
The pain does not leave.
But it dulls.
From sharp to bearable.
That is enough.
They sleep in shifts. Never deeply. Never fully.
Every snap of a branch brings them upright. Every rustle in reeds freezes their blood.
They have seen the worst the swamp has to offer.
They know what moves in it.
They survived.
Whether anyone else did is not theirs to know.
Morning comes. Then another.
They walk farther than either has ever traveled. The trees thin. The air changes subtly. The ground firms beneath their boots.
Two Creeks is long behind them.
There is no going back.
Only forward.
Night falls again.
They rest strategically. Back-to-back. Spear within reach. Bow strung but not drawn.
The swamp settles around them.
It makes its sounds.
It breathes.
And somewhere beyond the reach of firelight that never comes—
Something moves.
Not hunting.
Not yet.
Just passing through.