Smoke. Ash. The old smell of endings — how it always comes wrapped in the hope of a beginning. Rafi knew it well. It coated his tongue as he knelt beside Lale, her braid curling and uncurling in the dirt like a dying serpent.
She breathed shallowly, eyelids fluttering. He could feel the hush roots still coiled deep in her belly, winding toward her heart. If they didn't burn the forest's veins now, they would feed her until she was hollow bark and it was reborn in her skin.
She touched his cheek, her fingertips leaving streaks of sap. "Fire, Rafi," she whispered, a thread of the hush still clinging to her voice. "Only fire… only fire makes it quiet…"
He nodded. His throat hurt from words he hadn't yet spoken — apologies, promises, prayers to a mother long devoured by this place. None of them mattered. Only flame would matter now.
The forest trembled around them. Above, branches bent low as if eavesdropping. Whispers swirled through the roots, a thousand hushed threats pressed between the leaves. Rafi could almost taste them: We will outlive you. We are hunger. We are patience.
But he'd learned something, crawling through bark and nightmare for all these years: roots fear fire more than axes. Fire laughs at patience.
He took Lale's hand. Together they staggered to the old spore hollow — a cavern of gnarled roots that pulsed with wet light, veins snaking deeper than graves. The air inside smelled of damp rot and the sweetness of children's breath stolen in sleep.
He struck flint to steel. Sparks fell, fizzled, caught. The roots shuddered as flame licked their skin. The hush wailed — a choir of buried voices rising through soil and bone. Lale screamed too, dropping to her knees, clutching her sides as if to hold the hush in.
"I'm here! Hold on!" Rafi roared over the fire's crackle. He jammed a burning branch into the deepest root vein. Sap hissed, boiling away.
The forest answered with pain. Great trees split down their trunks. Flowers wilted, then burst into cinders. Shadows writhed like cornered beasts.
Lale clawed at the dirt, eyes rolling white. "More! Rafi — more!"
He tore open another vein. Flame bled along the channels, tracing the hush's secret arteries. A wave of heat slapped him back, filling his lungs with bitter smoke. He laughed — a wild sound — because in the roar of the blaze he heard the hush's lullaby falter.
Roots cracked like old bones. Bark split, disgorging black mold and brittle seeds. Fire chewed its way down into the hush's mind. And beneath all the roaring, the hush voice begged: We were your shelter. We were your mother. We were forever.
"Not anymore!" he spat. He grabbed Lale, lifting her just as a burning branch crashed where she'd knelt. Together they stumbled through a tunnel of smoke and wailing wood, flames devouring the hush's last stronghold behind them.
At the forest's heart, where the oldest roots once dreamed in green silence, nothing remained but cinders and the echo of a thousand secrets turned to ash.
Outside, dawn clawed its way over the scorched treetops. Wind rattled through the charred canopy — no whispers now. Just wind. Just life.
Rafi collapsed beside Lale in the clearing. She was breathing, raw but alive, her braid burnt short at the ends. She stared at him, eyes wide, pupils clear.
"It's gone," she said. Her voice was only hers — rough, human, free.
He lay back, tasting smoke on his tongue, and for the first time since the hush called his name, Rafi knew silence could be beautiful.