Episode 4
1210 Words
“You’re breathing like someone poured ash down your throat.”
The voice wasn’t Thomir’s. It was younger, grittier—half amusement, half warning.
I jerked awake with a gasp, coughing up smoke that didn’t belong to now. My ribs screamed. My throat felt like it’d been sandpapered raw, and the night pressed in around me like wet cloth.
Everything hurt.
My fingers dug into pine needles. My lungs were on fire. My leg throbbed like the metal joint had fused to bone again. I blinked hard and tried to make sense of the dark blur hovering over me.
It grinned.
Too wide. Too many teeth.
“I’d offer water,” the voice said, “but you don’t look the type to ask nicely.”
I reached for my belt instinctively, but my satchel—my blade, the paste, Thomir’s herbs—was gone.
“f**k,” I croaked.
“Language”, the boy chided, crouching with the grace of something feral. He was barefoot, covered in mud, with twigs knotted in his dark hair. A small jar of wound paste hung from one hand, dripping.
He sniffed it, gagged, then spat it onto the ground.
“Gods, you really are a cripple and a herb snob. What is this s**t? Rotten goat’s breath in a jar?”
“That’s my medicine,” I muttered, crawling toward him.
“Used to be,” he replied cheerfully, popping the cork off another bottle.
“Put that down.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll shove your teeth so far down your throat you’ll chew your own spine.”
The boy’s silver eyes lit up.
“Oh, good. You do have a bit of bite in you. Thought I was wasting time on another smoke-choked corpse.”
He stood in a single, fluid movement and vanished.
Gone.
No footsteps. No shift of leaves. Just—gone.
I stared at the empty space where he’d been, my body frozen, lungs still heaving. Something in the way he disappeared didn’t feel magical.
It felt wrong. Like watching a shadow escape the laws of light.
Then, behind me: “You’re slow. Probably why your uncle looks like a collapsed sack of meat.”
I whirled around.
There he was again, squatting next to Thomir, who lay barely breathing in the makeshift lean-to I’d dragged him to. His chest rose in shallow stutters. His lips were cracked and pale.
I scrambled over.
“Thomir. You in there?”
A groan answered.
Faint. Slurred.
But alive.
The boy watched me with unsettling calm, his head tilted. “You going to cry now? Or do I have to slap it out of you?”
“Who the hell are you?”
He grinned, baring too many teeth. “Bunny.”
“Like the animal?”
“Like the joke.”
“And what are you?”
He licked his thumb and pressed it to one of Thomir’s wounds. “Not the f*****g welcoming committee, that’s for sure.”
I knocked his hand away. “Get off him!”
“Relax. He’s not mine to eat.”
Bunny stood and dusted off his hands, though there was no dust. Just blood. Smoke. And whatever else had soaked into our skin from Windermere burning.
I looked toward the treetops, where the glow of the fires had finally dulled to a dying ember.
The village was gone.
Every root, every stone, every memory. Ash now.
Thomir stirred again, coughing. I laid a hand on his shoulder.
“We’re safe for now,” I whispered, unsure if I believed it.
Bunny laughed behind me, sharp and shrill. “Safety? You really don’t know where you are, do you?”
I turned slowly.
“What does that mean?”
He began circling me, slowly, predator-silent. “This place? These trees? They’re not woods. They’re old bones wearing bark. You sleep too loudly, and they dream about you.”
“You’re mad.”
“Probably.”
“What do you want from me?”
Bunny shrugged. “Nothing yet. But you’re interesting. You don’t smell like them.”
I blinked. “Them?”
“The bound”, he said, voice low now. “The oath-lickers. The tongue-chained. You don’t have that rot inside.”
He sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like… silence.”
“What does that even mean?”
He leaned in close, eyes gleaming like coins. “It means whatever you are, you’re either a glitch in their system or the f**k-up they’re afraid of.”
I bristled. “You think they’re afraid of me?”
“No,” he said simply. “But they should be.”
We stood there in the hollow, pine needles shifting under our feet. Thomir’s breathing was shallow. The wound on his side had turned an ugly colour. I didn’t have enough herbs. Didn’t have a fire. Didn’t have a plan.
I needed help.
But not from this… thing.
“You said you don’t want anything from me. So why are you here?”
He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I’m bored. Maybe I like chaos. Maybe your pain smells like breakfast.”
“You’re not normal.”
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Fine. You win. You’re weird and full of s**t. But you’re not running away. Why?”
Bunny’s grin faded, just for a second. “Because they’re listening. And because you’re louder than you think.”
He walked toward the trees, silent as smoke.
“Stay away from the river,” he said.
“What?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Just trust me. It’s not the water. It’s the reflection. That’s where they look through.”
And just like before, he vanished.
***
I patched Thomir up the best I could, chewing bitterroot until it coated my tongue, then packed it into his wound. He didn’t wake. But he didn’t die either.
When I finally slumped beside him, dusk had swallowed the woods whole. My body ached. My thoughts spun.
And Bunny’s words haunted me.
You don’t smell like them.
What did that mean?
Was I unbound? Or something worse?
***
He came back around midnight.
Carrying a pouch of mushrooms, a squirrel, and a leather flask that smelt like blood and fruit.
He dropped it all at my feet.
“Your uncle’s dying,” he said flatly. “Are you going to cry about it or use your hands?”
I stared at him.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Yet.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So why help?”
Bunny crouched again, that feral energy vibrating off him like heat. “Because you’re not like them. Because you should be, and you’re not. And because… monsters follow mystery.”
I swallowed hard.
“And what am I?”
He smiled.
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I stared down at Thomir—still, pale, breathing shallow.
Then up at the strange boy with silver eyes and secrets on his tongue.
And I realised something that chilled me more than fire ever could:
I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
I was babysitting and probably being watched.
- Writer
