They crawled out of the ditch before dawn, clothes heavy with ditch water and city filth. The braid girl's limp was small but stubborn — each step dragging a whispered wince from her throat, though she never made a sound.
They didn't dare sleep. Instead they drifted — from bus shelters to chain-link schoolyards to the backs of closed convenience stores. When clerks came out to chase them off with mops and curses, they vanished before the mop could touch concrete.
Rafi felt the hush more than heard it now. It throbbed in the meat of his shoulders, a low drum that set his heartbeat to its rhythm. It didn't care about city streets. It wanted dirt under his nails, bark under his palms. It wanted roots.
They ducked behind a boarded-up diner when the sun finally rose. The braid girl slumped against the wall, pressing her forehead to the peeling paint. Rafi crouched opposite her, fingers working uselessly at a knot in his filthy sleeve.
He didn't remember the first words that burned in his chest. Maybe we can't live like this. Maybe we need help. Maybe just I'm so tired.
Whatever it was, she heard it in his ragged breath and the way his eyes couldn't stay on hers. Her head lifted — slow, deliberate — and her silence said weak.
He hated her for it. Hated that she could stand the hush's claws while he still dreamed of warm beds and lights that stayed on.
A car rattled past, bass thumping through rusted doors. A city worker threw seed to pigeons on the other side of the street. Life went on, blind to two feral kids about to tear themselves apart.
Rafi slammed his fist against the wall. The hush giggled at the pain blooming in his knuckles. He hissed at her — a shape of words that sounded like I want out. She pushed off the wall, came close enough that her breath trembled against his neck, eyes locked to his with an animal's dare.
She didn't need a voice to say it: There is no out.
The hush liked that. It coiled between them, greedy for the heat of their fear and shame.
He wanted to run. She wanted to sink deeper — past street and bone and memory, into the forest's throat where the hush was king.
They stood there like that — two broken children clutching opposite dreams — until the hush lost interest in words and offered only one truth: Decide.
Rafi dropped his eyes first. Not because she won — but because something inside him knew she was right. The city wasn't a shield. Nothing human could smother the hush. Only roots and shadows and the place that made it.
He touched her shoulder. Not forgiveness. Not surrender. Just a sign that he would follow.
Outside the boarded diner, pigeons flapped and scattered — the only witnesses to two children slipping out of the city's grip, one last time.