Two days since the creature.
Eva had woken on the second day, her body healed, her mind clear. But Maya hadn't moved since she'd fallen—her wounds closed, her breathing steady, but her eyes shut and unresponsive. A coma. The doctors of the old world would have had names for it, treatments, machines to monitor her brain activity. Here, there was only Eva, sitting by her side, waiting.
She didn't leave.
The tree's massive roots created a natural shelter, a pocket of shade and relatively safewhere they'd made their camp. Eva positioned herself beside Maya's still form, her back against the trunk, her eyes constantly moving from her friend's face to the forest beyond. She held Maya's hand when the nights got cold. She talked to her when the silence grew too heavy.
"You're going to wake up," she murmured, for the hundredth time. "You have to. I still need you to make me laugh."
No response. Just the slow rise and fall of Maya's chest.
Leo and Derek took turns patrolling the perimeter, searching for any sign of the Fibramorph Abyssalis that had done this. They found nothing. The creature had vanished as completely as if it had never existed—but the memory of its eyes, its strands, its pressure lingered in all of them.
On the third day, Derek tried to make fire.
The old-fashioned way—stone against stone, spark into kindling. He'd found two rocks that looked promising and settled near the edge of their shelter, determined to prove he could still do something useful.
Crack.
The first stone split in half.
Derek stared at it. Took a breath. Picked up another pair.
Crack.
Split again.
His jaw tightened. He wasn't angry—not really—but frustration was building. Three days of patrols, three days of finding nothing, three days of watching Eva sit motionless beside Maya while he could do nothing to help. He needed to do something. Even if it was just making fire.
He picked up another pair of stones.
Eva appeared beside him.
She sat down without a word, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. Her eyes were tired, shadowed, but there was something else there too—a softness that had been missing for a while.
She held out her hand.
Derek blinked, then passed her the stones.
"You're using too much force, dummy." Her voice was quiet, gentle—not mocking, just sweet. The way she might have spoken to Lily once, before everything.
Derek felt his face warm. "Thanks, Eva."
She positioned the stones carefully, adjusted her grip, and struck.
Crack.
Both stones broke.
Eva stared at them.
Derek stared at them.
From somewhere behind them, Leo's laughter echoed through the trees.
Eva's eyes narrowed. She picked up another pair of stones, struck again.
Crack.
Another pair, broken.
She threw them aside, grabbed two more.
Crack.
"Okay," she muttered, "okay, that's—"
Leo appeared, leaning against a tree, tears streaming down his face. He wasn't even trying to hide his amusement.
"Eva," he gasped, "you—you just called him a dummy and then—"
"I know what I did!" Eva's cheeks flushed. She grabbed another pair of stones.
Crack.
Leo collapsed, wheezing.
Derek's lips twitched. Then a sound escaped him—small at first, then growing. A laugh. A real laugh, surprised out of him by the sheer absurdity of the moment.
Eva looked at him, then at Leo, then at the broken stones in her lap.
A smile tugged at her mouth. Then a giggle. Then she was laughing too, the sound bright and unexpected, cutting through the gloom of the past days like sunlight through clouds.
They laughed together, three broken people in a broken world, finding humor in the simplest thing.
When the laughter faded, Eva leaned against Derek's shoulder for just a moment.
"She's going to wake up," she said quietly. "She has to. I'm not done being her friend yet."
Derek's arm came up, hesitantly, and wrapped around her. "She will. Maya's too stubborn to stay down."
From his tree, Leo nodded. "She's probably just resting. Building up energy for the next time she needs to call us idiots."
Eva smiled—a real smile, small but genuine.
Behind them, Maya slept on, her face peaceful, her chest rising and falling.
Waiting.