Morning in the shelter bled in slow, pale ribbons through the frosted windows. Breakfast was powdered eggs and toast that smelled like burnt hope. Rafi poked at his plate, listening to the din of children who didn't yet know how quickly comfort could be uprooted.
The braid girl sat across from him, hair still matted from sleep, her fork idle. She watched a boy near the end of the table — small, freckled, too loud with his laughter. He hadn't yet learned to listen for the hush in empty corners. Rafi envied him for a heartbeat, then pitied him twice as hard.
After the meal, staff herded them through routines: showers behind thin plastic curtains, old clothes swapped for secondhand sweaters, whispered promises that a "placement" would come soon. Some nice family with neat rows of carpet and locked doors.
But in the corridor that led to the counselor's office, a window overlooked the winter trees beyond the fence. Through dirty glass, Rafi saw branches clawing at the sky — the hush's fingers scratching to be remembered. His vision blurred until he couldn't tell frost from root.
When the clipboard woman called his name, he turned too slowly. Her smile cracked at the edges.
Inside the office, questions crawled like ants on his skin. Do you remember where you're from? Did you see anyone else out there? Do you have an aunt, a grandparent, any family at all?
He answered with the forest: silence so thick the woman glanced behind her once, spooked by the absence of sound.
By lunch, rumors trickled through the shelter's halls. The new kids are weird. They don't talk. They stare at the walls. Sometimes they hum in their sleep.
The braid girl did hum, low under her breath — a note the hush once stitched behind her teeth. When other children crowded too close, she bared it like a fang. They learned to keep their distance.
That evening, Rafi lay in bed tracing cracks in the ceiling plaster. Each crack branched like a root map — a secret tunnel back to where the hush waited, patient as fungus in dead wood.
He didn't want to bring it here. He wanted to keep it buried. But the hush was no seed to forget. It fed on fear. It grew on doubt. It bloomed under the soft belly of towns that thought lost children could be made normal with warm socks and soft bedtime stories.
Below him, the shelter hummed with the quiet terror of a hundred hearts learning there were things worse than wolves in the woods.
And the braid girl, curled like a question mark under her blanket, cracked one eye open and whispered without words: When it calls, we run.