Samick does not listen to the quiet and find a calmness in it.
He treads through the water that floods the forest floor, and he listens for life.
He listens beyond the disruption of water, the steps that other warriors take through the flood.
He listens beyond those heartbeats.
And he searches for the one that flutters on every third beat. The weak heart.
Bodies are face-down in the water. They float. Moving into his path.
Each time an obstruction blocks his way, his eyes whiten that bit more.
Too long has passed since the last still-breathing body was lifted from the water. A human, a male, a kuri.
Not her.
Even longer has passed since the wave struck the camp and blasted fae and human alike deeper into the forest.
And since, Samick has been wading through the remnants of the attack.
He stopped calling out for her.
He considers the floating corpses, their plain jackets, not yellow; their plain hair, not amber; their plain flesh, not freckled.
And still, the occasional one stops him. He turns over a corpse here and there, checks the face, and finds hope in that none are her.
More warriors prowl the waters.
Arwyn is a mute shadow behind him.
He isn’t only searching for Tesni.
Arwyn checks off names from a scrap of parchment, documenting the loss of life—both fae and human.
But Arwyn has been trailing him since the waves settled and General Raske ordered the search for life.
It was a loss.
A great one.
But there is only one loss that lures Samick deeper into the forest, rolling over human bodies, drawing them out from tangled shrubs, pulling them down from the trees.
Some are not all the way dead.
He leaves them behind.
Continues searching.
And searching.
And searching.
?
The shore is parched, the bay barren.
Samick looks out into the shadows settled over where water was mere hours ago—and he sees the same death he found in the forest.
