Morning light seeped through the gaps in Athena’s shelter, painting stripes of gold across her bare legs. She blinked awake, her body stiff from sleeping curled on top of a pile of dried grass and leaves, a barrier from the cold ground below. Outside, the forest dripped with rain that had come in the night, a steady plink-plink of water falling from leaves to puddled earth.

  She crawled to the entrance, pushing aside the remains of the grass curtain. The world smelled different after the rain, sharper, greener, like the trees had exhaled all at once. Her nose wrinkled at the scent. It wasn’t unpleasant, just... much. Too much.

  Her shelter hadn’t fared well.

  It felt… unfair.

  Running her hand along the surface of the damaged wall, her fingers came away streaked with wet, grey mud. Her body ached, her hands felt stiff, and the feeling of having her hard work partially ruined by the elements left a strange, sharp frustration bubbling in her chest. She had put effort into this, tangible effort that left her body weary, and the world seemed intent on breaking it down.

  She needed to fix it. Again.

  Her hands moved before the thought fully formed. She scooped up handfuls of the mud from the edges of a moat that had formed around the walls, smearing it over the weakest parts of the structure. The cool sludge oozed between her fingers, thick and yielding, like the clay she'd imagined using to build sturdy walls. It held for a breathless moment... then, heavy with water, slid down in gloopy ribbons, splattering back into the shallow moat.

  Athena scowled. That familiar sharp frustration tightened its grip. Why wouldn't it stay? It was material, she was applying it, it should stay. But the mud, oversaturated by the night's rain, seemed to resist her efforts, clinging stubbornly to the damp branches for a moment before succumbing to gravity.

  She tried again, this time pressing stones into the mud like teeth in gums. The first few held, anchored against the woven branches by the sheer volume of mud she piled around them. Encouraged, she worked faster, scooping larger handfuls, wedging flattish rocks between the saplings, smearing more mud over them. Her breathing quickened slightly as she fell into a rhythm…

  Scoop, Stone, Press.

  Scoop, Stone, Press.

  This felt more effective. The stones provided some internal structure, some resistance against the mud’s tendency to slide.

  The wall stabilized. Mostly. It wasn’t smooth, its surface lumpy and uneven, the stones protruding awkwardly like the spine of some bony animal. But it stood. The patched section felt heavier, more substantial than the original structure, a tangible result of her effort. A small victory against the mud's reluctance.

  She tilted her head, studying the wall again, her frustration ebbing slightly as observation took over. The part that hadn’t collapsed during the light rain was… angled. Not straight up, but leaning slightly inward, like a tree bent by wind. The sections where she had attempted to build a vertical wall, even reinforced with mud, were the ones that had suffered most from the rain's assault.

  Angle. Sloped. Shed.

  "Angle?" The word surfaced, brought forth by Context Inspection, an abstract concept applied to a physical reality. She reached out, tracing the slope with a muddy finger. Maybe… maybe the angle helped? It wasn’t just about holding the mud. It was about the mud staying. Gravity pulled straight down. If the wall was tilted. Sloped…

  A gentle gust whipped through the clearing, rustling the still-wet leaves. The shelter groaned faintly, a sound of material strain she was beginning to recognize, but the angled section held firm while the straighter portions shuddered. Athena’s eyes widened. It wasn't just a feeling. The angled wall was more stable against the wind.

  Her skill didn't give her knowledge of aerodynamics or load distribution, the complex engineering principles that explained why a slanted wall was better. Only that it was better at shedding water and resisting the wind than the vertical walls. An immediate, visceral understanding, born of observation and physical trial-and-error, that this shape survived. This shape worked.

  More confident than before, she set to work reshaping the entire shelter. She couldn't take down the existing walls without the whole structure collapsing, but she could add to them, banking the mud and branches into that same slightly angled slope. Stones went at the base, piled heavier and pressed deeper into the ground to anchor the structure. Mud packed thicker where the wind hit hardest, where she felt the most vulnerable to the outside. And always, always that slight tilt, banking the mud and branches so it wasn't straight up and down, like the wall was turning its shoulder to the weather. Her body continued to protest, her muscles still sore from the previous day, but the focus on improving her shelter, making it stronger, overrode the discomfort.

  By midday, her hands were cracked with drying clay, the fine lines etched into her skin filled with grey grit. Her knees were stained earth-brown from kneeling in the damp ground. But the shelter stood straighter. More solid. Stronger. Its shape was uneven, lumpy, a patchwork of old and new mud, but it felt… more capable. More resilient.

  With the main structure temporarily stabilized against the elements, her mind turned to other needs, other tasks. She still felt exposed. Her skin was bare, vulnerable to the wind, the sharp edges of branches, the bites of insects she couldn't yet see or name. The wolf had fur. The squirrels had fur. The birds had feathers. They were covered. She was not.

  Exposure. Vulnerable. Cover. Protect.

  The concept had troubled her since she first noticed the creatures of the forest seemed shielded in ways she was not. She needed something more. Something like fur. Something like feathers. Something that covered her.

  She thought of the wolf, its thick silver coat. She thought of the bird weaving its nest, creating a cup-shaped shelter from twigs and mud.

  Nest. Bird. Weave. Twigs.

  Her own shelter was built using a similar weaving method, though much cruder. She could weave. She could gather materials. Could she weave herself a covering?

  She returned to the stream, not just to wash, but to seek materials. The water was cool against her scraped and mud-caked skin, washing away the grit, soothing the sting of small cuts she hadn't noticed before. As she knelt by the bank, scooping handfuls of water, her reflection looked back at her, her bare shoulders stark against the green of the forest.

  After washing, feeling cleaner and slightly less vulnerable, she began to search along the stream bank, away from the area where the wolf tracks had disappeared. She looked for flexible things. Not the stiff branches she'd used for her shelter, but pliable vines, long, tough grasses like the ones she’d used for cordage, large, supple leaves.

  She found long, trailing vines, their stems thin but strong, twisting around the base of trees. She tugged at them. They stretched, resisted, but didn't break easily. She gathered them, their green surface cool and smooth. She found broad, flat leaves, larger than her hand, their veins thick and prominent. They were soft but held their shape.

  She focused on her skill, on the wolf's grey and white fur, on the bird's vibrant blue and green feathers, on the hair of the rabbit that lived nearby.

  Fur. Weave. Bind. Cover.

  Sitting by the stream, she began to experiment. She took the long grasses and vines, twisting them together to make cords, stronger than the simple ties she'd used before. She took the large leaves, layering them, trying to find a way to make them stay together, to cover a large area.

  Weave. Bind. Thread. Sew.

  She tried piercing the leaves with a sharp twig, threading grass through the holes. It worked, crudely, the leaves held together, forming a floppy, uneven sheet. She made more of these sheets, layering them, trying to give them substance. She took the woven cordage and used it to bind the leaf sheets together, overlapping them like scales.

  Slowly, painstakingly, a shape began to emerge. Not a fitted garment, but a simple covering. A large, uneven rectangle of woven leaves and grasses, bound together by vine cords. She worked on it through the afternoon, sitting by the stream, her fingers sore, her concentration absolute. The rhythmic motion was soothing, a different kind of physical effort than building, less frantic, more deliberate.

  When it was finished, it was crude, imperfect. The edges were ragged, gaps remained between the leaves, but it was a sheet of material large enough to drape over her shoulders, to cover her front and back. She stood and held it up, the light filtering through the leaves. Then, she carefully draped it over her shoulders, tying the vine cords loosely across her chest.

  It was surprisingly heavy, a cool weight against her skin. It rustled as she moved. It didn’t fit her shape, just hung loosely, swaying with each step. But it was a covering. A barrier between her and the outside world.

  Cover. Cloak. Clothes.

  A quiet sense of satisfaction settled in her chest. It wasn’t warm like finding shelter, or sharp like tasting food. It was a different feeling, born of effort and imitation, of trying to become more like the world around her.

  She walked back to her shelter as the sun began to dip, wearing her new cloak. It rustled and shifted, an unfamiliar sensation, but not an unpleasant one. She gathered more berries and shoots, eating as she walked, the sweetness a familiar comfort.

  As dusk settled, painting the valley in hues of purple and grey, she was back at her shelter. She ate the last of her gathered food, her stomach settling, no longer aching with hunger. She adjusted her cloak, pulling it tighter around her shoulders as the air grew cooler.

  She sat inside her small shelter, arranging a pile of grass and leaves like a mat, feeling the solid earth beneath her. The cloak, though imperfect, felt like a layer of safety, a partial shield against the creeping cold and the feeling of exposure. She ran her hands over the rough leaves and vines she had woven, feeling the texture.

  It was crude. It was simple. But it was hers. Like the shelter. Like the fire pit she had built. Things she had made.

  She lay down on her makeshift bed, pulling the cloak over her like a blanket. It didn't provide much warmth, the air still circulated through the gaps, but it felt like a comfort. She was inside, covered, in her shelter. Safer than she had been the night before.

  A distant rumble echoed through the valley.

  Athena's eyes snapped open. Faint. Far away. Like the sound of something heavy rolling over stone. She listened, tensing, waiting. It didn't come again.

  Distant. Storm. Thunder.

  The words formed in her mind, the rumble providing the needed context, linking words to the sound. Thunder meant a storm. Like the light rain the night before. But maybe…

  Bigger.

  She lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds of the night, the whisper of wind, the distant call of an owl, the rustling of her leaf cloak. The thought of a coming storm, of wind and water threatening her shelter, unsettled her, but it was a tangible threat, something she could understand and potentially prepare for, unlike the unseen things that lurked in the dark.

  Sleep came eventually, heavy and restless, punctuated by distant rumbles of thunder.

  She woke suddenly. Not to dawn, but to noise.

  Wind. Roaring through the trees. A violent whipping sound, loud and terrifying.

  Rain. Not dripping, but pouring down, hitting the ground, her shelter, everything, with a percussive force.

  The walls of her hut groaned. The woven branches shrieking as they were battered by the wind and rain. The mud, already softened by the earlier rain, was taking the brunt of it.

  And then…

  A loud crack. Not thunder this time. Closer.

  A supporting branch broke. A connected section of her wall started to collapse inward, pressed by the wind and rain just on the other side. Mud sloughed off in heavy sheets, more branches snapped, leaves and grass tore free from the roof. Rain lashed in through the openings, cold and brutal.

  Athena scrambled up with a gasp, fear and panic seizing her. The storm wasn’t distant anymore. It was here. And her shelter was failing.

  Frantic, she crawled to the breach, shoving fallen branches back into place. The mud was cold and wet, soaking her hands, refusing to stick to the sodden frame. The rain poured down relentlessly, washing away her efforts as fast as she could make them.

  She needed more mud. Stronger branches. Something…

  She ran out into the storm, not thinking, just acting. The wind ripped at her cloak, threatening to tear it away. Rain lashed her face, stinging her eyes. She plunged her hands into the earth around her shelter, clawing at the rain-soaked ground, scooping up handfuls of cold, wet mud.

  She stumbled back to the wall, pressing the mud into the gap, shoving branches in haphazardly. The mud was useless. Sopping wet, it offered no support, no adhesive power. It simply slid down the wall, mixing with the pooling water on the ground.

  She worked desperately, fueled by panic and the brutal cold. The storm raged around her, uncaring. She was soaked, shivering, her fingers numb. Her shelter was disintegrating around her, piece by piece.

  She kept going, frantic, until her body gave out. Exhaustion, bone-deep and absolute, crashed over her. She collapsed inside the half-ruined shelter, shivering violently, mud smeared across her face and arms, the rain still pouring in through the gaping hole in her wall.

  She lay there, helpless, listening to the storm rage. Her cloak was soaked, heavy and useless. Her shelter was failing. She was exposed. Vulnerable.

  The night stretched on, a terrifying symphony of wind and rain and thunder, as Athena lay shivering on the damp ground, the feeling of failure a bitter taste in her mouth.

  The morning after the storm smelled too alive.

  Athena woke with her cheek pressed into damp earth, her limbs tangled in the grass bedding she'd piled beneath her. The air hung thick with the scent of wet soil and crushed greenery, a pungent, almost sweet odor that clung to the back of her throat. She blinked slowly, her thoughts syrupy with exhaustion. The storm had raged deep into the night, and her frantic repairs had left her muscles aching. The cold, wet mud still clung to her skin, a constant, uncomfortable reminder of the night's ordeal.

  She pushed herself upright, wincing as her palms sank slightly into the softened ground. The earth here was saturated, yielding under her weight with a quiet squelch that echoed too loudly in the post-storm hush. Water droplets still clung to every surface, catching the early light like scattered beads.

  Her shelter stood, mostly. The angled walls had held against the storm's full fury, a testament to her earlier adjustments. But the hasty mud repairs from the night before had suffered terribly. The mud, packed on while soaking wet, had simply sloughed off in uneven patches, revealing gaps where the woven branches poked through. Cracks webbed across the surface where the clay had tried and failed to dry, and in places, small rocks had worked themselves loose, leaving pockmarked gaps. A steady drip-drip-drip echoed from inside, her roof was leaking again, the heavy rain having found every imperfection in her hasty construction.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Athena scowled, stepping closer to inspect the damage. The trench she'd dug around her bedding in a panic last night had become a puddle, now filled with rainwater and flecks of displaced mud. She nudged a half-submerged stone with her toe, watching it sink beneath the murky surface. The memory of standing in the lashing rain, frantically trying to pack useless, sopping mud onto a crumbling wall, filled her with a fresh wave of frustration. All that effort, all that fear, and the result was still…

  Broken.

  "No…" she muttered, wiping her hands on her thighs, "Sloppy." Her fingers came away streaked with dried clay. Her hands, arms, body all covered in the sticky grey mud. The dampness clung to her skin, making her feel heavy and uncomfortable. She needed to wash. The mud felt like a second skin, but an unwanted one.

  The stream. She needed to wash away the sticky gritty feeling on her skin. And maybe, just maybe, the stream would offer some clarity, some respite from the frustrating reality of her damaged shelter.

  She made her way to the stream bank, the ground soft and squishy beneath her bare feet. The water was higher than usual, its usual clear babble replaced by a deeper, more insistent rush. It carried debris from the storm, fallen leaves, small twigs, bits of earth.

  Athena crouched at the bank, dipping her hands into the current. The cold bit at her skin, sharp enough to make her hiss, but she kept them submerged, watching as the mud swirled away in lazy tendrils. She scrubbed at her arms, her legs, her face, trying to wash away the grime, the residue of the night's failure. The water was a physical cleanser, but it did little to wash away the frustration that still coiled in her chest.

  As she straightened, her gaze drifted over the stones lining the bank, worn smooth by the endless flow of the current. Then, something caught her eye upstream, a flash of orange against the dark water.

  At first, she thought it was a leaf, some vibrant bit of autumn caught in the current. But the leaves she'd seen floating by didn't move like that, they didn't twist and drift with such weight.

  Curiosity tugged at her, a familiar pull, though muted by her lingering frustration.

  Athena stood, following the bank upstream, her bare feet sinking slightly into the damp earth. The orange flickered again, brighter now. Closer.

  Then she saw it.

  The fox lay half on the bank, half in the water, its three tails fanned out like spilled ink. Its fur was a shock of color, brilliant red-orange, almost glowing against the muted greens and browns of the forest. Beetles swarmed over it, their carapaces shimmering with the same unnatural hue, as if they'd stolen fragments of the fox's brilliance.

  Athena froze.

  The creature was clearly dead. Its chest didn't rise; its glassy eyes didn't blink. But the way the light played across its fur, the way the beetles pulsed like embers, it didn't feel like decay. It felt like something else. Something she didn't have a name for. Something deeply upsetting.

  She should have turned away. Should have left it for the stream to claim, to carry away its unsettling glow.

  Instead, driven by a morbid fascination that warred with revulsion, she stepped closer.

  The carcass was small, a fox, or what was left of one. The water had bloated its belly, its russet fur matted with debris. Beetles swarmed over its exposed ribs, their iridescent shells flashing orange and red as they worked. One crawled from the empty eye socket, antennae twitching.

  She should have turned away. Should have left it for the stream to claim.

  Instead, she poked it with a stick she found nearby, pushing against its side.

  The body rolled, revealing a gaping hole where the hindquarters should have been. White bone glistened beneath strings of muscle. Something inside Athena recoiled, a visceral snap of tension up her spine. Her stomach lurched. The smell intensified, the sickly sweet odor of death mingled with the acrid scent of decay and the unnatural glow of the beetles.

  Dead.

  The word dropped into her mind like a stone, heavy and final.

  Decay.

  Her throat tightened, gagging at the smell.

  Food.

  Athena stumbled back, the stick falling from her hands. The last word clung like bile on her tongue. She gagged, doubling over as her empty stomach convulsed. The thought of consuming that, of taking that glowing, decaying thing into her body… it was horrifying. It was a violation of some deep, unwritten rule.

  "No! Not food!" She choked out.

  Rotten.

  She scrambled up the bank, away from the thing in the water, away from the beetles, away from the smell. But the images followed, the glowing fur, the beetles, the bone, the way flesh parted like wet bark under pressure. Her hands found a fallen branch, and she dug without thinking, clawing at the soft earth beneath the leaf litter. She needed to bury it. To hide it. To make it go away.

  The hole was shallow, barely more than a depression. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to go back to the stream, didn’t want to touch that, that, that wrongness.

  Carefully, she moved the carcass with a pair of sticks, its tails hanging…

  Lifeless.

  The glowing beetles scattering as it was moved. Gently, she lowered it into the shallow hole before pushing soil over it until the fur disappeared beneath. Until all that remained was a mound of fresh-turned earth.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps.

  Why was she shaking? Why did she feel so… violated? The fox was dead. It was a thing that happened in this world, she knew that intellectually, but experiencing it, seeing the decay, the beetles, the glowing unnaturalness… it was profoundly unsettling. It felt like a disruption of the natural order, a break in the harmony of the forest she was beginning to perceive.

  She wiped her hands on her thighs, over and over, but the feeling wouldn’t leave, the memory of the slick give of decaying flesh under pressure, the way life could just... stop.

  A cluster of wildflowers grew nearby, their yellow faces turned toward the sun. Athena pulled them up by the roots, tearing them from the earth, driven by an urge to somehow counteract the death she had just witnessed, and planted them haphazardly over the grave.

  "Sleep good." she muttered. The words meant nothing. The action meant less. It was a ritual she didn't understand, a response to a feeling she couldn't name, but something in her chest unclenched when the last bloom settled into place. It felt like a small act of restoring balance, of replacing decay with new life, however fragile.

  This part of the stream was off-limits now. The memory of the fox, of its unsettling glow and the smell of rot, had tainted it. She didn't want to go near that part of the bank again.

  Athena wandered downstream instead, where the water widened into a still pool. Her reflection wavered as she approached, a pale smudge against the dark water, streaked with remnants of mud she hadn't quite managed to wash off. She knelt, watching the face in the pool mirror her movements.

  It was her, but not. Calmer. Smoother. Untouched by rot or trembling.

  She reached out.

  Her fingers broke the surface, and the reflection shattered into ripples. When it reformed, her mirrored self had changed, eyes wider, mouth parted in something like surprise.

  Alive.

  The word floated up from some deep place.

  "I'm not like the fox." Athena touched her own cheek, comparing it to the water-face. Solid. Warm. No beetles. No bones. A profound sense of her own aliveness, her own warmth, settled within her, a stark contrast to the cold stillness of the buried fox.

  A thought flickered, half-formed, barely there, about boundaries between living and not. Between her and the buried thing upstream. Between the natural cycle of life and death and whatever unnaturalness had created that glowing decay.

  She pushed it away. She didn't want to think about that now. She wanted to think about living.

  Instead, she scooped a handful of mud from the bank, fresh mud, untainted by the sight upstream, and smeared it on a flat rock. With careful strokes, she drew a face, two eyes, a mouth, no nose. It was crude, lumpy, but it was a face. A living face. She plucked three red berries from a nearby bush and pressed them into the mouth-hole.

  "Eat," she told the mud-face.

  The berries, heavy and wet, slid off, leaving crimson streaks down the rock.

  Athena sighed and ate them herself. They tasted too sweet after the unsettling events of the morning, the sweetness almost cloying, a poor replacement for the feeling of normalcy she craved.

  The berries were too sweet. Too ordinary. She chewed slowly, the juice bursting tart against her tongue as she stared at the mud-face on the rock. Its berry-streaked mouth sagged, the crude features blurred by runoff. She poked it, watching a blue-stained fingertip sink into the damp earth. The face didn’t react. Didn’t eat. Didn’t blink.

  Just like the fox.

  She wiped her hands on the grass, over and over, but the image lingered, that brilliant orange fur, the beetles like living embers crawling through its ribs. The way death could glow. The unsettling stillness of the buried thing.

  Her stomach twisted. She ate another berry, hoping to chase away the feeling. It didn't work.

  With a sense of weary resignation, Athena turned back towards her shelter. It was still damaged, a constant reminder of her struggles, her vulnerabilities. Maybe working on it, making it stronger, more secure, would help to ground her, to push away the unsettling feelings of the morning.

  The shelter was worse up close. Mud had fallen off the walls in uneven patches, revealing gaps where the woven branches poked through the surface like broken bones. Athena knelt, scooping up handfuls of clay from the rain-softened earth near the moat. The motion was automatic now,

  Scoop. Stone. Press.

  Her fingers continued working while her mind wandered back to the stream, to the buried fox, to the shaking, the feeling of wrongness.

  "Why three tails?"

  The thought popped into her head, a random detail she couldn't explain, another piece of an unsettling puzzle. She waited for Context Inspection to respond, but it remained strangely silent.

  Scoop. Stone. Press.

  She smeared a thick layer over the largest hole, her palm leaving a perfect print in the wet clay. The mark reminded her of something. She tilted her head, feeling her skill activate.

  Color.

  The berry stains still streaked her fingers, blue from the berries near the thicket, red from the ones by the stream. She looked at her hands, stained with the vibrant colors of the forest. Then she looked at the mud, dull and grey and brown. A contrast.

  A flicker of curiosity, bright and clean, cut through the lingering unease. On impulse, she pressed her hand to the wall again, her fingers still stained with berry juice. The print emerged vivid, the crushed pigments seeping into the mud like veins. Red. Blue. A splash of color on the dull surface.

  A breath caught in her throat. It was beautiful. A simple, unexpected beauty that captivated her.

  She grabbed more berries, red ones, blue ones, crushing them between her fingers with single-minded focus.

  Red. Blue. Red. Blue.

  The juice stained her hands, staining the mud she scooped up. Her hands became a blur of motion, slapping prints along the shelter’s exterior in erratic arcs. The pigments mixed where they overlapped, the colors bleeding into something new, something deep and royal and,

  Purple.

  Athena froze, her stained fingers hovering over the discovery. She mashed a blue berry directly onto a red stain on her hand, watching as the hues swirled together, creating that impossible third color. A laugh bubbled up, sharp and bright and unfamiliar, a pure expression of delight that chased away the shadows lingering in her mind.

  She painted until her fingers ached, until the shelter’s walls were a riot of hand prints and streaks, until the fox’s glow and the beetles’ shimmer faded beneath the joy of this. Of making something that wasn’t just strong. Something that was beautiful.

  The mud squelched under her palms as she pressed another handful into the wall’s gaping wound, creating another colorful hand print. It sagged slightly under the weight, a few clumps plopping to the ground with wet thuds. Athena frowned, scooping up the fallen clay and smearing it back into place. This mud was too muddy, wetter than what she’d used before the storm. She could see the difference in the patches she’d already repaired: the newest sections were still dark and glistening, while those that had survived had lightened to a pale, dusty brown.

  She ran her fingers along one of the drier patches. The surface was rough, cracked in places. But where thin blades of grass poked through, remnants of the first days rushed construction, the mud held firm, anchored by their roots.

  "Dry," she murmured, picking at a grass blade embedded in the dried mud. The entire tuft came free in one piece, the remaining mud around it still clinging stubbornly to the woven saplings beneath. The grass was acting like tiny anchors, holding the mud in place as it dried.

  Harden.

  Her fingertips traced a network of fine cracks radiating from a bare spot. Then she touched a grass-stabilized section, still solid.

  Sturdy.

  The grass made it sturdy.

  A memory flickered: the beaver dam’s interlaced branches, how the sticks trapped mud between them. Her breath hitched. The grass was doing the same thing, but smaller.

  Reinforcement.

  She scrambled to her feet, nearly slipping in her haste. She looked at the mud, then at the grass growing around her shelter, then at the cracked patch on the wall. Grass woven into the mud. That would make it hold.

  But how to make it dry and hard like the parts near the fire pit? She thought of the warmth from the stones, how they seemed to pull the moisture from the earth.

  Her mind flashed back to the fire. The ember. The way it consumed the moss. The way its heat had burnt her finger.

  "Heat!"

  Her fire made a lot of heat!

  The fire pit’s stones still radiated warmth from last night’s flames despite the rain. Athena crouched beside them, pressing her palm to the hottest rock. Almost too hot to touch.

  "Perfect!"

  Heat. It dried things.

  Dashing back to the wall, she began slapping mud onto the weakest sections, incorporating handfuls of grass this time, pressing tufts into the wet mud with deliberate care. Each patch became a little experiment, some with more grass, some with less, some smeared thin and others caked thick. Some of her colorful hand prints blurred under the new layer of reinforced mud, but she didn’t care. This was better. Stronger. This mud felt different now, more resistant to sagging, holding its shape better with the grass woven through it.

  But it was still wet. It needed to dry. And it needed heat.

  She looked at the fire pit again. At the burning stick she’d used to make the fire. She could make more fire. She could bring the heat to the wall.

  A low rumble echoed in the distance.

  Athena’s head snapped up. Beyond the trees, the sky had taken on a sickly yellow tint at the horizon. The air smelled charged, like the moment before lightning. Another storm was coming.

  Her hands moved faster. She gathered armfuls of dry grass, twigs, and small branches. She grabbed the quartz stone from her pouch, held it up to the yellowing sky, focusing the light onto the pile of dry tinder near the base of her wall. Smoke curled upward almost immediately.

  Fire.

  She fed the fledgling flame with twigs, then larger pieces of wood. It grew, casting dancing light on her mud-covered walls. She placed hot stones from the fire pit near the base of the wall, feeling the heat radiate outward, watching as the damp mud nearest the stones began to lighten, to dry.

  This was it. Fire to dry the mud, grass to reinforce it. Stronger walls.

  She made more small fires around the perimeter of her shelter, placing them strategically near the mud walls, feeding them carefully, always with a watchful eye, remembering the pain from the ember. Where there were exposed branches, she pressed on more mud, not wanting to burn the sticks that made up her walls. She gathered more stones from around the clearing and carried them back, arranging them around the base of the walls in small rings. Filling them with more grass and twigs before carefully lighting the fire with the help of a burning stick.

  The yellow sky deepened to an ominous grey. Another thunderclap, closer this time. The wind picked up, carrying the scent of impending rain.

  Athena bared her teeth at the darkening sky.

  "Not this time," she growled, and kept working. She smeared more mud, more grass, closer to the fires, feeling the heat, watching the mud dry, harden.

  The first raindrop hit Athena’s forehead like a warning.

  She looked up just as the sky split open, a jagged streak of lightning tore through the clouds, followed by a crack so loud it vibrated in her teeth. The ancient oak at the clearing’s edge exploded. Splinters rained down, one grazing her cheek as she stumbled back.

  "Loud." Her hands flew to her ringing ears. The thunderclap still echoed, shaking the ground beneath her.

  "Bright." White spots danced in her vision from the afterimage.

  "Too much."

  She crouched, pressing her face into her knees for a moment. The storm didn’t care. Rain immediately poured from the sky in sheets now, turning her carefully reinforced walls into dripping canvases. The freshest Purple hand prints melted into brown streaks.

  The fires hissed in pain.

  Athena lunged for the nearest one as water pooled around its stone ring. Embers spat and died under the deluge. She grabbed wide piece of soggy bark and shielded it, using another piece to scoop up the remaining embers, and dumped them in a pile inside her hut.

  "Don’t go!" She called out to it, as the last tendrils of flame flickered.

  Smoke curled from the blackened remains. For a terrible moment, all she could see was the fox’s empty rib cage, those glowing beetles swarming where life had been.

  The fires she'd started around the hut were struggling, some already extinguished by the sheer force of the rain. Her drying efforts, her careful plans, were being washed away.

  No. The fire wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  She rushed back outside and scooped the hottest embers from the largest fire pit onto her piece of bark, cradling them against her chest as she scrambled inside her shelter. It leaked, but not nearly as badly as before. The reinforced walls, the angled sections, they were holding against the wind and rain, imperfectly, but holding.

  In the driest corner, she built a new nest of twigs and dry grass stolen from her bedding. She deposited the embers on the pile and moved to gather the remains of the other. She needed the fire. She needed the warmth. She needed it to live.

  "Breathe," she whispered to the embers, blowing gently.

  They responded. A tiny flame licked up, trembling like a newborn thing. Athena shielded it with her body, her back to the storm, to the gaping holes where the rain still managed to penetrate.

  Hours passed.

  The fire lived, but barely, a sullen, spitting thing that demanded constant attention. Athena fed it slivers of bark, then strips of her precious grass insulation when the bark ran out. Her hands shook with exhaustion.

  Outside, the storm raged. Inside, she whispered to the flame like it could hear her:

  "You’re like me." A log shifted. "Alive but not."

  Another gust shook the shelter. The fire dimmed.

  "No! Stay!" She hunched over it, arms forming a cage. The comparison struck her suddenly, this was just like the fox. Beautiful. Strange. Dying because the world was too wet, too cold.

  But she couldn’t bury fire. Couldn’t plant flowers in its ashes and pretend that fixed anything.

  "Why?" She poked the embers. No answer. "Why?" Louder now, as if volume could force understanding.

  The fire crackled, indifferent.

  Athena’s vision blurred. She curled around the flame, her cheek pressed to the dirt floor.

  "Why… why…. why………."

  Sleep took her mid-question, her fingers still outstretched toward the warmth.

  This chapter was scheduled to release 4/23 at 9am PST...

  That is unless you surprise me again and our followers increase!

  [AI Generated. Will remove if it causes problems.]