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Rain hammered softly against the stone above the cave mouth, the sound steady enough now that Braun had long since stopped listening to it. The fire crackled low between scattered rocks, throwing uneven amber light across the cavern walls. Smoke drifted upward in lazy ribbons before vanishing into the dark somewhere overhead. Braun sat near the flames with one forearm braced across a raised knee, slowly dragging a whetstone down the length of his dagger. Steel against stone sounded. Again. Again. The Middle was quiet tonight., he thought. Which should have warned him something was wrong.
The thing in the corner had not moved for nearly an hour. Braun pretended not to notice it. The cabin itself was little more than warped wood and stolen warmth buried deep in the Middle, its roof rattling softly beneath rain while the fire cracked low and amber. One chair. One table. One bed shoved against the wall. And in the farthest corner, where the light refused to settle properly, the shadows breathed too thickly. Bryaxis. Or part of her, at least.
The river nymph surfaced only after midnight, but Braun had known she was there for hours. The forest had gone too quiet around the water long before she appeared, the current itself moving strangely beneath the moonlight. He sat near the bank anyway, sleeves rolled to his forearms, sharpening a hunting knife against a whetstone while the shadows drifted lazily around his boots like smoke too tired to rise.
Braun noticed eventually, just as a faint smile touched her mouth. It was a dangerous thing. It was soft enough to make a man forget rivers had teeth. Then she moved closer. The water folded around her as she drifted toward the bank until she rested between his knees, pale hands settling lightly against his thighs for balance. Braun stilled instinctively, shadows curling once around his wrists before calming again.
The Pooka stole his boot sometime around sunset. Braun discovered this only after stepping directly into freezing mud with one socked foot while Cove, the otter, watched from a nearby log like this was the greatest event of his tiny life. “…You little bastard.”
The kelpie watched him from the center of the marsh like it already knew exactly how this would end. Moonlight turned the flooded bog silver-blue around them, reeds bending softly in the cold wind while black water stretched endlessly between drowned trees. Braun stood knee-deep near the shoreline, one boot missing thanks to a certain maned menace from earlier, sleeves soaked through and shadows winding low across the surface like living smoke.
The Suriel stole his tea. Braun discovered this only after spending nearly twenty minutes boiling river water over a tiny campfire in the ruins and turning back to find the steaming cup simply… gone. Cove chirped suspiciously from atop his pack, while Waverly scurried ahead. Braun narrowed his eyes slowly at the empty stone beside the fire. “You have got to be kidding me.”