Echoes Around the Fire

“It’s not the missing voices that unnerve you most—it’s the ones still here, too quiet to trust.”

The bonfire's flickering light cast a warm glow across our faces, gilding skin and ash-streaked sleeves in shades of amber and gold. But no heat from the flames could melt the frost that had crept into the air between us. The shift in atmosphere was subtle, but unmistakable—like the hush before a stormfront moves in, or the instant a pheromone changes the direction of an entire colony.

I’d long trained myself to see such shifts in the insect world—minute changes in movement or scent that signalled a colony on edge. Tonight, I saw those same signs reflected in us. The absence of Jamie, Joel, and Glenda sat like a stone in the centre of our little camp, a weight around which all conversation bent and broke. Their empty spots around the fire weren’t just unoccupied—they were hollow, pulling at us like voids in the structure of something already fragile.

I glanced across the camp as Kain disappeared into his tent without so much as a nod to Chris. The flaps drew closed behind him with a sound too final, too abrupt. I knew enough not to press, but it stung to witness that quiet fracture. It pressed again on the bruise of my doubt—Chris’s evasiveness at the lagoon, the strangeness of that injury. Whatever had happened out there, it wasn’t just slippery rock.

Around the fire, we sat without ceremony. The others picked at their food with begrudging movements, bites taken without taste, hands too still between mouthfuls. Normally, even in the worst moments, there was some conversation. A joke muttered. A murmur of planning. Not tonight. Tonight, our silence felt organised—like termites going still when a predator’s presence is sensed through vibrations in the soil.

I stirred the small pile of food on my plate, more out of habit than hunger. We hadn’t made use of the smaller cooking fire after all. The idea had seemed good earlier—almost cheerful, even. Now, it felt misplaced. The simplicity of the meal mirrored the simplicity of our state: quiet, functional, emotionally anaemic. There was no ceremony, no community in it—just calories, swallowed down to fuel us for another day.

Across the fire, Paul and Nial sat close but didn’t speak much. The low murmurs I’d overheard earlier had faded entirely. Now they only passed the occasional glance, brief and loaded. Watching them was like observing ants exchange a droplet of trophallaxis—no excess, just a silent transaction of necessary information. No warmth. No sharing for sharing’s sake. Just survival.

I wondered what thoughts sat behind Nial’s guarded eyes—whether he was still thinking about the family he’d been forced to leave behind. Whether he questioned Paul’s authority or Luke’s decisions. Whether he regretted walking through that Portal. Then again, didn’t we all, at some point?

And Paul—his posture remained open, attentive, but the flicker of strain had started to show in his shoulders. The firelight caught the creases in his brow more sharply tonight. I didn’t think it was just fatigue.

My gaze travelled slowly around the circle. Each person a node in a damaged web. Threads had been snapped, realigned. Our patterns were shifting. And though I couldn’t yet tell whether we were adapting or simply fracturing under pressure, I knew the difference would be everything.

The fire popped, throwing a brief spray of sparks into the air. They scattered skyward, bright and brief—gone before they could fall. Around me, no one spoke. The heat on my face was real, but the chill inside was harder to shake.

We were still here, still together.

But something had changed.