4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
The Silence Before the Split
Chris comes back from the lagoon with a bruise that doesn't bleed and an explanation that doesn't hold. Karen covers for him. She knows how to keep her mouth shut, how to read the space between words. But silence has a weight, and tonight it presses down on everyone. The fire burns. The empty seats stay empty. And Karen begins to wonder if what's fraying between them can even be stitched back together.
The evening light paints the camp in gold, but Karen isn't fooled. She tends the fires with careful hands, rationing logs, coaxing embers. There's comfort in the rhythm—something ancient, something grounding. But Clivilius doesn't let comfort last.
Chris returns from the lagoon, and Karen knows immediately that something is wrong. His stride is too tight. His voice is too light. And the bruise blooming above his brow doesn't match his story. No blood. No cut. Just swelling, and silence, and the way he won't look at her when she asks what happened.
She covers for him. Tells Paul it was just a slip. Keeps her questions tucked behind her teeth. Whatever happened at the lagoon, Chris isn't ready to share it—and Karen isn't willing to crack him open in front of the others.
But later, around the fire, the fractures show anyway. The empty spaces. The loaded glances. Kain disappearing into his tent without a word. The meal eaten in silence, bites swallowed without taste.
Karen watches it all—like an entomologist observing a colony on the edge of collapse. The web is fraying. The threads are snapping.
And she's not sure any of them know how to hold it together.
