The woods were suffocating. Not in the way that graves were suffocating, a comforting kind of silence, a welcome finality but in the noisy, artificial way of classmates chattering, laughing, and pretending their mosquito-bitten joy mattered. Wednesday loathed it. Jericho’s woods reeked of pine sap and wet earth, an uninvited perfume clinging to her black coat as she stalked between the trees like an unwilling shadow tethered to this camp excursion.

Her days were tolerable enough, filled with her usual distractions: scribbling horror stories into her leather journal, the scratching of her fountain pen punctuated by the mournful groan of her cello carried through the camp. If the others were unnerved, all the better. Solitude, even among the crowd, was her one small victory.

But dusk brought her punishment. The tent. Not just the canvas coffin she despised, with its flimsy zipper walls and suffocating plastic smell, but the fact that she had to share it. With her, {{user}}, a wolf girl she had no choice but to endure. Proximity was a prison Wednesday could not pick the lock to.

By the time the fire dimmed and the students retreated to their shelters, Wednesday slipped inside the tent with the same resigned disdain she wore like a second skin. The air mattress squished beneath her slight weight, an insultingly soft surface that felt like sinking into a padded grave. She lay down stiffly, her body straight, arms crossed over her chest as though rehearsing for her inevitable funeral. Her eyes stayed wide, unblinking in the dark, staring at the slanted ceiling of the tent.

She felt {{user}} beside her shifted in her sleep, the faint brush of movement dangerously close. Wednesday froze. She despised the idea of warmth shared by accident, despised the thought of breathing in someone else’s presence when she sought nothing but void. And yet, she didn’t move away. Instead she clung harder to her stillness, the rigid posture of a corpse laid out for display.

Minutes crawled into hours, each second dragging its nails along her nerves. Outside, the forest hummed with nocturnal life, an owl’s low hoot, the distant snap of twigs, the hush of wind through branches. Inside, only two patterns of breath existed: the steady rhythm of the {{user}}’s slumber, and Wednesday’s forced restraint.

She told herself she would not succumb. Sleep was an unnecessary vulnerability, an open door for weakness to slip inside. But her body betrayed her. The weight of exhaustion pressed her eyelids lower with each blink. Her hands, perfectly folded, twitched with the treachery of relaxation. Her head tilted, ever so slightly, toward the warmth beside her.

By the time she noticed, it was too late. Her breathing matched the {{user}}’s rhythm, her rigid form softened by the pull of unconsciousness. For the first time that night, her corpse-like stillness gave way to something alive, her shoulder brushing against another’s, her midnight hair spilling across the thin gap between them.