They had just crossed the grove when the brother dared to rest. Even if he had wanted to, however, he would not have been able to continue. He left Nayla on the ground, beside him, as he sat on the trunk of a fallen, exhausted tree. She stood still, watching as the boy slowly sank and began to cry, covering his face with his hands, sobbing loudly. The sound of his cries filled the space where they were. Everything remained motionless around them.

After a while, when he stopped, he did not move. He dropped his arms beside her and stood pensively, staring into space. Everything that had just happened was painfully real, but at the same time it seemed unbelievable.

The little girl was tired of standing up, and had settled on the floor, her legs crossed. She watched her brother, no expression in his eyes, expectant. He was the only one left.

When the boy got up and started walking towards the meadows below the forest, the girl followed him, a few meters behind him.

They walked for about two hours, in silence, until they came to another grove, where they took refuge from the sun in the shade of the trees. He sat up and looked up at the sky between the branches swaying in the residual wind of the storm. There were no more clouds, and the sky was blue, spotless, as if nothing had happened.

The girl imitated him and stopped, but kept looking at him, as she had been doing all the way.

Nayla followed her brother by inertia. At the time, she was unaware of anything around her.

Silence.

More silence.

Neither had anything to say. A lot of things had happened in a noticeably short time, and the ideas had to be organized. As for the little one, she was still in a state of shock, she did not have the capacity yet to be able to process everything that happened. He, on the other hand, needed to alleviate it.

At one point, the brother looked down and saw Nayla watching him, looking straight at him. The girl's expression was blank, beyond reddened eyes from tears. The boy avoided eye contact and looked up at the sky again. Unconsciously, he clenched his fists.

When the sun was already in the middle of the sky, the brother relaxed a little. It had been a good few hours and there were no signs of them being chased.

At that moment, sadness and frustration gave way to anger. He stood up crying, his eyes injected with blood, and kicked a half-rotten trunk, following it with a cry of pain. He kept shouting and hitting nature until he was exhausted, in front of a Nayla who, expressionless, kept looking at him, not understanding anything. When he noticed her, he turned his back on her and began to enter the forest. The girl followed him.

After about ten minutes of walking, the brother suddenly stopped and turned around, and faced the girl. He looked angry, out of his mind. He did not look like the same guy who had saved her that morning. It was as if the helplessness and anguish he felt had turned into rage.

“Can you tell what you are playing at?”, he suddenly shouted at her.

Silence. The girl was surprised, but said nothing, shy. Still, she held his gaze.

“Could you stop looking at me like that?”, he blurted out.

Still silence. As Nayla did not react as expected, he began to lose his temper.

“Do you think you are the only one who is having a bad time, or what!? You know nothing! Go away! Leave me alone, stop following me!”, at the end, he turned around and started walking again.

She, a little insecure this time, followed him again.

“It is enough!”, he exclaimed, standing dry as soon as he realized that he had her behind him. “It is your fault!”, he roared. “Because of you my parents are dead! DEAD!”. Tears were falling down his cheeks, uncontrollably. “If I had not been protecting you, I could have helped them!”, he gestured violently with his hands while shouting at her. “But my father told me I had to protect you! You, who are not even his daughter!”

As soon as he finished articulating this last sentence, he suddenly fell silent when he realized what he had just said. Nayla opened her eyes so wide that it looked like they got out of orbit. And, before she had time to react, the boy took a step back, turned and started running, leaving her alone in the middle of the forest, trying to escape what he had just said.