By the third morning, the group no longer slept together.
Melina noticed it before she understood it.
Bodies lay farther apart now, arranged not by warmth or protection, but by tolerance. Those who smelled wrong were given space. Those who bled were given more. Those who could not walk were left behind entirely.
The fire burned again—deliberately this time. Smaller. Contained. Fed cautiously with dry wood, never bark. The flame no longer roamed. It obeyed distance.
Ash gathered beneath it.
One of the men crouched near the fire and rubbed ash between his hands, smearing it across his palms and forearms. The gray powder dulled the smell of dried blood. He sniffed himself afterward and seemed satisfied.
Another copied him.
Then another.
"They think it cleans," Melina said quietly.
"They think it changes," Boris replied. "Which is close enough to truth to survive."
A woman who had been vomiting the day before approached the fire hesitantly. Her skin was pale. Her movements slow. She extended her hands toward the warmth, then dipped them into the ash and rubbed it across her abdomen.
She did not look relieved.
But she did not smell like sickness anymore.
Others noticed.
Distance closed slightly.
Ash became permission.
Near the edge of the clearing, the woman who continued to bleed from her vulva remained apart. The blood came steadily, soaking into her thighs, dark and persistent. She had tried washing herself repeatedly in the river. The water cleared, but the bleeding did not stop.
She sat now with her back to a tree, legs drawn close, eyes hollow.
No one touched her.
Not out of fear.
Out of pattern.
Melina's chest tightened. "They've decided it's not temporary."
"Yes," Boris said. "Recurring phenomena become identity."
One of the men gestured sharply when she moved closer to the fire. He pointed downward, then away.
She understood.
She moved back.
Menstrual blood became something that required distance.
Not punishment.
Management.
Nearby, two men argued briefly—rough sounds, gestures sharp. One pointed to his groin, to a scarred wound that had festered overnight. Pus oozed where skin had been cut days earlier.
He pressed ash into it.
The pain made him hiss, but he did not pull away.
Shock dulled sensation.
The others watched closely.
"This is dangerous," Melina whispered. "They're sealing infection inside."
"They don't know infection exists," Boris replied. "They only know outcomes."
The man survived the hour.
That was enough.
Authority began to shift subtly—not to the strongest, but to the ones whose bodies endured. Those who bled and did not die. Those who ate and did not vomit. Those whose wounds closed rather than rotted.
People watched them.
Copied them.
Stood closer to them.
"This is leadership," Melina said. "By accident."
"Yes," Boris said. "By survivorship."
Later that day, one of the injured men collapsed near the edge of the clearing. He did not scream. He did not convulse. He simply stopped moving.
The group gathered briefly.
Someone touched his neck.
No response.
They stepped back.
Melina waited for something—anything. A gesture. A sound. Recognition.
Nothing came.
The body was left where it lay.
Flies gathered almost immediately.
No one returned to that place.
Death had become inconvenient.
Not tragic.
Not sacred.
Just something to walk around.
Melina felt her breath hitch. "They're forgetting them already."
"They never learned to remember yet," Boris said.
As dusk approached, the fire was fed again. The light pushed back the forest. Distant sounds—eyes reflecting briefly in the dark—retreated.
Fire had become boundary.
Protector.
Destroyer.
Cleaner.
People smeared ash on their bodies before sitting near it, believing it made them safer—less likely to burn, less likely to smell, less likely to be wrong.
It worked often enough.
That was the danger.
Melina's hands were shaking now. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly hyperaware of her own body—of organs she understood, processes she could name, pain she knew how to treat.
"This is unbearable," she said. "Watching them turn fear into rules. Watching bodies become categories."
Boris didn't answer immediately.
He was watching the woman who bled sit alone in the dim light, ash smeared uselessly across her arms, eyes fixed on the ground.
"She's still alive," Melina said. "They're wrong about her."
"They're wrong about most things," Boris replied. "But wrong rules that keep enough people alive… persist."
Melina closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, her voice was different.
"How long," she asked, "before they decide some bodies are mistakes?"
Boris swallowed. "Soon."
Silence settled.
The fire crackled softly.
Bodies slept at measured distances.
Ash marked skin.
Blood defined boundaries.
And humanity—still learning, still confused—moved forward not with understanding, but with separation.
Melina stared into the fire, something in her finally fracturing.
"We came here to observe," she said.
"Yes."
"But this isn't observation anymore."
"No," Boris said quietly. "This is endurance."
The night deepened.
The rules hardened.
And the human body—bleeding, burning, excreting, surviving—became something to control before it could ever be understood.