Senako did not speak for three days. She worked, and she carried wood, and she helped lift the injured, and she sat by the fire at night, and she did not speak, because speech was a kind of tool, and her tools were gone, and the forge was cold, and the anvil was on the grass, and the iron was in the mud, and the world she had known was under water, and silence was the only thing that held. Peony brought her food, and she set it beside her, and she did not ask her to eat, because she knew that hunger was not the problem, that the problem was the absence of the forge, the absence of the work, the absence of the thing that had given her hands meaning, and she sat with her, because sitting was the only thing she could do, and she did not speak either, because she understood silence, because she was a gardener, and gardeners understood the language of waiting, of soil, of things that grew slowly and could not be hurried, and Senako was growing slowly now, and she could not be hurried.
On the fourth day, she stood up. She walked to the anvil, which was on the grass, covered in a thin film of mud, and she knelt beside it, and she wiped it clean with her sleeve, and she ran her palm across the face of it, and it was smooth, and it was scarred, and it was hers, and it was the only thing that was hers, and she stood and hefted it, and it was heavy, and it was familiar, and she carried it up the slope, to the place where the volunteers had set up a shelter, and she set it down in the corner, and she sat beside it, and she did not speak, but her hands were moving, because her hands had memory, because her hands knew iron, because her hands did not need words to work.
Arrax found her there, sitting beside the anvil, her hands on her knees, her eyes on the ground, and he sat down beside her, and he did not speak, because Senako was not speaking, because some silences were not empty, because they were full of the things that could not be said, and Arrax understood this, because he had his own silence, the silence of the boundary, the silence of the dogs that did not bark, the silence of the pack that had scattered, and he sat with Senako, and they watched the fire, and they did not speak, and the silence was not uncomfortable, because it was shared, and shared silence was a kind of speech, and it said what needed to be said, which was that they were alive, and they were together, and the valley was gone, and the valley would not come back, and they would have to build something new, or they would have to leave, or they would have to stay in the ruin and make it home, and none of those choices were easy, and none of those choices were wrong, and the silence held all of them, and it held them gently, and it did not ask them to choose, not yet, not today.