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# Waverider Expedition - Tideforest

The hanging bodies

The tideforest smelled of salt and rot and green things breathing.

Kethra poled the narrow skiff through water thick as glass. Roots tangled above and below, each one glistening with beads of tide. Gato sat crouched at the bow, knife in hand, eyes darting to every sound.

"Feels like we're sailing inside a throat," he muttered. "All ribs and whispers."

Kethra didn't answer. Mud streaked her face against the flies, her eyes fixed on the way ahead. The map they'd borrowed from a Coralwyn trader was little more than scratches: a few symbols, the word Red Feathers, and a warning written in elvish shorthand: "do not sing."

"They'll hear us soon," Kethra said finally. "If they want to."

"And if they don't?" Gato asked.

"Then we're already ghosts."

The skiff slid deeper into the mangroves. The air grew darker, thicker. Shafts of light pierced leaves like spears through smoke. Somewhere far off, something croaked, slow and rhythmic, answered by another.

They found the first body at low tide.

A man hung ten feet above the water, impaled on a sharpened branch. His skin was gray-blue, eyes wide and alive. His mouth moved, without sound.

Gato froze. "Saints... he's breathing."

Kethra leaned back, gripping her spear. "Not breathing. Seeing."

She climbed the roots, her balance perfect even on the slick wood. The man's pupils followed her, wide with horror. The bark where he hung glittered with dried sap, the same color as the darts that stuck in his neck and chest.

"Paralysis venom," she said. "He's still awake."

The man's lips trembled. Gato reached for his knife. "We can cut him down."

"No," Kethra said softly. "Look."

They looked up. More bodies... dozens. Hung like fruits from the canopy. Pirates, from the tattoos and ragged clothes. Some fresh, some already half claimed by birds. The tide beneath them was red with reflection.

Gato's throat clicked. "So that's what happened to the Red Feather's trade partners."

The forest answered with a soft, collective croak. It came from everywhere and nowhere, an echo layered in many throats.

Kethra turned slow. "We're being watched."

Shapes shifted among the leaves-small, quick, glimmering with colors that changed in the dim light: gold, green, crimson. The Bright Fibians. Dozens, maybe hundreds, perched like ornaments, motionless except for the slow flex of throats.

One dropped from a branch and landed on a root in front of them. Its skin shimmered blue and red, eyes like twin coins. In its hands was a bow no longer than an arm, strung with vine, the arrowhead glistening wet.

Gato swallowed. "We come in peace," he said, voice cracking.

The Fibian tilted its head, imitating him perfectly: "We come in peace."

Another echoed it from above: "Peace. Come. Come."

A third voice, from somewhere unseen: "Come in hanging."

Kethra lowered her spear, her tone even. "We seek only to learn. To understand."

The Fibian blinked slowly, then croaked something low and guttural to the others. Laughter, or something like it, rippled through the trees. Then silence again.

It gestured with one hand. The hung man twitched, eyes rolling toward them. The Fibian looked at Kethra and spoke in a guttural dialect.

"He took. He lied. The Tide remember."

Gato whispered, "He's been hanging for days. Let us take him down."

The Fibian's throat pulsed. "Tide not finish. Tree not done. You cut, you hang."

Kethra's jaw tightened. "Then what do you want of us?"

The creature's eyes gleamed like wet gold. "To see."

Without warning, darts whistled. Gato ducked. Kethra raised her arm but felt the sting, sharp, precise, just beneath the shoulder. The world tilted.

She fell against the skiff. Gato's hand caught her, but his voice was already distant, bubbling through water. The forest folded inward, all light turning green.

She dreamed she was beneath the tide, roots above her like veins. Faces drifted past, fibian, human, all staring down through the water's skin. The hung men swayed gently, mouths open in silent song. Their eyes glowed faintly, like pearls caught in murk.

A voice croaked through the current: The Tree Father sees what the Tide forgets.

Kethra opened her mouth to answer, but bubbles escaped instead. One of them rose, breaking the surface, and became her own reflection staring back. The eyes were not hers anymore. Golden. Patient.

When she woke, it was dusk. The dart wound was bound with green fiber. Gato sat nearby, pale, holding a half-burnt torch.

"They left us," he said. "Didn't kill, didn't take. Just... watched till we slept."

The hung men were gone. Only vines remained where their bodies had been. The Fibians had vanished into the canopy, the water calm again.

"What happened?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No idea. The tide came in. When it went out, the bodies were gone. Like they'd never been."

Kethra touched her shoulder. Her fingers came away faintly gold with pollen or dust. It shimmered in the dying light.

"They wanted us to see," she said.

"See what?"

"That mercy has different roots."

They pushed off in silence. The mangroves thinned, and the sky widened above the channels. The sun was bleeding into the horizon.

Behind them, the forest gave a single, long croak, so deep it felt like breath moving through wood.

Gato glanced back. "You think they'll let anyone else through?"

Kethra didn't look. "No. They've already decided what belongs."

As the tide turned, the roots swallowed the sound, and the mangroves closed over what had once been men, leaving only the slow ripple of water and the faint gleam of gold drifting where the current turned.

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