The morning unfolded in heavy silences and the quiet clatter of work.

Ash still hung in the air, fine and grey, coating everything like memory. The fire had devoured its fill and retreated, but the compound was a ruin, its bones laid bare in the morning light. Bette moved slowly through the wreckage, each step a negotiation between pain and duty, between the horror of the night and the weight of the day ahead.

Smoke curled lazily from charred beams. One of the tool sheds had collapsed entirely, its corrugated roof folded like paper. The clinic was gone burned from the inside out, leaving only a half-standing frame, scorched medical cabinets yawning open in the debris. The milk preparation area had survived, though its windows were cracked and sooted. The roof bore scorch marks and part of the siding had melted where the fire had licked up the walls. Bette moved closer, stopping just shy of the doorframe… what remained of it. She glanced toward the backroom, once kept cool and quiet, where the recovering animals were usually housed. The air here hung thick, bitter, clinging to the throat. It held the silence too tightly, as if even sound knew better than to linger.

Something in her chest tightened.

She didn’t go in. Didn’t need to. A few singed feathers caught in the corner, a half-melted water bowl tipped on its side, quiet details that told her enough. She stood there a long moment, one hand resting against the charred wall, before turning back into the light.

She exhaled through her nose, shoulders tightening.

Villagers moved methodically around her. Some were salvaging materials from the wreckage; planks, sheets of metal, tools spared by chance. Others swept out ash with bundles of reeds or shovelled wet earth to redirect runoff that had started to pool under what remained of the generator shed. Two young men were already patching together a temporary corral wall for when the elephants came back… if they came back.

She paused in front of the nursery shelter. The structure had buckled from the heat. The front wall had collapsed inward, and the interior was a charred skeleton of what it had once been. Debris crunched under her boots as she stepped through the threshold.