The clashing violence that you leave behind has stained your memory, flashing white teeth, rippling skin and faces pinched with wickedness; selfish, callous. It is something you have never known and still hatred swells not through your veins. Your small body throbs and the thin, legs that tumble beneath you are growing numb. You are exhausted, confused and completely alone in the vast wilderness which heralds little familiarity. Your mother instructed you to find a deep forest - but the only forests you know are the sparse pungent pine-lands near home, and trees scattered through the vast meadow beyond that. Naturally it is through these that you flee. A plan has formed in your mind - naive perhaps, innocent - you will run until you can run no further, and only when the blue tides of lava surround you will you stop. Your mother will find you, your father might even be there waiting already.

“Da!” you bleat at the thought, shrill, frightened, choked by the sobs that rob you still of breath.

You can barely see the landscape as it spins around you, but you are certain that your memory is not failing. Occasionally you find a familiar landmark; a gnarled tree, or a rogue boulder chipped by the elements to portray the hooked beak of a bird. Beside each you slow - but never do you stop. Already you are missing your mother terribly, her warmth, the comfort of her milk, and though hunger twists your stomach (you have not eaten since late morning), adrenaline cures its curse. The sun to the west is slowly melting into the dark horizon - the black wall of trees that seem to creep ever closer to your sprinting frame. You cast a weary eye towards them, willing them back. Be brave, Zah… you tell yourself boldly, and your skin prickles with anticipation.

The grass is long throughout the meadow, and when you finally break from the tree line of the Threshold and into it’s rolling, golden sea, you begin to bound - an actin that comes naturally, but wears you out promptly. You begin to stumble frequently, to trip and fall despite the urgency of your quest; the resolution in your infant mind. Before long you stagger to a standstill, knees grazed, smeared in the green fluid housed by tiny shoots of grass carpeting the earth. You simply cannot continue, and you begin to cry pitifully for your loss - that of your father, your mother, your hope. “Ma!” you cry hastily, miserably, and wander in a wobbly circle. “Da!” you cry again, but only the flutter of birds wings behind you answers your call.

Around you, the haze of evening is descending and you feel bitterly alone for the first time in your life. It strikes you while you dither, that it is probably in your best interests to find shelter - a sanctuary like the golden den you were born in - so that hungry eyes might not find your vulnerable position. Eyes as quiet as those pale sandy pools of your mother begin a frantic search for anything under which you might be able to hide, and they find at last an old oak tree who’s skeletal arms tangle upwards into the dark blue depth of the sky. They seem never to end, though stark-naked and uninviting they are. Slowly you travel closer, and through the murk of evening you find only the strange bulge of a pallid orb nestled between curling, wild roots.

You pass a wary glance about you, though mistrust is something foreign to you. There is no one…

Quivering lips descend to touch the object - it shudders and you leap away with a cry. Tiny ears are lured again forward when it stills then, almost as suddenly as it had moved, and you wander near once again. You have never seen an egg before, and so you cannot know of the babe restless within. Like you it’s mother is missing. You decide after much deliberation that it is harmless, it seems to respond to your presence, and you settle down to lay beside it in a hard hollow in the ground. You cannot sleep - the visions scar your thoughts viciously, though you are distracted again when the white orb begins to whimper. Your petite skull turns; your fine, downy ears are pricked forward and listening, and your eyes discover a dark line that had not marred its surface before.

Sharply you snort.

Another crack appears, and another, and soon the delicate shell looks more like a withered leaf than a rock. Pieces begin to flake away, and a strange smell floods your pumping nostrils - a creature emerges. It has fur just like you, warmth, and a voice. Though you are puzzled, your loneliness is overbearing and you slither a little closer. The creature quickly responds, its bright eyes settle upon you, and from there the bond which you seem altogether clueless about is set. Together, body curled against body you rest. Sleep is far from your reach, hunger burns two juvenile bellies and pained snivelling cancels the silence that otherwise blankets across you..