Of course he'd gone looking for Ma, because what else was he ever gonna do, because it was Ma and she was gone and there wasn't a single reality in which he wouldn't have gone to look for her. That was a no-brainer. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to find her, and make her feel better, and bring her home, because she belonged at home with him. And that was that.

He hadn't even considered the possibility of not finding her, because that wasn't a possibility. He would find her.

Except he didn't.

He didn't find her at all.

She was just gone, and something of him had gone with her.

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Grey water carved into the grey shore. Somewhere behind him grey seagulls squabbled over a grey crab. The sun was distorted, hidden behind a film of limp grey cloud; in the distance a grey whale rose out of the sea, and from his position on the beach Zero watched it through dull grey eyes, grey snot drizzling sluggishly down his lip. Had he been crying? Probably, he thought, and shrugged. It didn't seem to matter much.

Very little mattered anymore, he'd found.

They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They neglect to mention numb. For a boy who's life had been defined by emotion, Zero had taken to numbness like a fish to water, fully embracing the comfort of it once those hot pangs of denial wore off. She was gone and that was that. She'd left him, just left, the way he told himself she never would- she left him, and what was he supposed to do, to feel, to think?

(Do you have an answer?

Yeah. Neither do I.)

A second whale joined the first. Two seasons ago this would have been the highlight of Zero's week: standing on the beach, watching whales, trying to assemble it all into a story he could go home and tell Ma. He would have danced, carving crescents into the virgin sand, eyes lit up like the fourth of July- but his eyes didn't light up today, and his hooves didn't dance. Even his tailfeathers remained uncharacteristically still. He'd stood like this for hours, unwilling or unable to acknowledge that a world existed around him. It was a good trick, he'd learned, for when his feelings felt like they were getting so big they were filling him up on the inside, growing and growing and growing, hot and cold and sharp and dull, a monster with poisoned claws tearing at the empty space inside his chest, its voice a thunderous roar in his ears, its breath hot and stagnant in his throat, its-

He choked, a shudder passing through his body, making the metal that nearly encompassed his entire left side and foreleg glitter in the dull grey light. Zero pulled his wing in tighter, as though trying to disappear within it, to wear it as a cloak. Against the scenic backdrop he was rigid and closed, silently willing himself to become a statue. A statue, unable to move or think, think, think I wish I couldn't think because then I'd stop thinking that if only I could fly then maybe...

maybe...

maybe...

Zero the Lightning's Son closed his eyes, willing away the rising tears. In a voice too big for his small body, too old for his young face, the boy whispered to the sea, "Happy birthday to me."

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