Zero didn't want to go home. Not yet. Home was too hard, too bright and unyielding. It burned with the truth of the matter: that Ma was gone, gone somewhere else where he wouldn't find her, and he had been left behind.

And when he got home and found it just like he expected, barren and full of people who were not Ma, it would be another nail in the coffin of his misery. Because a little part of him still hoped that once he got to the desert she would be there waiting, a blue bolt of lightning on the golden sands. And that part, he knew, was wrong.

Zero couldn't bear the thought of going somewhere he knew someone he loved was not, so he made the only logical choice: he turned north, where he knew someone he loved was. It was a long journey but he made it in silence, brown body pulled tight in upon itself, metal side glittering as the sun slowly sank down beneath the lip of the world. Ma had told him a story about the Sun, once, about where he went when he disappeared and yielded the world to the moon, but the lighting boy couldn't remember it now- so he decided to make up his own. It involved a whale, and a dragon, and maybe a princess who was really a thief and stole the sun until a brave knight came and challenged for it back and he was accompanied by a fish-

No, a lion-

No, a kangaroo-

No a, uh-

A frustrated scream ripped through the hills, and the boy breathed heavily, angrily, because it just wasn't good enough and Ma could do it better but she couldn't because she wasn't here because she just left.

He stopped, sides heaving, and for a few minutes just stood. Then sunbeam eyes opened and the boy looked around, confusion joining aggravation on his face. Because even though he was definitely in the Foothills... well, really, he didn't know where he was outside of that.

The night was cold, and terribly dark, which made it all the more miraculous that he found his way at all. Zero peered through the (familiar? no?) trees, suddenly realizing the stupidity of his plan. Despite his prior visit the oft-lost boy had no idea how to navigate the Foothills, and it's not like he could shout for Isopia, because someone might hear him and he wasn't supposed to tell people her name because... reasons.

So the boy wandered in what he thought might be the right way, occasionally pausing to sniff the air, or raise an ear in pursuit of his friend. That he wouldn't find her was inconceivable, because he had to find her, because she had to be there, because if she was gone and Ma was gone then, well....

He didn't want to think about that.

Had the sun been up he might have realized that his horrible sense of direction had, for once, done some good. In truth the boy was mere meters from his best friend's clearing, skirting around it like a river might a stone; but meters didn't matter in the dark, and Zero continued to stumble blindly, stubbornness and heartache the only things holding his battered body in check.

---

TAG;; @Isopia