2/17/2025, 10:56 PM
Time alone had been sobering. It had taken her a year to settle into the idea that she was separated from her children, and she had wandered ever since. She'd come to terms with it, after a while, but she longed to find them again. She had also come to terms that her body was somehow younger in this place than it had been before she'd gotten here. Some nights she still dreamed of the landslide... and of her youngest child, who she had been trying to save.
Most of the time, she was better. Today was a better day. Every day she was alive and healthy was a better day, and she willed that quiet and hopeful optimism to keep her going. Her other children were there to keep track of her youngest, and Zahra could put faith in them to do right by that.
The morning light had a tint to it that was hopeful, too, like a breath of spring across her skin. She moved naturally towards the warmer air, her eyes drawn from the path to the soft pink leaves and blossoms of the tree sprawled ahead of her. The botanist in her was intrigued and she wanted to know more, what had caused it to grow, and whether the warmth was something from the tree or the terrain.
She wound through the path of the thicket until she reached the tiny clearing, which opened out enough to reveal the stretch of the tree's branches and pink adornments above. And there, inspecting some sort of stone device with what smelled like water, was a stranger with ginger fur. Though the paws weren't black, wolves of that color always made her think of her father and she felt drawn closer.
The stranger was wagging, seeming happy to have found the strange elevated pool, and Zahra looked up at him curiously from where she stood on slightly lower elevation.
Mercury