Something shoved her forward before she was ready, squeezing and crushing and forcing her into a place that felt far too large. The darkness she had known split apart beneath flashes of white light and sound crashing around her. Ranyin hated it immediately. She drew her first breath because her body demanded it, not because she wanted to. Air burning through her lungs brought a cry tearing from her throat, sharp and angry as she protested the injustice of existing.

The storm would answer with another roll of thunder.

The girl lay trembling on the floor tiny and blind but already fighting. Her tiny paws flexed against the ground as if she might somehow push the entire mountain away from herself. The cold bit at her skin and the noise never stopped. The world felt hostile from the very beginning.

Instinct pulled her toward the warmth she was drug to, but even then there was resistance. A stubborn refusal buried deep within her, the urge to reach warred against the urge to pull away. Because she did not know what a mother was, what safety meant.

She did not know love.

And maybe she never would.

—