Minnow
A SILENT DROP OF OCEAN

She didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care about wanting the stupid refugees to leave her and her family alone, she didn’t care about how wrong it was that Fern and Flint were together or about how Fern was even doing. It was selfish, but Minnow didn’t care about whether the plague had killed her family or whether the cure she’d brought home had worked. She only cared about finding her way back to somewhere familiar, somewhere someone spoke like her and looked like her and acted at least somewhat like her. Most of all, she wanted to get home to get back to Pyre. That was something she cared about. What was her aja going through without her there to help protect her? They were a team.

It felt like a huge piece of her was missing, and it ached more than anything Minnow had ever endured. She’d fallen from trees and broken bones, she’d taken her fair share of falls from her mother’s aja as a child. Nothing hurt quite like this, and no mud salve, or warm embrace from her mother could make it any less painful. Even the frigid air and cold seat at her back weren’t numbing her enough to forget about her aja and her family and how alone she felt.

Minnow’s aja quest had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, up to this point. It was the furthest she’d ever been from home, from her family, and trying to make friends with the aja, some of whom wanted nothing to do with the ker at all. But they had understood her. Not she was like a stray dog in a large market, looking for food but unable to ask for it. Occasionally, she glanced up at the people walking past, hoping one would look like a ker. Would notice her sitting there and offer to share some of their food.

Her claws dug into her side as it roared again, and she whimpered softly.

However, when there was a voice behind her, Minnow quickly wiped her eyes and attempted to look far more grown up than she felt inside, and turned to face the person who seemed to speak ker, like her.

He wasn’t one, though. He looked like everyone else around here, and Minnow sank. He wasn’t going to have a way back if there weren’t ker here already. He did look familiar, however, although Minnow couldn’t place where she knew his face from.

“I don’t even know where I am or how far I walked this morning and I’m so tired and hungry and no one seems to hunt here they just wander around with game like they’d never eat anything with substance and were are their tails?” Minnow felt the tears welling again as she spilled her guts, but he seemed to have the same air of authority that Birch had, and it made her feel like a tad again, comfortable releasing information and knowing there was some safety from repercussions. “Do you know how I get back to the swamp?”