What.... what happened?

That was my first initial thought as I waited and waited and waited at the den that I shared with my son, Nike. Night had begun to fall and he had yet to return. He foraged often, bringing me berries because he knew I liked them. Truth be told, I liked them only because he brought them to me, so eager to please, and anything my perfect child did was pleasing to me. I would NEVER ruin that image for him. He was the sunlight that I turned to, the thing that kept my soft gray and white body moving. We struggled and yet we prevailed through winter alone, then an easier spring and a decent summer, and now into fall. We prevailed!

I never left him for long. The internal clock within me could not be held off. The further I traveled from Nike the antsier i became and often i would retreat home without a meal just to verify he was safe and sound. Only this time he wasn't. I was sure, in my bones, that something had went awry. Was he dead? Had he left like Zeus, a phantom of my memory?

Oh god, what if he had never been real? Like all those hallucinations I had once had, that Meryl had treated me for in Diveen. What if Nike had been a figment of my imagination? "NO! I shout into the dark of the forest, startling the night bugs into silence for a time, and I begin to run.

I am still running, ever more frantic, ever more mad as the morning rises. My steel gray eyes settle upon a small figure in the distance. I know it isn't him - he is too small, too ugly to be my Nike. Nike is pure beauty - white and gray and so healthy. So perfect! This boy is nothing like him - no one is like him. But I race towards him with a frantic look on my face, my teeth flashing. He is way too small, I think, but then I stop caring. "HAVE YOU SEEN MY SON?" I scream it at him, pausing with my sides heaving and whipping my head side to side to not miss anything. "YOU MUST TELL ME," I start again, suddenly crowding into him, willing to chase him down if he runs. I would find Nike. I had to. Because he had to be real.