Common

Sabah woke with the golden taste of joy still in her mouth. "Brax," she whispered, her sleepy-heavy eyes searching for him. Yet her autumnal surroundings were still and quiet, with just the trace of a chill breeze to disturb what red-brown leaves still had not fallen. Somewhere in the bright blue beyond a crow called, and in the distance the sea hissed faintly. The memory of her situation returned to her: it had been an entire year spent fruitlessly searching the islands for her one and only son. It had been another night spent cold and alone. Her elation at finding him was nothing more than a quickly-dissipating dream, crumbling like ashes in her mouth.

Sabah's bronze-and-white coat twitched where a light rain had dampened it overnight, and she leaned to scratch against the rough bark of the maple that had acted sentinel while she slept. She turned the dream over in her head, squeezing out every detail like a dying man seeks water. The details were gone now, however, with just the impressions left: her son's champagne-gold hair, his hazel eyes, his laughter, his smile. The feel of him, when he'd been a tiny bundle of spindly legs, curled against the swell of her belly. It all felt as real as if it had happened yesterday.

No. She could not give in yet. It must have meant something.

After snatching a quick breakfast, Sabah made for the one place she had avoided all this time. Dying yellow grasses brushed against her pale legs as she entered the forbidden ground, each tickle spurring her heart to beat a little faster. At every small sound and scent she stopped, head high and ears alert, her one blue and one brown eye bright as a trembling doe's. Then — the snap of a twig. The musk of a stranger strong in her nostrils. Sabah started, swivelling toward the sound, and her son's name tumbled from her mouth before she could stop it.

"Brax?"