Meadowlark Prairie baby, you wouldn't last a minute on the creek

@Zhenya

She’d not gotten a lot of answers the first time leaving the caldera; a new friend, perhaps, but nothing more than that. She hadn’t found anything familiar to close the gaps. They aren’t even gaps worth filling and there are many more holes she should focus on but it gives her something to do. Adjusting to a new way of life, separated from where she currently lives, has proven to be more difficult than she anticipated.

In the last few days, she felt a shift. She’d gained weight and didn’t appear nearly as gangly. Her headaches are less frequent and the other small symptoms had subsided. The need her body continues to remind her, to crave only gets louder even if she physically feels better. Her mind, wired to the motive, keeps her moving through the prairie. If she can piece together how far she’d traveled, perhaps she can find the thing she seeks for most of all.

There is less snow here but the grass poking through over her head seems familiar enough. Hidden beneath the tall grasses, snow still devouring her legs above her ankles, she feels sure enough that she’d found her newest companions here—or they’d found her—but the haze remains in the back of her mind the further south she goes.