Cricket Creek Bog a gentle breeze or lightning in a storm

Weejay was young, but she was no fresh sprout. She caught the uncertainty in her companion, and it earned the agouti a darkening stare. What was the point of being connected to things, if you could not connect with her mother? It made Weejay feel, perhaps unkindly, that the stranger was either a fraud, or was lying to her -- and both of those thoughts made Weejay feel uncharacteristically small.

Yet she did as she was told, like any obedient child. She closed her eyes and tried to listen. All she heard was the groan of the trees as the wind passed through; the breathing of her new friend, and her own frustrated sighs. "I don't hear anything." She said at last, defeated. Her eyes opened with a glistening hardness that had not been there before; tears, fresh brimming. "I don't hear anything but you and me while she's dead! She isn't different, she's DEAD."

There it came, the tantrum that had been in her eyes a moment before; Weejay did not wait for an answer. She could bear here no longer, not when it felt like spirits but reminded her of her mother. Stifling a sob, Weejay turned and ran.