Emberwood The kids aren't all right.

They had finally somehow found their way back to somewhere familiar to the girl, an honest miracle, given the messed up state of them both. He hadn't counted how many wrong turns they had taken, nor how many times the child had made them retrace and correct their steps to find a path vaguely correct, until another correction was made. At one point he'd forced them to take the long way back South after they'd wound up at the vacant swath of some willows, to spare them from the agony of passing through the cache again. The detour had cost them time, but time wasn't very precious, when the only deadline you had to meet was survive and keep your sanity screwed on tight.

When she stopped, he followed her gaze as she trailed to the scratchings on a tree, much like the one's she had described for him in broken language throughout their trip. A flower of some sort, and he murmured, "That's pretty," but fell otherwise silent. Ibis was of more concern to him, now that they'd come to her home. Her small body shivered against his side, and he pressed in tighter, unabashed to wrap his foreleg around her as a father would his daughter, or a brother his sister, to let her rest in the warmer cavity of his chest.

"What do we do now?" the answer was obvious, but the answer seemed difficult to find.