Sun Mote Copse When the world went long.

They both began to turn toward their respective destinations when Towhee somehow caught the signal to wait. Her head whipped back toward her son, rain streaming off every taut edge of her body as her eyes bored into his face. He appeared to be listening to something. Towhee rarely thought about her inability to hear, much less let it bother her, yet right now she cursed her deafness inwardly.

-"It's her,"- Figment said eventually. Simultaneously, Towhee's heart leapt and every muscle in her body seemed to go pliant with relief. In the very next instant, they bunched again as she sprang after Fig, the two of them careening haphazardly though the rain-soaked copse... and directly into the bedraggled Fennec.

As her two yearling children crashed together, Towhee skidded on some slippery mud and nearly lost her footing. Somehow, she avoided impacting either one of them, though she quickly righted herself and slammed into Fen anyway, albeit a little more gently. She didn't catch her daughter's indignant question, what with all the movement and the rain, and the fact that Towhee buried her face against Fen's sopping shoulder.