Lone Star Mountain lvii. has gone up in flames

Wilwarin had not known the smell. Only that it was strong and it made her heart race instinctively. It was a sound that had sent her scurrying into the hidey hole, something lumbering, something big. A monster maybe. 

Whatever the thing she had heard in the distance was, it did not seem to have noticed her yet. The butterfly hoped it would not detect her at all, attempting to pray as she had seen her mothers do. But there was no brother sun in the shadows of her nook and no sister moon either, nothing she could give to the disembodied spirits she did not yet understand. 

Silently, wordlessly, she prayed. 

As if in answer, from the sliver of sunlight came soft steps and the voice of her mother.

’Amil!’ her lips shaped the soundless cry of joy as her pallid moonlit face appeared in the opening — tears pricking her shifting eyes to see mother dove there, smiling down at her.

 She had feared she would never again see that smile, lost to the mountains and its unnamed monsters.