Firefly Ravine there in the smoke

Cameo, I just don't want her to drop.

She wasn't cognizant of the chaos until she was the focus of it: the shouting voices piercing to new ears, the snapping teeth blurry, shining white scythes in the dark. Coiled against her siblings and mostly asleep until the grapple of foreign fangs upon her, the feeling of being airborne—and then the arduous transit in to the wilderness, where nothing smelled familiar, and she was too scared to open her eyes. The heavy breathing around her scruff might have lulled Ghenaya to sleep had it not been so frantic.

When they stopped, it wasn't because the shadow had wanted to stop. Ghenaya is summarily thrust among bramble and fern, hidden in a damp recess in the tangle there; free, finally, she does what comes naturally and begins to crow and squeal—but the shadow swoops in to quiet her.

She is tired, she cannot fight it.

The shadow smells like home.

Soon there is a voice—a shouting, which makes her bundle tight in her hiding place at first. Ghenaya does not know words yet. She barely grasps at the tone in the voice, the pleading edge, and only when the shadow shouts back does Ghenaya rouse enough to expose herself. She ambles a step, and then is blocked by the heel of the shadow as they come to loom from above.

Mother? She smells the caribou musk that dominates all of Saatsine, despite not knowing what to call it; she sees the dark shape and smells her father, but also there is the hormonal scent of her mother—a mother—and Ghenaya pleads in her own way, crawling over Sulukinak's toes.

Mother, please! But that is not her mother.