At two months old Ranyin had already learned that crying did not always make someone come. She had learned it slowly, though she could not have explained the lesson if someone asked. It lived somewhere beneath words tucked into the same place that told her when a voice was too sharp or when a body turned away from her instead of toward her. Hunger made her belly ache, cold made her curl tighter but loneliness made something else hurt, something she had no name for.

And mother did not always come, so Ran had stopped calling as often. That morning, she lay near the mouth of the den with her chin resting across her paws amber eyes fixed upon the shape of her mother farther inside. She watched her for a long time, long enough that another pup might have grown bored and found something else to occupy them.

Ranyin did not though, she watched for an ear to turn toward her. For eyes to open, for some indication that her presence had been noticed at all. The result was the same, nothing.

Her little jaw tightened, fine. the word had become one of the few she wielded with any confidence, even if she mostly said it inside her own head. Fine. She hadn't wanted to curl against mother's belly. She hadn't been waiting for her to wake up.

She took one step toward the entrance, paused and looked back before another step claimed her.

Her ears tipped backward as sunlight crept across her face; the world outside was enormous compared to the cramped familiarity of the den, full of sounds she couldn't place and smells she couldn't understand. Instinct told her that she was small here, that there were things beyond those walls that might hurt her.

So, surely this would do it, mother would notice now. Ranyin stepped completely outside; as she had done before expecting this time to be different. Her head slowly turned, peering over her shoulder toward the darkness she'd left behind, but just like every time nobody followed.

Something hot and ugly twisted in her tiny chest. Fine, she whispered aloud this time, and she marched forward with all the determination she could muster. She didn't know where she was going. But she was going somewhere, and somewhere was better than sitting around waiting for somebody who didn't care whether she stayed.

Every few yards Ranyin would pause, hearing little noises among the trees that compounded in her head, so she would check. Needing to know if something was behind her, and though each time there was nothing, each time her ears flattened a little more. Eventually the den disappeared behind brush and unfamiliar shapes swallowed the path she'd taken. Ranyin hadn't noticed exactly when that happened. One moment she had known where home was, and the next she turned around to find that everything looked different.

Her stomach dropped ...Mama? the word slipped free before she could stop it, but silence answered. Ranyin's face scrunched immediately, offended by her own mistake. Don't care...

Tiny claws dug stubbornly into the earth before she continued onward, slower now. Every noise earned a sharp turn of her head, every movement became something worth watching. A branch shifting overhead held her attention until she decided it wasn't dangerous. A distant sound made her crouch before she understood there was nothing nearby. She was frightened, but returning meant admitting she'd wanted to be followed.

That was the strange little cruelty already taking root inside Ranyin, she couldn't understand neglect, couldn't name rejection, couldn't reason through why the woman who was supposed to make the world feel safe seemed so indifferent to whether she was in it. She could only understand what happened when she left — mother didn't come.

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