Brina woke up confused and sweaty and itchy and hungry and thirsty. And it was dark. The rustling leaves reminded her where she was and she began to cry.

She was interrupted by a sharp pain in her arm, and she screamed and began to panic, trying to brush it off and slapping at something she couldn't see until it finally let go. Lines appeared to glow to Brina, she could only see viridescent stripes in the air, she didn't know what she was seeing! She couldn't find the way out, and the glow moved faster than Brina could see and the stinging struck again. She found the way out when she kicked the leaves away and let the light in. The brown and black snake escaped through the new exit, and Brina kept kicking at it and screaming until the panic faded and she wept miserably in her hiding place for a long, long time.

It took ages, but once she finished crying, Brina determined that she felt better. Everything else was still terrible, but she had a better starting point. Yesterday was terrible, but that was yesterday. Today... Brina didn't know what today was. Fall. She couldn't remember the moon, either. Brina rubbed her face weakly and sighed. Okay.

I'm Brinarini and I'm magic, and I'm loved, and I'm fast, and I'm strong, and I'm tough, and I'm good. 

Damn straight, kid.

I can do this, she told herself, but that felt like a lie, today. 

You really can, she heard in Ro-Ro's voice. It's not impossible. Just hard. You really only need to go out there to get water and food. You can keep this hiding spot.

The snake was a good reason to not, though. And the wolves. She'd think about it, Brina decided. 

"I'm Br--oh." Brina saw her bright orange voice fly from her mouth and bounce around in her hidey hole. How she had missed it during the panic and flailing was beyond her, but she could see it now. Sound. If she had any luck today, she'd be able to use it. The first time she was attuned to sound, Ro-Ro had to teach her how to tolerate it enough to leave Aunt Eupa's room.

Brina crawled out of her hiding place, really hoping that Aunt Eupa or Ro-Ro or someone was standing outside it and waiting for her so they could be mean.

It was cold! Even the air coming into the hidey hole was cold, but as she emerged into the chill and her breath steamed lightly, she realized how spoiled she was by the magic protection yesterday. The ground hurt her feet and sucked the heat from them. Brina considered getting back into her hiding place, but then she remembered the snake and she looked at the bites on her arm. 

Oh.

Brina stared at the puffy red punctures in her flesh, knowing what she was seeing and not knowing what to do.

The snake was poisonous. That's what those lines were, she could see the poison outlined in the patterns on its head.

What could she do? She couldn't remember! Was this going to kill her? How long did she have?

No sooner than Brina began to panic about it, the wounds steamed lightly and the swelling reduced. Her magic was saving her. Her legs collapsed from under her and she wept for the relief. She wasn't drawing up real tears anymore. Her mouth and throat were dry and her voice was scratchy. The cool air chilled it and stung, and made her nose numb.

She needed to get water. She remembered how to gather and drink dew, though she had to climb a tree to get to the dewy leaves. Her arms hurt so much that she was afraid she was going to fall, but they only hurt. They weren't weak like yesterday. 

The leaves were soft on her lips, bright yellow, and going to fall soon. She went to the other side of the tree and let the sun hit her and warm her up. That was nice and made her feel better.

Should she try to go back to the river and follow it up? Walk to Tinian, since she knew which way that was? It was upriver, and it moved sideways on the map, so it was east from her house and from the river. 'Cos the river went west so she moved west so Tinian was further east, right?

Right?

Was that how it worked?

She saw the map in her head. This side of the river wasn't part of it, but the directions were the same, west to the ocean and east to Tinian, north to the mountains and south to the plains, and if they were on the south side of the river, then this was the north side of the river, so south was the river. She could go southeast and get to the river and Tinian! And she might even get to avoid the wolves!

Which way was southeast?

The sun rose in one and set in the other, bad storms came from the ocean and the dawn to the west, so west was the sunrise and east is the sunset!**

It was the first time since the day before yesterday Brina didn't feel useless, and she tried to keep an optimistic attitude as she started walking on her bare aching feet.

Finding places to dig up crickets and worms was easy, this time, but Brina's hands hurt a lot. She wondered if she got them hurt yesterday and didn't notice because of how cold she let them get. Daemon had told her that she could do that, damage herself without feeling pain or hurt herself without damage at all from the magic. She wasn't immune to her own castings all the time, it kind of depended on the ones she could see. Daemon could adapt, he said, his skin would let him absorb other peoples' magic or the forces, and make himself harder to hurt with them. He often swapped to Brina's for the day so she wouldn't accidentally hurt him in lessons, but that wasn't necessary anymore. 

She missed Daemon, too, now. She was sorry she knocked his screen over. He was just teaching her, and he was actually being really nice about it because Aunt Eupa and Daddy and Ro-Ro all punished her by the time she was flailing like that. She didn't like the feeling of guilt. And here she'd gotten lost because she didn't want to do her lessons. 

She felt really silly again, but she liked the idea of going back to the river to find Daemon. That was where she'd met him in the first place, after all. That was part of why she went to the river alone. They always said she could get hurt or fall in, but she never had. 

'til yesterday, anyway. 

But she found Daemon there, too. She remembered that really clearly. It was only last fall, she realized. It felt like forever that they'd had Daemon, but really he'd only been with them for a year. 

Daemon was a very powerful sorcerer, too, but he told Brina frequently that she was stronger than him. Once she learned to use her power, she would probably be able to compete with him in most ways, but she would probably never have the fine-tuned control he had because of the sheer amount of power she had. 

Brina caught a glimpse when he was near their house, and she wanted Ro-Ro to come with her but she was off hunting something really big and furry to the southeast and would be gone for a couple of weeks. Brina thought the shiny person might be a faerie, or maybe lost on his way to Tinian, but she wasn't good at tracking like Ro-Ro, so she couldn't find him again. So instead, she went to the inlet and got lucky. Brina tried to hide as close as she could to him to get a better look. She'd never seen anything like him before.

He might have followed some of the paths to the inlet or might have been wandering upriver and just liked it, but he had found it and decided to perch on one of the big rocks around the side and was looking out over the water. The way his arms were black and his chest was red and his face was white made Brina think that he was wearing a shirt, but there was too much detail on the muscle on his arms, so she got a little closer to see if it was fur and she saw the scars and burns on his sides and on his back where the red skin had been bonded to the wounded white flesh, and even a few places of messy scars where the red didn't cover. The glossy black ones on his arms were much smoother, very simply carved over and around his shoulderblades, lined by the edges of the red. The black flesh had a reflection of fire as if the shining skin itself was ablaze. Brina wasn't sure what she was seeing, but it was beautiful, plasmic, and on his arms and on the glossy black horns curled around his head like a crown. 

The plain white tail twitched at the end as he stared over the water, and Brina saw him drum his black clawed fingers on his staff. She tried to get around sideways to see the staff a little better, she never got to see those. She heard her skirts swish too much, and she remembered how he jumped to his feet with a lightning-streaked fireball on the end of his staff. It took him a second to see her, but Aunt Eupa said people tended to not look down.

Brina froze and folded her hands in front of her to show she wasn't a threat or holding anything, and she gave a quick curtsey of greeting when his fireball thing went away. She hadn't meant to startle him, and he looked very scared and angry. It was gone fast, but he was still wary. She liked his eyes--they were all black, no colors or whites or anything. She could hardly tell where he was looking, it took her a few seconds of watching him to see the sort of circles in them. 

Brina had talked with him only a little before she got called to lunch, so she invited Daemon to their house. Daddy and Daemon talked kind of a lot, and he came back and started teaching her. She couldn't have asked for a better teacher, either, she got lucky. Uncle Peck liked him, even, and it took a while for Aunt Eupa to get used to him, but she did. 

Ro-Ro liked him, too, but he didn't meet her for a while after he started teaching Brina. They didn't even get to talk for a while longer. 

Looking at Daemon was always nice. He was always kind of showing the force he was attuned with as well, and Brina could watch him add more if he was exposed to them. He couldn't see magic at all, not even just the forces of it, unless they were being cast. It made her sad to know he was never going to see his arms like she could. She also liked the spikey face and heavy brow. Ro-Ro said she liked his face, too. 

He wasn't a big man, but he didn't have to be. He carried himself with an air of someone that knew he could level a small town at any point in time. Or at least that's what Aunt Eupa said when she was trying to teach Brina how to be scary. Brina couldn't do Aunt Eupa's version of "scary" right, though it seemed to be the best one in the house. Daemon wasn't scary to Brina any more than Aunt Eupa was, but she knew both of them were strong. Daddy only beat them both because he was immortal, but it was agreed that Daddy being immortal was enough to not bother trying to fight him. 

Brina was sorry for yelling at him yesterday. She tried to think of something she could do for him, but he really didn't want her to do anything for him. She kept asking and he kept saying no thank you. 

Brina remembered right before they started letting him stay at the house, too, when Ro-Ro had his futon put together and the screens and stuff and she was waiting for Daddy and Aunt Eupa to stop being weird about him. They all had to have a talk one day, but after a fight between Daddy and Aunt Eupa, it was fine and he moved in like he belonged there. It did take him some time to settle, but mostly that was Brina and Daddy interfering too much. Ro-Ro had to tell them to leave him alone. 

She had only gotten to see two examples of Daemon's real big powers. The first was a sort of "storm" he was trying to teach her, and the other was an accident that turned him into a cloud a few months ago.

He taught her how to fly in two ways, though he could only do one of them. The other was just what happened when she got the idea into her head to make wings. That was a real good day, actually. She was just messing with her magic really, Daemon taught her how to handle it while her magic was acting like that. He said he made it up at the time, but it worked, and she could still do it. Making the wings actually taught her how to do the cloud thing he could do, but they told her not to try, yet. They said she really could have hurt herself with that spell. She did it anyway, and she did lose her hair and reshape herself a little when she put herself back together, but she didn't get hurt. They all yelled at her for that one and she had to chop wood until her arms were so sore she could hardly lift them the next day. She had to use her magic to pick stuff up. 

Brina wondered if they were going to punish her when she got home. She didn't really care, she just wanted to see her family again, she would enjoy being punished just because it meant that someone that loved her was taking care of her again and watching over her and keeping her from being hungry or thirsty.

Ro-Ro always said that. Said that when Brina did dangerous things, when she didn't listen to her family and started doing things she knew she wasn't supposed to, she was taking for granted how easy it was for her to live. Not everyone was so lucky, not everyone had a family like hers, or money like they did, or medicine, or food or shelter. Survival was hard, was the hardest part of being alive, for almost everything, and Brinarini had it easy and she didn't think anything of it.

Brina burned with shame as she realized how right Ro-Ro was. Brina didn't think anything of how easy she had it. Food and water were always there. Clean clothes. Money, that was just for extra stuff, she knew that she could survive happily with everything Ro-Ro gave her all by herself because she did until she started school and wanted a frilly dress like Mierta's. Ro-Ro and Daddy went through all that trouble to learn what she meant when she started talking about it, and Daddy bought her one and Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa helped her learn how to look at it so she could make one herself. And that was all extra, that wasn't survival. 

Brina wondered fleetingly how lucky she was with her family compared to the kids at school. She wondered if she died, if Daddy would adopt anyone else. She couldn't remember if she'd ever asked before. She kind of hoped so, someone else could be as lucky. 

Aunt Eupa would never love anyone else like Brina, though. She already didn't love anyone else like Brina, she was already sure of it, not even Ro-Ro. 

Brina wasn't sure what Ro-Ro would do. She'd probably have to hold Aunt Eupa and Daddy up until they could move and stuff again. 

Uncle Peck would lose his purpose, though, he was only alive for Brina's prophecy, so if she died, he would die, too.

But that was okay. Brina wasn't going to die. She was going to go home. She couldn't have washed that far down, and now she knew where she was trying to go and sort of how to get there. She could eat and find water, she knew how to find a shelter. She could do it. She was certain of it.

The sight of sound was always odd to Brina. Mostly it was ripples coming off in a cone or rings, but sometimes it was sparks or just waves coming off where the sound came from too big to be anything but lines to her sight. Voices came from the head or the face or the mouth or the neck or the chest. She could watch Daddy get louder and start with the sound in his face and kinda in his chest to just all in his chest. She could feel it in the air when he did that. There were big ones that made one big wave or constant little ones that looked like fogs, or even just blotted her vision and got in the way. Thunder terrified her on sound days, huge walls of dark brown that were everywhere and pushed on her. The river and wind tended to make the forest look foggy with the constant blue-gray. Sometimes the colors would mix with the hot-cold and make it pretty, but today Brina had the poison, the one Daemon called corruption, and the sound.

Brina considered a blindfold, like she wore for the first few times she had her sound days, and they had to work with her for a long time to get her used to thunderstorms, but it was good practice, Aunt Eupa said, for when the real scary stuff happens. Gotta learn to focus through the panic, kid.

Actually, the forest looked foggy, was she getting close to the river? Was it windy? No!

The river! Brina could hear it! She didn't run, she was careful with herself today, she learned a lot of lessons yesterday about preserving energy. Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro always talked about it, Aunt Eupa said that was why she was always napping. If you get too tired to find food or water or shelter, you die. She would not make a mistake like that again. But she did still pick up her pace and walk southeast like she was and she kept going and she got there, oh, the river, she could sing, she found the river!

This close, the water this high, the fog was hard to see through, but that just made it easier to follow. Brina kept her eyes low and carefully paced riverways, going against the current and away from the sun. She'd get to Tinian that way, even if she didn't find her family first. She hoped they were looking for her.

Where was Ro-Ro?

It probably would have helped if Brina hadn't made herself so hard to track. 

I find still prey much more easily than moving prey, child. That's why I use my spear to make it stop moving. 

That was silly, Brina had to admit, she shouldn't have run. But Ro-Ro hadn't found her, or at least hadn't let her know where she was, yet. Aunt Eupa would certainly still be following her.

So Brina kept going upriver and trying to keep her hopes up. It was getting harder. She was hungry and thirsty again, and she didn't want to stop to hunt, but she learned about being tired yesterday, and she learned the harder lesson about losing the river.

The poison-magic made the itch go away, at least. That might even have been why. Brina thought about using it to take advantage of being able to eat stuff that wouldn't be good for her. She still missed the hot-cold, though, her toes hurt, and her legs, and her nose. It was really cold today.

It was exhausting to keep going, but Brina was afraid to stop. She did try and look for more crickets under a log, and she found a bush of berries she knew were poisonous. She ate them and hoped her magic would save her. She only found them 'cos they glowed to her sight and got her attention. They stained her fingers and lips bright purpley-pink and tasted horrible, but she didn't care. 

She was even thirstier after that, and she drank the river water like she wasn't supposed to, too. 

She hoped she didn't kill herself with that and kept walking.

Brina noticed distantly when noon rolled around. She felt the heat of the sun coming through the leafless trees. She soaked it in and hoped that the heat hitting her back and neck would be enough for her poor hands and feet. 

She had been lost for a full day, now. 

Brina wept at the thought.

It was getting harder to think. Brina worried it was the poison. She was still achey and hurt from yesterday. She sort of noticed when her feet started dragging, but she didn't try and fix it until she tripped over a stick hidden in the leaves. Her hands and feet were so cold they hurt. She kept trying to warm her hands up, but she couldn't do anything about her feet. She tried to think of a way to make shoes, but she couldn't. Her poor little toes. 

She didn't mean to step in the water when she did, and that made it worse. Her feet had almost been dry, dammit, and they were starting to actually feel bad for being so cold and wet, now.

And as if that wasn't enough, Brina heard the wolves again. She started running upriver without caring to look where they were coming from anymore. She already knew she couldn't outrun them, but it was too soon to give up, she had to keep going!

Their playful, easy panting echoed eerily through the trees to Brina's ears, and she heard the bounding steps hitting the leaves as they carried on behind her. She knew they were wearing her down, but she couldn't stop!

One of the wolves yipped cheerfully as it persued her and Brina imagined the pain of its fangs sinking into her leg, the rest of them descending upon her and ripping her apart. The wind roared in her ears, or maybe that was her own heart and her feet pounding on the ground. Or maybe those were their feet. 

The little magician couldn't hear how many there were, and she was afraid to look away from where she was going, she was going too fast. The pounding continued, and almost took on a rhythm, Brina's panting along with the wolves', and her running feet in time with theirs, though slower. It was almost like she was running with them, now, but she still dared not look to see them, she was having a hard time already. 

Everything was just lines of different browns and white and grays. She kept her head down and staggered as fast as she could. It was almost nice-- the wolves helped her warm up, and it didn't look like they were trying to hurt her yet, since she still could fight back too much. While she was running, she could forget how lost she was. That she didn't know where she was going was only sort of a problem--but she knew where the river was, that was all she needed.

She knew they were doing the persistence hunting thing, now, where they were just going to follow her until she couldn't keep going. They found her scent and they were going to follow her and eat her where she fell. 

Which was why Brina couldn't fall.

The wolves eventually stopped chasing her, and Brina was left sprinting alone and to her own pounding heartbeat and panting as she struggled through the forest. Her legs ached and burned with every step. She thought she was good at running, but she was learning better. Ro-Ro always liked to pick on her about what good at running really meant. Her feet ached so badly, her little toes were so red, same as her fingers. It ached more than she'd ever known anything to ache, even after work punishments and blisters and practicing handstands with Aunt Eupa.

It felt like days, but it couldn't have been an hour before Brina found where she washed up. That same ribbon that came off before she fell in had come off when she was dragging herself to shore by that big tree. The ribbon was still here. She had gotten turned around at some point and wandered even farther from home. 

Brina glared hard at the ribbon. Asshole. She stomped to get to it, the water wasn't as high as yesterday and she was so angry that it made her eyes not work and made her lungs burn. She snatched it off the log and tried to tear it up. She chewed and pulled, then threw it on the ground and stomped on it and spat on it and screamed at it. And then she picked it up and cleaned it off and put it in her pocket. It wasn't the ribbon's fault she messed up. And it was a pretty ribbon. It just needed to learn its job better.

The mushrooms she ate after that were not poisonous to her. She found them because she found them, and they weren't glowing. She wished she hadn't made the mistakes earlier so she could be proud of that, but she already knew that the snake this morning should have killed her, too. 

More ages passed. And more. It was so cold. Brina's feet stopped hurting, and she had to watch them move to make sure she didn't turn her ankles. She wondered if her toes were going to fall off. 

Brina didn't realize it was as late as it was by afternoon, the sun started hitting her face and front, it was nice. But it also showed her how slow she was going, how far away she was from where she'd been and where she was going. She wanted to go home so badly, and she was starting to worry that she never would see it again. Maybe Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro really did lose her, and they weren't following her? Would. Could that happen? Could Ro-Ro really lose her for real? Ro-Ro could find anything, that would be silly. They'd save her if she was in real trouble.

But what if they didn't? What if it really was that she was just lost and no one knew yet? 

Well, no, they'd know from last night. Even if they didn't worry until dinner, they'd worry at dinner. 

Could they call Ro-Ro in the feywild? 

It was cold and Brina was still hungry, and it was still cold. She tried not to weep as she walked, but she couldn't help it. The wolves were going to find her like that, but she was wondering now if it was warm enough in the wolf's belly that she would at least heat up a bit before she finished dying.

"Ro-Ro?" she called into the forest. "Aunt Eupa?" 

There was nothing. "I'm sorry!" she continued, hoping that was what they wanted to hear. "I'm really really sorry that I went to the river alone, and I'm sorry I knocked over Daemon's screen and I'm sorry I was playing on the tree and wasn't being safe. I'm sorry and I'll never do it again."

No answer. It was worth trying, she supposed. She still cried afterwards. 

She didn't hear her family. She couldn't see her family. She looked across the river constantly and couldn't see anything at all, really, just the same old trees and mud and rocks. 

Brina found a tributary, she thought, a little river that fed into the big river. It didn't look little until it got to the Tuthai Mot. Brina wondered if it had a name. The path it led up was really pretty, but Brina didn't want to go there ever. She tried to remember if she'd ever seen the tributary from the other side while she was walking up or down the river, if she'd passed it on the way to the walls of the city. She didn't think so.

She couldn't hear or see her family. She saw no streaks of orangey-brown of Daddy's voice in the fog of the river's roar. She saw no sharp yellow-green of Aunt Eupa's, the brown-streaked blue of Ro-Ro's that looked like a turquoise stone and rippled from her mouth and throat. Daemon's blue with green waves, Uncle peck's yellowy-orangey color. He didn't make waves, he made lines that moved in the wrong directions, it was funny. She had to touch the spots to realize that his voice lines were actually stripes in the usual rings. If the invisible bits were a color, she couldn't see it. Ro-Ro said it was probably the spirit-part of his voice. When Uncle Peck spoke, he spoke aloud to the spirit realm in a way that most things didn't.

The wolves, though, their noises were sharp and black and waved from behind her even before she heard it, and she started running like she wasn't supposed to. She was so tired. She needed to rest. 

But she was afraid to stop. If she stopped, they'd catch her. That's what they were doing, chasing her and exhausting her. Brina couldn't remember anything about dealing with wolves.

I'm getting there. I can do this. I'm Brinarini and I'm loved and I'm magic and I'm tired, so so tired, Aunt Eupa.

I know, kiddo. You got it. Keep going. This is one of those things we tell you to practice for. This kind of stuff right here, this is what all that stuff is work for. Keeping Brinarini alive. We tell you to practice all the time, we tell you to practice all the small stuff, but the real practice, it's all coming down to practice keeping Brinarini alive. S'why we don't make you work around the house. You live here, but your only job is to learn to live.

Brina liked working around the house, but Aunt Eupa said that was different. Chores weren't working around the house, that was more living practice. Aunt Eupa was always on about Brina growing up right and learning how to take care of herself and others. 

Say the words. You got it.

I'm Brinarini and I'm magic and I'm loved and I'm strong and I'm fast and I'm tough and I'm good. And I am still really really tired, Aunt Eupa.

I know, kiddo. Keep going.

Actually, you should stay here, Ro-Ro's voice reminded her.

Shut up, Ro.

Brina snorted a laugh. She almost forgot she was running from the wolves, and she kept running. She felt like she was going crazy, talking to her guardians when her guardians weren't here. Letting her guardians talk to her. She kept hearing them, she guessed. They did repeat themselves a lot. Aunt Eupa did the words all the time. Ro-Ro was always trying to teach but no one ever listened to her. She said it was the curse of living with Aunt Eupa. She never looked competent enough to follow. Brina didn't know what that meant, but Ro-Ro couldn't explain, either, and she just ran her hand through Brina's hair and kissed her head. 

I can do it. It's hard, not impossible.

The wolf noises finally faded away, and she ran until she couldn't. She was okay. She'd be okay. She'd be okay. 

I can do it. It's hard, not impossible.

** This is true in Anagod