The greenly lit shuddering of trees, the rustling of the wind through branches—they were the first things the little girl noticed. The rest of her awareness; the pain in her own body, the cold seeping into her skin, the steady thump of her own heart beating, those came later. For a beautiful, painless moment, it was just her and the trees, the strange smells of the forest, so different from the smells she had grown up recognizing. It was all so mesmerizing, overwhelming, oddly comforting, and in her mind she tried to let the foreign air swallow her, replacing her consciousness with the silence of nature.

But the baby wouldn't let her. He wailed and squirmed, tearing her attention from the listless otherworldly breezes and back into the present. Slowly, painfully, he brought her back down to earth, and she realized that the baby wasn't the only one who was agitated. Her muscles ached, her stomach rumbled, and she had no idea where she was. But she had very little time to come to terms with the fact that she was hungry, tired, utterly lost, and completely alone.

Except, of course, for the baby. The useless, tiny burden she'd found herself saddled with, the noise-making, fidgeting, red-faced little thing, who could do nothing but screech and wail and stink and eat and vomit. If their mother had decided to just leave her alone out here, she might as well have left her with something useful, something helpful, like a map or extra clothing.

She cut her thoughts short. She hung her head, telling herself that their mother hadn't left them, she'd simply lost them. She was probably out looking for them right now, calling their names and worried sick.

The girl gathered herself and made a plan. She made a list of priorities in her head. The first order of business was to keep her brother from crying. Then she'd have the time to find out where she was. And why the air was so thin, the trees so foreign to her. After that, she would find her mother.

She sat herself down in the shadow of a whispering tree and held the baby close to her, one hand fumbling through the pack for the bottle of milk her mother had left there. It was their last one—which she took as a sign that their mother had not intended for them to be alone for very long. But then she realized that it was their only bottle, and scolded herself for letting her thoughts stray to delusions of hope.

"Don't kid yourself, Raine," she told herself quietly, holding the bottle to the baby's greedy lips. "She's not coming back. Not coming…" She fell silent, thinking. Well, of course she only left them with one bottle, it had been an accident, they were only separated for a short time—

No, she had meant for them to be on their own, that's why she had given them so many supplies before their parting. Raine sighed, her head throbbing. She tried to remember how she had gotten here, gotten separated from her mother. She didn't recall much—she had been sleepy, unaware—it was like the patterns of her memories had been disrupted at that moment. But she remembered tall rocks, like a crag, or the columns of a huge building… it had been night.

That was all she could recall. Anything else was hidden behind a hazy wall that even the most intense concentration couldn't dispel. And the baby's racket didn't help either. Even with his mouth covered, dripping milk and still sucking in more, he managed to periodically squeeze out a few pathetic cries. Raine took the bottle away, figuring that she should probably ration out the remainder of the milk, since they seemed to be alone in the middle of nowhere with no sign of civilization, or food, anywhere around them.

And then what? Raine thought to herself. What do we do when the bottle runs dry? Raine remembered how her mother used to feed the baby, propped up peacefully under her shirt while she cooed at him, smiling. At first Raine had thought the practice was weird and even a little frightening, but her mother assured her that that was how babies were fed, and that when Raine was a baby she too sat squished up against her mother's breast for nourishment. When Raine inquired further about the care and creation of babies, her mother just laughed and told her to ask her father, since he was the biologist in the family. When she asked him, she got a short and unsatisfactorily vague answer about mammalian fetal development and something to do with Xs and Ys being chopped in half.

She wondered if by some miracle she might be able to feed the baby on her own. She didn't exactly have the storage capacity for much milk—well, she was only eleven, but maybe her body would adjust to the changing conditions. She knew that around her age her breasts would start to grow, but she wondered if she had the mind-body connectedness to urge it on a little. At least get some good out of puberty before the bottle went dry and her little brother starved to death.

She packed the milk back into her bag and swaddled the baby, who whimpered, red-faced. She tucked him into the folds of her jacket, where his cries were muffled slightly, and she looked around her. The trees seemed endless, and it didn't look like any direction was preferable over any other. So she chose her own path and followed it, taking her first steps into the vast wilderness.

The first night out in the wild alone was bad, the second night was worse. By the third day, Raine knew she had to find people fast, or they would both die. Her supply of food ran low more quickly than she had expected, and the milk bottle was nearly empty. She watered it down so that the baby would at least have a full stomach by the end of his feeding time, but she could tell he was malnourished. She didn't know it was possible for a baby to lose that much weight so fast, but it seemed his rounded plumpness dissipated by the hour. She, too, was noticeably weaker than before. She didn't have enough food to keep this up. They had until tomorrow, at most, and then they would be out. And that was the end of them, unless Raine could manage to find food, and some substitute for milk, out in this wilderness. Perhaps she could find some animal, milk it, eat its meat… her stomach grumbled.

She lowered herself against a tree, cradling the baby. He had cried himself to sleep some time ago, and now weakly twitched in her arms, too exhausted to wake up and wail. She leaned back against the creaking trunk, examining the yellowing leaves of the trees around her. It looked like winter was coming early this year. Very early.

She bit her lip thoughtfully. Obviously either there was some sort of meteorological anomaly in this particular neck of the woods, or else Raine had gotten herself lost in a place far, far away from her family. Raine knew from the books her parents had given her that the seasons were dependent on what part of the world you happened to be in—what if she got herself lost somewhere so far away that the seasons were entirely different?

She shook her head. It was impossible that she had traveled that far in so short a time. It was only four days ago that she had been with her mother, holding her hand, looking up at her pale face… and now she was already three days lost in this strange autumn wood. Luckily for her and the baby the weather had been mild, devoid of rain, but every night she was so cold she worried that she would wake up to find her brother frozen to death in her arms.

That particular night it grew even chillier, so she decided to build a bigger fire than usual. She stopped her perseverant trod and gathered enough firewood to last the night. Her parents had always been reluctant to start fires in the wilderness—they said that it was always possible that the University was following them and would find out where they were camped.

Her parents talked about the University a lot. Sometimes they would wistfully chat about the days of their youth, both embroiled in the institute's laboratory research, buried knee deep in data. Mother said she had met Father at the University, when she was doing her thesis on the principles of aeronautics. Father had been working in a botany lab, and she liked to laugh that when he first saw her, he was so enamored with her he dropped the entirety of the control group on the floor, setting the whole lab back at least a month.

Apart from how they found each other, they didn't have many good things to say about the University. They seemed to avoid the topic when their daughter was around, mentioning it only in emergencies, when they had to skip town or hide themselves. All Raine knew was that the University was a huge building made of grey brick, and that it was what forced her family to move around so much.

She didn't mind. About the time that she realized she wasn't learning anything in school was when the University disrupted her family's monotonous daily life. So while they were on the run, her mother and father taught her all they had learned—they bought her books and diagrams and made sure she memorized them sufficiently, since they often had to drop their cargo at a moment's notice to make a hasty retreat into the wilderness. She lived with it; of course, she would love to have a collection of books, but the urgency of her situation helped her learn faster. She never knew how much time she would be able to spend with a book, so she became quite good at devouring knowledge as fast as possible. Since she could read at her own quick pace and retain the information without repetition, she never needed to worry about getting too far ahead, as she always did in school. She could go as fast as she wanted, so long as her parents knew she had truly learned the material.

There was nothing Raine loved more than reading. There was nothing she was better at. Whenever she was worried, lonely, unsure, she could always escape between the pages of a book. It didn't matter what type—a textbook on geometry, or an ancient epic poem, they all enthralled her equally. So it wasn't a surprise that the first night after they had arrived in this strange new place, she had tucked her little brother into the folds of her big coat and searched the pack for something to read. To her horror, there was nothing—nothing but food and clothes and a few necessary toiletries, a tiny knife barely suitable for cutting bread, and a large flagon of water. Goods only useful for survival, but not living. She needed to find some people, find some books…

She knew that maybe she could forget about her hunger if she could immerse herself in the narrative of some ancient war, or into the complexities of equations and diagrams, but she was alone out here, with no pages, no words, only the sounds of the forest and the feeble whimpering of her tiny little brother. But within the first few hours of their lonely journey, the hope of finding books receded into the background, replaced with a desperate need for food and warmth.

The night only grew colder and Raine scooted close to the fire, hugging her ratty blanket around herself and the gurgling baby. She couldn't tell if he was satiated by the watered-down meal she had given him, or if he was just too weak to launch a full-fledged wail. Either way, he was quiet, if only for a tender, short time. She held him close and looked him over, his tiny nose, his uncomprehending eyes, and couldn't help but marvel at the fact that every intelligent soul, every person, great and horrid, human or elf or in between, started off as a helpless, stubby-limbed little baby.

I wonder what turns this stupid thing into a person, she thought, rocking him steadily. Is it reason? Communication? As if sensing her thoughts turn to him, he raised his little eyes up at her, grey-blue like hers and their mother's, and met her gaze. She stared into his empty eyes, so full of potential. It must be memory, she thought. He has nothing to remember, so he has nothing to think about. She supposed that's how it worked… memory was the basis of learning, the basis of thought and consciousness—so little Genis had no scaffolding on which to build his mind.

Raine had a few early childhood memories, but they were disjointed and without context. She remembered her father picking her up and putting her on his shoulders, her mother singing softly to her, and she remembered her parents fighting, screaming at one another from opposite sides of a dark room, then scolding each other for being loud enough to be discovered… All these bits of consciousness were few and far between, blurred by the dreamy vertigo of toddlerhood. She didn't have a memory that she could call her first. Raine wondered if her transition from unconscious baby to conscious child was gradual, or if there was a moment in her early life when her mind just clicked, and she suddenly found herself capable of remembering the events of the day. Perhaps there was a moment when each of the nascent puzzle pieces of her brain had finally come together and she became a thinking, feeling, albeit somewhat disconnected person.

She looked deep into her little brother's milky eyes, wondering if she would be able to watch him turn into an autonomous soul, rather than a speechless, thoughtless, helpless little thing that depended on others for sustenance. She wondered if she would be able to discern the moment when he gained a mind, or even if there was a moment at all. Maybe it would all be too gradual for her to notice. Even so, she would get to watch it, and take notes. But first, they had to live through the night.

She put her finger on the baby's nose and smiled. "I thought about leaving you, you know. My chances of survival are much better without you around. But… I promise I'll keep you alive. You're my little experiment."

The baby responded to her affection by promptly urinating on her pants. Raine briefly regretted her promise to her little brother, but by this time she was quite used to the baby's habits. She removed the baby from her lap, unwrapped him and laid him by the fire, where he cried and wiggled miserably. She sighed, hoping that she would come across some sign of people soon. She wasn't sure what would kill her first: the hunger, the cold, or the horrid stink of the her younger brother.

The next morning, she ate the last of their food, and fed the crying baby the last of their milk. It's all or nothing now, she told herself. Today is the day we either starve or learn to survive. She held weak little infant close to her, and started off in her arbitrarily decided direction, which she guessed was southwest. She couldn't see the moon or stars from under the thick canopy of branches, so she had very little to navigate by.

To distract herself from the grumbling in her stomach, the whimpering of her little brother, the cold seeping into her bones, Raine buried herself in thought. She talked to herself, she talked to the baby, softly, slowly, trying to calm him down.

"You know, Genis," she said, stepping over a large rock, foot crunching the fallen leaves, "if we die out here, in the middle of nowhere, no one will know for a long time. Days, weeks, months. Maybe they will never know. The only people who will care would be our parents, and they're the ones that left us out here in the first place." She heard the sound of running water whispering in the distance, and followed it, hoping to come across a cool, fresh drink. "And eventually," she continued, making her way toward the noise, "they'll forget about us too. Maybe they'll have more children. Maybe they won't. Maybe they're dead. Maybe the University got them."

The susurrations of the water grew louder, and Raine licked her lips, trotting a little faster. Maybe the University did get her parents, and she and her brother were lucky enough to have escaped. Raine never knew what the University wanted, and she definitely didn't know if they wanted it enough to kill for it. A brief, terrifying image of her parents' corpses flashed through her mind, and she banished the thought. Her mother and father had been running from the University for years, they could take care of themselves. It was Genis and herself that she should be worried about. She tried to assess how long they could survive alone, or how on earth they would find a way back to their parents, but she couldn't see that far into the future. She sighed and forced herself to think about the here and now, about the sound of water flowing, about quenching her thirst.

When she got to the shallow, clear brook, she was so eager to drink that she didn't take enough care walking down to the water. At the edge of the stream, her foot slid across the mossy stones and slipped out from under her. She tumbled downward, lifting the baby, turning herself over to keep him from crashing onto the rocks or into the cold water. She held Genis in the air while she fell, so preoccupied trying to save the baby she landed flat on her back in the freezing water. She lay still for a moment, shivering, holding the baby high above her as if in offering to the gods, and she let the cold water rush across her back, soaking the bag and everything in it. Well, there go our dry clothes, she thought miserably. As if they already didn't have it rough enough.

Raine sat up slowly, and set the baby on the shore of the tiny stream. He began to cry over all the commotion, but Raine didn't bother shushing him. She sat there, dripping freezing water, and shivered for a while, letting the cold shock course through her. Her legs shook, her breath left her, and before she knew it, she was crying. The tears felt uncomfortably hot on her face, running along her gooseflesh. She looked at the bundle on the shore, wiggling and whining, and the tears came pouring out of her. She hugged herself, sobbing, and stood, bending back down toward the river to gather water in her flagon and pick up any items she'd dropped on her way down into the flowing stream.

We're going to die, she told herself miserably. We're going to die, and no one is going to remember us.

She shivered, wishing that she could be anywhere but here, wishing that she didn't have to be alone, wishing that she had a plan, that she could remember what happened at all, that she was back with her family, that she could just leave all this, let the water wash her away into nothing. But here she was, freezing, starving, lonely, and there wasn't much she could do about it. All she could do was try to gather their things and see if they could survive another night. She reached back into the stinging cold water for an object shining under the water, thinking that it had fallen from her bag.

When the pulled her hand up, what she held was not something that had come from the pack. It was something she had never seen before. Black, sharp, beautiful, it glinted in the afternoon light creeping through leaves. It looked like a piece of some ancient weapon, perhaps an arrowhead or the broken tip of a spear. It captivated her, this tiny shard of humanity, out here in the middle of the forest. She closed her hand around it and brought it close to her chest.

She closed her eyes for a moment, pulling herself together. A light breeze tickled her wet skin and chilled her to her core. She shook slightly, but the tiny fragment in her hand felt warm, reassuring, encouraging. Someone had been here before, maybe recently, perhaps hundreds of years ago, but for the first time in days, she and her brother were not alone. There was some evidence of civilization here… small but consequential. The person who had used this fragment of metal had left a little piece of him or herself here, a tiny memory, something to hold onto.

She turned back to the baby, who now cried whole-heartedly, stomach empty. Raine picked him up, shivering through and through, and decided to follow the river. It had already given her a small piece of civilization, so perhaps it would lead her to a town. She just hoped it didn't get any wider or deeper. She didn't particularly like deep water.

She was starving, wet, freezing, and saddled with a crying baby, but she forced herself to walk forward, stepping over rocks and roots and bushes, leaving a trail of cold drops in her wake. She resumed her talking, shivering, trying to keep warm, hoping that the water dripping from her wouldn't freeze the baby. After a few hours, when the last warmth of the sun disappeared over the horizon, Raine tried to force herself to resign to their fates. She tried to tell herself that they would freeze out here, that they would starve, alone, and that their corpses would be devoured by beasts in the night. But she couldn't bring herself to admit it, not after she had found that tiny metallic shard of hope. She had promised her little brother that he would survive, and he would. Besides, she could not accept the unfairness that he would have to die before he could really live, could really experience memory and language and consciousness.

It was too early for them to die. It was simple. Raine would not allow it. So she walked onward through the maze of tree trunks and shadows, refusing to look back, until the trees thinned and she spied a road in the distance. She desperately scrambled toward it, doubting if it was even real, suspecting this was a trick of the forest or of her tired mind.

The road turned out to be real, but when she placed her tired feet on the packed gravel, she felt very little relief. She was still freezing, still alone. The moon rose slowly, and for the first time in days she got a clear view of it.

It was not her moon. Its grooves and shapes and shadows were unfamiliar to her. It rose like a giant, scrutinizing eye, like an angry god watching her closely. Her knees went weak and she fell to the dirt. Genis began to wail.

"This is a dream," Raine said quietly. "A long, awful dream."

Raine closed her eyes and wished desperately that her mother would shake her awake, that she would wake up in someplace warm, a place she could call home. But she didn't wake up. She only stared at the foreign moon rising slowly in the sky, and started to cry all over again.