Fugitive of the Sky

Chapter Three: One Long Night

Aqie shakily pushed herself up and joined Rrari at the doorway. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, but the valley's light wasn't gone just yet. Aqie stared after Warble as he disappeared around a bend in the mountain slope. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. She looked up at her mother in worry. "Mom? What if Dad doesn't come back?" Aqie asked anxiously.

"Warble won't die," Rrari murmured softly.

"How do you know?" Aqie wanted to know. "How can you be sure that he won't make a mistake and the hunters will get him?" She began to sniffle, but resisted the temptation to go inside. She wanted to look out on the dark green forest.

Rrari sighed and drew Aqie into a hug. Aqie hugged back, clinging to her as if at any moment they might be ripped away from each other. "The truth is, I don't. We never do."

Aqie stared up at her mother in shock. "Then why— how—" she couldn't seem to finish her question. A sob finally broke free from her chest, and she buried her face into Rrari's tunic, still sweaty from their flight.

Rrari stroked Aqie's black head. "We just have to trust Adonai."

"But how?"

Rrari did not answer for a long while as Aqie muffled her sobs in her tunic. "We ask Adonai for the gift of faith and trust, and hold on to what we know. Adonai works everything for good, despite evil," she answered slowly.

Aqie was silent for a minute. "But I'm still afraid. I didn't know all that history before, and I was scared of the hunters, but knowing it makes me all the more afraid. How will Dad get away?"

Rrari hugged Aqie tight. "Fear is a monster that makes things bigger than they seem. Don't give in to it, but go to Adonai instead. No matter what you do or don't know, those hunters are still the same — though they might not be as bad as you think. There's always much more under the surface."

Aqie snuggled into her arms, feeling eight again. "I don't understand."

"Do you remember the human girl we helped last winter?" Rrari asked.

"I remember. It was one of the most exciting things of my life, before today," Aqie replied.

"What did you see when you looked at her?" Rrari murmured.

Aqie thought back, remembering. "I saw a girl who looked about my age lying in a snowy clearing on the outer edge of the valley. She was bloody and dirty and seemed very scared. I was so surprised to find her that when she looked at me, I turned around and fled straight back home."

"But there was more to her, wasn't there?"

"I guess so. I don't know why she was all the way out here in the mountains. She was nice to watch, though."

Rrari shook her head. "Oh, little one, of course you don't understand. There's so much more about the world you don't know. She was an escaped slave girl who fled into the mountains. That's why she was beaten and dirty. I don't know how she made it to the valley in winter before collapsing. She was sick, too, remember?"

"A slave?" Aqie repeated. "Like, someone who cleans your house for you?"

Rrari shook her head, face grim. "No, as in someone you bought as a piece of property to do whatever you like with. Usually that includes cleaning your house. Though that wasn't what it used to be — slaves had rights before the Great War — it isn't now. It's a horrible practice."

Aqie grimaced before turning back to the point. "Yuck. But how did you know she was an escaped slave?" Aqie furrowed her brow. "You only let me ever talk to her."