Maple had never meant for her life to end up like this. In all honesty, she hadn’t expected her life to go anywhere, out in the forest and strung out, only interacting with others as a shapeshifted kitten, where the villagers would pity her and leave out scraps and saucers of milk.

The road was darkening, sky bruised and beginning to weep starlight onto the path ahead. Maple had tied up the horses by the wayside, started a fire, stomped out the fire, and climbed back into the caravan all before Lizabekt had even registered their stopping.

“Hey, robin. You hungry from all that napping?” She smiled, watching Liz rise from the Murphy bed. “I made soup.” She placed the second mug on the table, sitting on the floor beside her wife’s bed.

“You know I’m not used to the horses, sparrow. It’s the only way to make my head stop hurting.”

Maple smiled. “You’ll get used to it.”

”We’ve been on the road for a week.”

“City girls,” Maple made a show of rolling her eyes.

Liz scoffed and sat up, if only to bat at Maple half-heartedly. “Oh come on, you love the city.”

Maple smiled. She did love Etterdatch, with its noise and rooftops, and colour and sound. She loved it even more with Liz, firecracker-red, charged with gunpowder and wheatpaste and cheap liquor. But she would be lying if she said she didn’t miss the forest, with its own chatter, and canopies, and smell.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss Violet.

“Do you ever miss him?” She asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Jared?” Liz echoed. She had never spoken about her brother, not since that day. “I think about him a lot.”

“What was he like?”

“Sweet. Quiet. A reader.” Liz had gone quiet again, sipping her mug with the same measured steadiness one might smoke a cigarette. “How about you?”

“I didn’t think she survived.”

Liz laughed then, sharp and bright with a timbre that exploded all the joy from the sky out into their small caravan. “At least one of us gets to meet the family, then.”

Maple drank to that.