The Moon isn't moving anymore. It sits high above the clouds, bathing the savannahs in an ivory light, both comforting and unnerving at the same time. Masega and I sit, thinking of nothing and everything at the same time. Her hands are clasped together around the tea, which has long since gone cold.

We haven't spoken since Masega's speculation about Mama's feet. Instead of tumbling words lies a silence, as grim and foreboding as the leering chiffon Moon. If I am to tell Masega the truth about Mama's condition, now is the time. But my tongue stays obstinately still.

My mind is straying back to a year ago today, when Masega first fell ill with what Mama and I call the winter-cough. That morning, she failed to awaken, similar to the Sun's failure to rise. It took Mama an hour to rouse her, burning with fever and addled with coughs that wracked her small frame. That was the day I first noticed the worry lines on Mama's face. Between her feet and Masega's winter-cough, I was forced to take over as our main provider.

The next day, I taught myself how to use a rungu, and brought down a wild boar, but I couldn't bear to see all the blood, nor its hopeless struggles.

I never used a rungu again.

Instead, I brought any extra plants I foraged to the market, and traded them for slabs of meat. To this day I avoid wild boar. The raw smell of boar meat makes me sick to my stomach, remembering its desperation and the sticky burgundy soil left behind. I let Mama butcher it, even though I know the rhythmic motions hurt her. I can never do that to another animal again.

Masega coughs again, and the claustrophobic quiet shatters. I stand and stoke the fire. "Here, Masega, give me your cup," I say, and she obeys. I watch her as she bends to grab another teabag and fill it with aspen, making sure she doesn't stretch too far, then take the misshapen, half-melted metal prong and poke at the sticks. An ember ignites at the touch, and I attach Masega's cup to the spit. She drops in the aspen and we both watch it boil.

By the time the aspen has soaked into the water, Mama hasn't made an appearance. I begin to worry – for Mama, for her fragility, for what will happen to Masega if I look for her and don't return. Several long, torturous moments pass, and I say nothing.

Then –

"Masega, stay here. I'm going to the forest."

Masega's head whips up and I see the coals of panic in her eyes. "You can't!" she half-gasps, staring at me. Another cough bubbles up through her lips and she rushes into her next sentence with the ghost of a breath. "Mama said not to and it usually takes a long time for her anyways because her feet and it's dangerous and it's NIGHTTIME and Akia you can't leave you can't leave you can't!"

"I have to risk it," I argue, even though I want to agree with her. My pulse rises as I imagine the perils of darkness prowling among long grasses. The pride of lions. A deadly possi of beetles. Crocodiles disguised as salvation at the waterholes. My mind ticks through the route to where I gather herbs. There's a good chance I'll be faced with at least one of those. If I die, and Mama doesn't show up, then Masega will die too, as alone and desperate as that wild boar.

The thought wounds me. I can't leave her. She's only ten.

But Mama's out there, another voice argues. She's probably hurt and alone.

"I've made up my mind, Masega," I say, even though this turmoil is anything but decided. I can't go back now. "I'll see you in a few hours, okay?"

She whimpers, a guttural sound of terror. All her hardiness has been stripped by this new threat, all her bravado vanishing as completely as the light of the Sun. My hand clenches the rungu, still stained a deep tawny brown from the blood of the boar. As I turn to face the unfamiliar night, she curls into a ball in the far corner of her cot.

Stepping onto the plains feels impossibly wrong. It's the same world, yet so different - so twisted, so ominous, like the Sun had warded off some unnamed evil that now lurks in the confines of the Moon's realm. My toes sink into the soil and the sense of unease deepens, but I force myself to move. Masega's watching me; I feel the weight of her eyes on my back. She must see the façade I put up and nothing more.

I swallow, tightening my grasp on the rungu. Should I need to protect myself,  I'm aptly armed. One foot moves, then the other, so cautious as to weave through the stalks of fonio like a mamba intent on its prey. But I'm the prey now, not the mamba. Whatever haunts the sable steppe has set its attentions on me. There's nowhere to hide.

If this is what Mama knew lingered out in the swarth after dusk, how could she ever have mustered the nerve to leave the safety of our hut?

The grains next to me tremble, and I jump around, pointing my rungu at the source of the noise. My hands shake as badly as a windblown leaf, if there was any wind to be felt. Anything could be concealed there, waiting to strike as soon as my back is turned. I jab at the ground experimentally, hoping that whatever it is doesn't feel my paranoia and doesn't sense the reluctance with which I hold my weapon.

A crested rat scuttles out, and I deflate. There's nothing to be afraid of. I look up to the jade shadows of the forest. Nothing to be afraid of. Not at all.

Despite this reassurance, I keep a meticulous watch for danger, and the smallest movement sends chills up my spine.

The terrain slopes from dry crumbly dirt to moss-flecked pebbles, the beginnings of the forest, and I still have no sign of Mama's whereabouts. Though she left the hut a while ago, her feet are in no condition to make this walk, and more so on the uneven ground.

Mama is gone.

I blink and suddenly it's hard to breathe. Far away from Masega's fragility, I let fear consume me, and take three quick, shaking steps backwards. Was that my movement that caused the grasses to swish, or something more sinister that I cannot see? Is that the swaying of forest branches in a faroff gust or the light creeping footsteps of a lioness hunting me down? I hug myself. If by miracle Mama is still alive, she's not here. She's not here. She's not here.

My mind puts two and two together and before I fully process what I'm doing, I'm a quarter of the way back to the hut, stricken with panic. Each desolate pound of my foot against the soil thrums with the knowledge that Mama is beyond my help now.

I dash from the trees and hurdle over the old fallen log. Behind me, on the edge of the plains, I hear a cackle of hyenas spring into pursuit, and I double the length of my stride. Mama might not be the only one lost tonight. If the hyenas catch up to me, a lone girl out on the plains, Masega will have no sister, and no future.

A small hill rolls out of the ground, and as soon as I climb it the hut will be in sight. My heart beats wildly in my throat as three of the hyenas scramble over it after me, paws akimbo, and leap back onto my trail. It's not far away now. I can see the gentle glimmer of Masega's candle through the window.

The window!

"Masega!" I scream, piercing the air above the maddening shrieks of the hyenas. Her shadow jerks, and she yelps.

"Akia! What's happening?"

"MASEGA! Close the window! Close it now!"

An arm appears, then the interior vanishes into a wall of black. She's pulled the rectangle of wood down, barring any entrance that the hyenas might have had. I gasp out a sigh of relief. Whatever happens to me, Masega will be safe.

It's little comfort. Masega may not meet her end with the hyenas, but if I'm not there to take care of her, she'll die, slow and agonizing, sure as the Moon's cream-colored grin above the obsidian loam.

I won't let that happen to her.

I'm close enough to see the cracks in the wooden door, and the question of whether it'll hold against the hyenas flashes through my mind. Fingers outstretched, I lunge over the last few feet - almost there - almost there...

A pair of teeth snaps shut around my skirt, and I cry out, feeling skin tear away from my thigh. From inside, Masega bleats my name, but I can hardly hear her. I'm aware of almost nothing but the wound in my leg and the savage, starved gleam to the hyenas' eyes. The closest one curls its lip and shows teeth stained the color of lost rubies. My blood.

"Mama!" I yell, hoping that wherever she is she'll hear me. "Mama, help me, please!"

There's the tiniest whispered "Akia" from the house before the hyenas converge.

It's a sea of russet, a surging mass of teeth and claws and snarling. My injured leg throbs to the rhythm of my heartbeat, still pulsing stubbornly in my chest. Something digs into my arm and I rip myself away. Agony sears from my wrist up to my forearm, and red sprays onto the fur of the nearest hyenas. I clutch at it, feeling dizzy, and struggled against the haze of unconsciousness that rose up behind my eyes. I can't sustain this for long. They're going to kill me. I'm going to die.

Then I remember my rungu, strapped to my waist, and I unsheathe it. My assailants are in no way deterred, though perhaps a little more so when I stab it hilt-deep into the next hyena to jump at me. As I struggle to remove the carcass from my weapon, another attacks my back, and I howl in anguish, wrenching the rungu from the dead hyena with a score of pain and whacking my foe in the side of the head. It whines, backing away and shaking itself. Good. Two down.... I glance over the remaining animals.

Oh, no.

I estimate there are about fifteen left standing, all very close, all very large, and all very angry. There's no way I can take this pack on and expect to win. My best chance -

I close my eyes for a half a second and inhale.

I have to try.

If it doesn't work, I'll be killed, and it will be a slow death from many cuts, from more than the gashes on my leg and arm and back. I brace myself and reopen my eyes.

For Masega.

My grip on the rungu tightens. I point it directly in front of myself and charge, emitting a crazed war cry. The hyenas I face scatter with high-pitched squawks, connecting the garnet-hued spearhead with the corpse it felled. Arms still outstretched, I ram into the door. It doesn't budge.

Despair washes through me. I've failed.

They advance, and I grope the side of the door desperately for the knob that be my salvation, not daring to look away. My breath catches in my throat. I swing the rungu at them as threateningly as I can with my impaired arm and bang my other fist on the door. "Masega!" I shout over the hyenas' gut-wrenching laughter. "Masega, open the door, please Masega let me in, let me in, PLEASE!"

I pause and wait for the door to swing free, the rungu no longer in motion.

Nothing happens.

Masega, where are you?

The hyenas can sense my hysteria. They inch forward on paws turned silver in the moonlight, unnerving me further. I will my fingers over the splintering wood faster, probing for the knob. My nail catches on something and I curl my hand around it. Thank the stars! I twist my entire arm and the door gapes open. As the hyenas break rank and pounce, I rush into safety and press my entire body onto the door.

I'm alive.

I made it!

"Masega!" I call, fortifying the entrance with the rungu. Now that the immediate danger has passed, I allow myself to deflate, letting out all my air in one great gust. There's a thump and a squeal; the door rattles on its hinges and I shove back, keeping it in place. It and the rungu are the only barriers between us, and I intend to preserve them until the hyenas are gone.

"Masega?" I repeat, stumbling on the floor as another hyena throws itself against the acacia wood. "Masega? It's okay to come out. You're safe. We're safe."

The effect of my words is undermined by the relentless attacks of the hyenas, but I'd have thought that Masega would at least show herself. I survey the hut from my spot on the door. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary: the blankets are piled on the beds in Masega's favorite fold, the tea kettle hangs skewed to the left on the spit above the fire, which has burnt down to smoldering embers, and the unsorted herbs lay scattered on the makeshift countertop.

I look harder.

It's too serene, too still, and emanates a sort of wrongness, like the calm before a storm. "Masega?" I try again.

Silence.

She's hiding, I tell myself briskly, not considering the other possibility. She's hiding. There's nowhere else she can be.

She didn't open the door for you, flutters the voice at the back of my head.

I quell that train of thought before it can be explored and wait until the hyenas move on to hunt for Masega. Eventually their vicious cries fade, to be replaced by the perplexed chirping of the partridges and locusts. I let my stance relax. "The hyenas left," I say softly, mimicking Mama's most calming tone. "It's safe to come out, Masega. Nothing's going to hurt you."

I cock my head and listen, but she fails to reply. There's no motion except for the flickering candlelight and the shadows it casts on the wall. If she's not going to answer me, I need to be firm. "Masega, this isn't funny. You need to come out."

I decide to ransack the hut in my efforts, tossing yesterday's herbs into a haphazard heap to check the deep interior of the cupboard and crawling down under her cot, one of her most frequented, private niches in our largely shared home. Her most treasured possession - a nugget of opalescent silver-rose stone - is hidden here, along with a third blanket for wintry nights and a lion that Mama carved for her years ago. She would never leave without her trinkets, and yet...

And yet...there they are, hugging the wall as if meant to be a secret, with their owner nowhere to be found.

"Masega," I implore once more to the empty air.

I go over the hut again, pillaging every nook that I missed last time. She's not behind the salt store or underneath the one squeaky drawer. She didn't cram herself into the tiny hole in the ground that serves as a well. It's as if she's been erased from time, with nothing but a rock and a lump of wood as evidence that she exists.

I refuse to accept it. She was just here; the shutter is still bound tightly to the bottom of the window, and her mug of tea still lies by the coals and the kettle. I saw her, I saw her as I fled from the hyenas and heard her call out for me when they shredded into my skin.

My skin. I'm still bleeding, and now that I'm paying attention to it, the lacerations start to sting with brutal precision, tracing agonizing lines from my knee to my hip and pinpricks of pain peppering my spine. I reach over and press a strip of damp cloth to my leg; even if it does nothing for the pulsing, cadenced throbs, it at least stems the flow of blood. The moisture drips into my wound, and I stiffen and let out a sharp hiss as it smarts. It's nothing compared to the raw torture of the hyena's claws as they buried themselves in my thigh, but at the same time more so; I was distracted with staying alive when the pack and I faced off, but now I can focus on nothing but this biting pain, not even Masega's mysterious absence.

I finish treating myself, soaking the rag again and again until the prickling stops, and tie it around my torso to prevent any more bleeding. I glance over my shoulder, as if Masega's there helping keep it in place. Her vanishment worries me. Where could she have gone? She was here seconds before I burst in.

A thought oozes up from the subconscious of my mind and I freeze, a chill of dread shivering up my bandaged back. If she's not here, then she must be outside.

Outside where the hyenas are.

Outside where the hyenas could easily catch her, a ten-year-old girl with no rungu and no sister to protect her.

"Stars," I breathe, "let her be safe."

I grab the rungu and return to the uncertainty of night.

~~~

GUYS! Wow, chapter 2 is up. This one took me a pretty long time to write, hammering out details and what not. So, Mama's gone, and we don't (well, YOU don't) know where Masega is. Please speculate in the comments! Where do you think Mama and Masega have ventured to? Why do you think the Sun is missing? I want to hear it all!

-Snowfall