Then she left.
Clutching the photographs in fear, she hid in that hollow tree. She could hear the endless, densely packed footsteps outside.
She heard her mother's psychic shriek from far away.
She heard gunshots.
She heard...
Flesh being torn apart.
By the time she woke again, a very, very long time had passed.
She stayed hidden in that hollow tree, frightened and motionless, waiting for her mother to come back for her.
Just as before, her mother would quietly poke her head into the hollow, reach out to flick her forehead, and tell her with a smile:
"Miao Miao, time to go home."
But she never did.
That wait seemed to last a century.
She waited until the trees weathered away, until she could clearly hear decay around her, until the rotten tree snapped with a heavy crack beside her.
At last.
She raised her head and opened her eyes.
She saw a sky that seemed shrouded in eternal night, felt the black wind whipping across her cheeks, and saw the enormous head that had broken the tree receding into the distance.
Then she opened the bulging envelope she had held tightly against her chest.
She saw family photographs of them all together, the little cat plush her mother had sewn for her, and two pieces of her favorite dried fish, now completely desiccated.
"It feels like... I've forgotten something, meow..."
"What was I supposed to be waiting for..."
"Oh, right! Where am I, meow? It's already dark. If I don't go home soon, Mom will worry, meow!"
"Home?"
"Where is home, meow?"
Those lost memories froze upon that wilderness.
Miao Miao trembled and wept, clutching Lynn's arm as large tears pattered onto the ground.
"Mom! Mom!!"
In that instant, she began struggling again, almost madly.
She had