"Mom! It's getting dark!"
Dan hopped from foot to foot at the edge of the clearing, boots thudding on the packed dirt, the basket swinging from his fist. Behind him the cabin sat in the last orange light of the day.
"We're going to miss it!"
"Hold your horses." The voice drifted out through the window, warm and unhurried. "I need to tame my hair."
"That's impossible!" He threw his free hand up. "It'll take hours. It can't be tamed!"
The door banged open.
She stepped onto the porch like the evening belonged to her. White trousers, fitted black tunic, knee-high boots. Her hair did the rest. It was fire-red and fell past her waist in thick spikes, every one of them ignoring gravity. She looked late twenties at most, though something about the way she stood felt much older. Her red pupils swept over the shadows between the twin trees by the cabin, then landed on him.
Dan had the same hair, black streaked with red, just as lawless.
"And what was that about my hair?" She crossed her arms, smiling.
"Do you really have to ask?" He dragged a hand through his own spikes. "I got it from you, remember? I know the struggle."
"I still like to try." She lifted her chin with great dignity and came down the steps. "I refuse to look like a walking thornbush."
"No thornbush is that pretty," Dan muttered, and dug through the basket so she wouldn't see his face. Bread, berry jam, smoked fish wrapped in cloth. Everything was there.
"Such a charmer." Her grin widened, and her teeth showed, too many and too sharp, like something ancient had learned how to smile. It suited her anyway. "Ready?"
"I've been ready for hours." He turned toward the tree line. "We can't miss this. I don't have another thirty years to wait for the sky to line up again." Then he looked back, grinning exactly like her. "It's going to be so much fun."
"Oh, I know." She rested a hand on his shoulder.
They walked into the trees together, her boots crunching over the earth, the canopy overhead bleeding from violet into indigo.
"You know," she said, bumping his shoulder, "if you want, I could reach up and grab one of those shooting stars for you."
"Quit joking, Mom. You're not that strong."
"A girl can dream."
Their voices thinned out between the trunks until the forest swallowed them, and the cabin stood alone in the dark clearing with one lamp still burning in the window.
—--------
"Come on, just a little further!"
Lizzy's voice cut clean through the woods. She was walking backward, effortlessly, to keep an eye on her son.
"W-we've been walking for hours." Dan was wheezing. Neither of them needed light. Their eyes held the path in perfect detail, every root and stone.
"It'll be worth it. I promise."
"I can't go on." Dan dropped to his knees and held the basket out in both hands, almost lost in the knee-high grass. "Take the sacred bread and run."
Lizzy gasped and clutched her chest. "B-but we swore to see the sunrise together!"
"It can't be helped! Not every dream comes true!" His voice cracked into a theatrical rasp. "Go! I'm being swallowed by the sea of grass! Don't waste another—"
"Or I could do this."
She scooped him up with one arm and dropped him on her shoulder like a sack of flour.
"That is not how the game works." He sighed, then set the basket on top of her head and settled against her neck anyway.
"Sorry, little man. We'll finish the scene later." She swatted aside branches that would have clipped him. "Honestly, I'm excited too. Your father's never seen this shower. I want to sit out here with him one day."
Dan rested his chin on her hair. "So you've seen it before. Are you super ancient, Mom?"
"When you put it like that, I feel like a hag." She laughed, and he felt it rumble through her ribs. "But even if you convert our lifespans into human years, I'm still pretty young."
"So are you finally going to tell me what your race is?"
"We're here!"
She stepped through the last line of trees, and the forest let go of them.
The valley opened wide. A flower field ran off in every direction, cool wind combing through it, the air sharp and clean after the damp of the woods.
"Your father made this place," Lizzy said quietly, and her free hand trailed through petals brushing her hips. "From scratch. Because I once mentioned I liked flowers."
The field woke up slowly. Glow worms flickered on, then insects Dan had no names for, lifting out of the stems in drifting threads of pale light until the whole valley shimmered.
Above them there was no cloud, no canopy, and no moon. The sky was bare black glass, the perfect dark for stars.
Dan didn't say anything. His amber eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open. The universe sat on his chest and he forgot how to breathe, until his mother's voice reached him.
"So? Pretty neat, right?"
She lowered him gently into the glowing flowers.
–-----
"A little of this, a little of that, and *ta-da!*"
Lizzy held out a lumpy sandwich, stuffed so full that fish flakes and purple jam were leaking out the sides.
Dan sighed and shuffled closer across the blanket. "Of course you got it wrong. You can't just mix everything. Also, I'm ninety percent sure jam in fish is illegal."
"What?!" She snatched it back. "Your father has never complained about my cooking, and I find it very gourmet!" She took an enormous bite to prove it, cheeks flushing with smug satisfaction.
'Right. Don't touch the cooking.' Dan went back to his plain bread and smoked fish.
He watched the lights drifting over the edge of the valley. Without noticing, he scooted until his shoulder rested against her side. Maybe every kid felt this way. When he sat this close to her, the world felt harmless. Nothing could reach him.
"Still scared of the little bugs?" She reached into the basket for another smoked fish and crunched it, bones and all, with those sharp teeth.
"No hate for them." Dan kept his eyes on the thing crawling near the blanket's edge. "The way they walk just disturbs my soul."
"You're almost ten, kiddo. You should be used to them by now."
Her hand shot out and plucked a huge, iridescent beetle off a stem.
Dan nearly left his skin. He scrambled backward and stopped just short of tumbling into the flowers, then realized with horror that the tall petals were probably hiding a whole kingdom of bigger ones.
"Fine, fine." She flicked her wrist, and the beetle spread its wings with a low buzz and vanished into the dark.
Full and quiet, the two of them lay back on the blanket with their heads propped up and stared into the empty sky. The valley hummed around them.
"Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"What's Dad's work actually like?" He turned his head to look at her profile. "He disappears for a week, sometimes a month. He's been gone a few months now."
The playfulness left her face. Her red eyes held the indigo of the night. "I hate how long it takes him from us," she said. "But what he does matters. A lot, to the realm."
Then her face twisted into a furious pout. She sat bolt upright and punched the air. "But he was supposed to be home a *week* ago! It's so lonely at the cabin without him!"
"Wow." Dan sat up with a dry smile. "I'm deeply offended. Am I not entertaining enough?"
"No! I mean, obviously you are, but I didn't—" She flapped her hands, her cheeks going red. "Ugh. You'll understand when you grow up and fall for some girl your age!"
"Hard to believe." His voice went quiet and he looked at his knees. "We live in the middle of a forest. Outside of the books, I've never seen another kid my age."
The fight drained out of her at once. She stared at him. "I'm sorry, Dan."
"I'm not mad." He looked toward the horizon where the valley met the sky. "But I want to see a real city. A village, even. All the stuff I've been reading about my whole life. You and Dad have so many stories, and I just want one of my own."
When he turned back, she was watching him with a look that hurt to see.
"I didn't know you thought about it that much." She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "When the preparations are done, I promise, we'll live in a big, beautiful city."
"Mom, you don't have to keep apologizing. It's not your fault we live out here—"
"It is." Her voice shook, and it was strange to hear. "Your father's asked me so many times to bring you to the capital. But I'm scared, Dan. I'm really scared."
"Scared of what?" He leaned closer. Seeing his invincible mother look breakable was the worst feeling he'd ever had.
"Anyway!" Her smirk slammed back into place like a door. She poked his chest. "How's the magic coming? Can you beat your old lady at air tag yet, or are you still a slowpoke?"
"No!" His cheeks flushed, and a thin glow of mana flared around him. "You cheat! You fly way too fast!"
"Using emotional damage to make me go easy on you isn't a strategy, young man."
"You're an adult! Act like one!"
She tackled him flat onto the blanket and went for his ribs. His laughter broke across the silent valley and scattered the glow worms into the air.
"What's the fun in acting like a boring adult and thinking about politics and prices of salt all day?!"
"Look!" Dan yelled between gasps, pointing straight up. "Mom, look, it's starting!"
One white streak tore across the black sky, silent and bright.
Lizzy stopped. She rolled onto her side and watched as one streak became dozens, and the dozens became hundreds, until the whole sky seemed to be burning softly.
Dan sat up, starstruck. His mana slipped loose without his noticing and he started to rise off the ground. Lizzy reached out and hooked her fingers into the hem of his tunic so he wouldn't drift out of her reach. The falling light reflected in her crimson eyes.
"It's still not too late, you know," she murmured. "If you want one, I could catch a shooting star for you."
"Again?" He didn't look away from the sky. "That joke's getting old, Mom. Keep up with the trends."
'I'm not joking, my little dragon.'
She pulled him into her arms from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder. Dan never took his eyes off the heavens, and above them the river of falling stars poured on, lighting the hidden valley where the two of them sat, tucked safely away from the rest of the world.