"Sparrow?"

Tiquail padded slowly into Sparrow's room, the door had been opened a crack and she had decided to let herself in.

Sparrow hastily shoved something into her pillow case. Tiquail knew that it was the letter from her mother.

"Are you ready to train? Tony's waiting for you."

More than a week had passed since Ebony had delivered the letter. Since then, Sparrow had been much quieter than usual, nodding and shaking her head, and speaking only when she felt it was necessary.

That's why, when Sparrow actually spoke, Tiquail pricked her ears in surprise.

"Yeah I'm ready."

She swept by the wall and scooped up her dagger, then slipped by Tiquail and hurried away.

Tiquail twitched her whiskers, greatly confused by Sparrow's change of attitude, before turning and following her down the spiral staircase. "Sparrow!" She called.

Sparrow turned around and raised her eyebrows. "Yeah?"
"Are you alright?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, it's just that you've been..."

Tiquail's voice trailed away as Sparrow's eyebrows traveled farther up her forehead. "It's her loss." She said simply, looking away and continuing down the stairs. Tiquail watched her go, still confused, before turning around again and padding back up the stairs.

"Hello, Tiquail." Ainnya purred as Tiquail's head appeared. Tiquail flicked her tail in greeting.

"How's Sparrow?" Ainnya asked. Tiquail shook her great black and white head. "She's alright."
"Explain please?"
"Better than yesterday."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I'm only confused,"
"About?"
"How can a human change their attitude so quickly?"
"It's been more than a week."
"Yes, but a blow such as being virtually abandon by your mother-"
"Sparrow is a strong girl-"

Tiquail sighed and held up her tail for silence. Ainnya stopped talking, though rather reluctantly, and twitched her ears expectantly at Tiquail.

"This, my friend, is one of the millions of things we agree on. Sparrow's got an idea. I can tell. She's thinking up something and she's not telling me about it."

***

Sparrow wished she knew how to get there. She wanted to get to her mother, find her, tell her not all was lost, but she didn't know where to start. She was well aware that she had been told to stay away, but her mother wasn't the only reason, nor should it be. The warnings had been ominous, and Sparrow wouldn't have gone unless things were beyond serious, unless there was more in it for her.

Confused? As well you should be.

Three days ago, Sparrow had received a new letter from her mother, this one sending her more into distress than she had ever been.

Sparrow,

I'm close. But I'm not somewhere you should be. If you ever see me, run. Run because I don't want to. I can't. They're still here. They're dying. I have to watch. Everything is slipping away. Don't come to find me. Avoid me if you see me. I'm an enemy now, and you must let go, because I can't.

I'm being eaten away from the inside.

Stay away!
Mom

This letter, if anything, has probably confused you more. Well, it confused Sparrow too, though she had a good idea of what it might have meant.

Sparrow, with good reason, thought her mother was a Tracker.

Making her decision easier? At first Sparrow thought her mother would kill herself, but after reading the second letter hundreds of times, she realized that it must have been easier now that her family had left to pick her side and stay loyal to it, once and for all.

She kept saying "run" and "avoid me" because she was a Tracker, and Tiquail has said that the people of Trails were hunted. If Sparrow's mother found her, she would shoot her. The only thing was, she had no idea that Sparrow was immune to whatever they put in their darts, and could heal others as well. Sparrow knew it was probably a bad idea to expose this, but she had to go. She had to.

One thing that Sparrow had been able to figure rather quickly was who her mother meant when she said "they're".

"They're" was the rest of her family. The pieces that Tiquail had lost and never bothered to find, or put back together.

This filled Sparrow with anger. Tiquail had never, never tried to find her family.

She probably thought they were dead. Sparrow thought, trying to calm herself down.
That's no excuse!
But she could have gotten herself killed...
She has twelve lives!
Yeah but they probably would have tortured her.
Oh, shut the hell up.

Sparrow was warring inside of her head, and as she worked her way over another hill she started to feel reckless, not that she wasn't already, considering she was about to run into enemy territory and search for her family, who was probably being tortured, or used as slaves, this very second.

She stopped paying attention to wear she was going all together and just let her legs carry her wherever they wanted while she thought.

Sparrow wasn't sure how she would actually save her family, if he ever actually found the place where the Trackers were hidden. She wasn't even sure why she thought she could actually get there. This world was under ground, the Trackers could easily be above. Wasn't this entire place Trails?

Suddenly, Sparrow was knocked over backward. She landed flat on her back, her nose throbbing after ramming it into whatever she had run into.

She looked up and found that she had run into a person.

He was wearing all black, but he wasn't wearing a mask or sunglasses, and his exposed face showed something painfully familiar. Something that broke Sparrow's heart in two.

Four girls also stalked out of the trees. Four familiar girls.

Sparrow's family.

It would have been wonderful if they hadn't been pointing weapons at her. It would have been wonderful if their eyes were alight with joy upon seeing her rather than blank and expressionless.

This definitely wasn't the way Sparrow had pictured reuniting with her lost family.