Parsnip had been lost for so long she could hardly remember what it was like to be found. If anyone had been asked whether they thought the youngster could survive on her own for a month, let alone several, the answer would have been a resounding "no" followed by incredulous laughter. Yet, through dumb luck, the girl still survived. Sure, she was skinnier than she should be by any rights. It was easy to count the bones of her ribs and her fur was rough and dirty - tangled with burrs and sticks and leaf matter. While she was a little worse for the wear, she was still the same girl she'd always been with gangling limbs and a goofy, bright-eyed smile. 


At first the forest had seemed very frightening to the young girl so far from her family, but after so long she hardly found herself spooked at all. She had made her home in the shadows of the dense trees. It was lonely, of course. She rarely bumped into anyone willing to speak to her for more than a moment. There had been times she'd tried to follow them, but she'd always gotten distracted and lost the trail. Parsnip was beginning to believe that the forest didn't want her to leave. In her mind it became an entity and to ease her loneliness, she began to speak to it.


"I wonder what I'm going to find for lunch today," she mused aloud as she squeezed through a thick patch of brambles. The thorns and briers tugged at her fur and she added a few to her collection as she finally reached the other side. "A mouse, maybe. Those are sometimes easy to catch." In all honesty, the small rodents were the only reason she hadn't starved to death out here on her own. "Maybe--" she started, but stopped as a glint of light shown through the leaves overhead. It was mid-afternoon but the dense canopy kept out nearly all of the light. She was used to the dimness and the sudden glimpse of sunlight caught her by surprise. Snippet couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the sun. Of course, she couldn't remember a lot of things. "Did you see that?" she asked eagerly. 


The girl's tail began to wag and she bounded forward until she found a place where a rare gap in the leaves let the sunlight shine through. She stood in the golden patch and turned her face up toward the sky. The brightness hurt her eyes, but she didn't close them. "It's so warm!" she laughed as she soaked it all in. What a gift! A treat! Today was definitely going to be a good day. 

 

Parsnip spent much of her time holding one-sided conversations with the dark and twisted woods but the trees had never spoken back. Yet, she heard her name called out loud and clear. She turned her head sharply in the direction of the sound. "Are you talking to me?" she asked, though the answer was quite obvious. Her foolish staring up into the bright light meant that now she could hardly see. There was a dark circle before her eyes - an after-image of the sun - and she blinked several times to try to clear her sight. 


She first squinted and then opened her eyes wide, but neither seemed to have any affect on the speed of adjustment. "How come you didn't talk to me before?" she queried again. Slowly the circle began to fade and the the dim forest came back into focus. It happened just as her nose registered the familiar scent of family. Snippet lifted her head so quickly she almost gave herself whiplash. "Opa?" The girl didn't give her grandfather any time to speak again before she was bounding toward him. Although she was over two years old now, she still retained all the painful awkwardness of the yearling she'd been. "Opa!" she howled as she barreled straight toward him - a collision course if he didn't take measures to avoid impact. 


"I got lost!"