In the pre-dawn dark beneath the leaves, she can just make out a hunched shape on the next platform over. Easing onto the thick branch that supports both of their platforms, she scrambles across, quietly enough that the boy doesn’t even look up. It’s the boy who was hidden among the leaves where the sweet-smelling flowers were—Timothy. The one who asked to hear the end of her story.

She’s relieved to see he made it back to the camp, but her relief doesn’t last long. His small body shudders, trying to hold in a grief so much bigger than him. She edges closer and sits beside him, touching his shoulder, and putting a finger to her lips when he looks up, startled.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers.

His tear-stained face is blotched red and pale, his eyes made bigger by the saltwater. He stares at her, and after a moment she lifts her arm, feeling awkward. He dives against her, burrowing into her side so she can feel his shuddering breath.

“Bad dream.” His voice is muffled.

She pats his hair. It’s gritty with sand.

“You can tell me, if you’d like.”

“I was in another place, and I had a bed so big it was like an ocean. There was a window, and two people standing in front of it, but they didn’t have faces and I couldn’t remember who they were.”

“Did they hurt you?”

He shakes his head. She feels it against her ribs.

“They just stood there, looking at me. One of them sang, and the other one reached out to touch my head, then I woke up.”

He pulls away from her so she can see his face. The tears no longer flow, but his eyes remain wide.

“Do you know who they are?” His expression pleads with her, and something catches in her throat.

Her heartbeat is an ache, the feeling of loss. Her mother’s blurred face hangs in her mind, the tune of her humming muffled so she can’t quite hear it anymore. For a moment, she can’t speak, and she swallows hard.

Parents. Parents singing a lullaby and tucking him in for the night. And for Timothy, it is a bad dream. He can scarcely remember what he lost, but the terrible sense of something fundamental missing from his life remains. Looking at him, the bewildered fear on his face, she hurts. The pain isn’t just for him, but for herself as well.

The longer she stays here, the more parts of herself she’ll lose. She’s certain of it now; it’s already begun. She’ll wake up one day and it won’t be just her mother’s features that are blurred. She might not remember that she ever had parents at all.