Xu Ayla's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ayla counted the last handfuls of dried minnows at dawn. Seventeen small mouths waited above her in the treehouse, and her plans for a bigger sanctuary sat scrapped on the floor. She had promised herself she would never turn a fairy cat away. Today that promise weighed more than the food bin. She carried the scraps down to the stone platform she had built between the roots of an old oak. A small fire crackled in its pit, and a mouse trap clicked empty beside it. Empty again. Her stomach tightened. She set out the wooden trays and divided the minnows into equal squares, pushing her own portion into the cats' pile. Sixteen cats crept down to eat. The seventeenth, a tiny orange kitten with shimmering butterfly wings, could not lift her head from the lantern-lit crate Ayla had padded with leaves. Ayla knelt by the crate. The kitten's wings trembled. By tomorrow she would not stand. Ayla pressed her forehead to the wood and finally let the thought form: she could not do this alone. She wrapped the kitten against her chest, banked the fire, and started walking toward the village path. For the first time in two years, she was going to ask for help.