The afternoon sun was warm on her face when the chaos started.
"Teacher!"
Zhen's voice cut through the quiet, high and sharp and urgent. Zhǐ Ruò looked up from her scrolls.
"Zhen? What's wrong?"
"Tao Zi is missing." Zhen's purple eyes were wide, her small hands trembling. "He was playing by the river. I turned around for one second, and he was gone."
"Gone?" Zhǐ Ruò's heart lurched. "What do you mean, gone?"
"He's just... not there." Zhen's voice cracked. "I looked everywhere. I called his name. He didn't answer."
Zhǐ Ruò dropped her scrolls.
The world narrowed to a single point: Tao Zi was missing.
"Show me," she said. "Show me where you last saw him."
~
The river was quiet.
Too quiet.
The water murmured over the stones. The leaves rustled in the breeze. But there was no sign of the jaguar cub.
Zhen stood at the water's edge, her small frame trembling. "He was right here," she whispered. "We were playing. He was showing me how to skip stones. And then—"
