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top of it. There was a large brown fur tossed over the branch. She pulled that down, along with one of the soft things from the bed, pillows, her mother had called them, and pushed them both into the little corner of the space. It was a comfortable little bed, almost as comfortable as one of her little forest nooks, except this one did not have the sun gently filtering through cracks in the rock, nor did it store the heat from the day and radiate it into the surrounding space.

Chapter Two
     
     
    William went looking for Sarah not long later and found her seemingly absent. Certain that she had not escaped, he started looking for her. There were not many hiding places in the room. When he did not find her under the bed he looked in the closet, where he discovered her curled up on a fur coat, fast asleep. She looked peaceful and content although she was curled up in a position that would have left most city dwellers working out cricks and cramps for days on end.
    “Sarah.” He said her name softly. She stirred briefly, then came to full awareness. These wild ones, they did not have the luxury of slowly waking up when they were disturbed. He made sure to keep his distance, in case she lashed out reflexively.
    “What?” She sat cross-legged and scowled at him.
    “Time to eat. Come on,” he beckoned. “I think you’ll like this.”
    She had to be hungry. He could hear her stomach growling as she followed him out to the kitchen.
    “There is no food here,” she said, sounding disappointed until he opened the refrigerator. There, before her astonished eyes was all manner of food—fruits and vegetables, meats and eggs. There was more food there than she had ever seen in her life.
    “How did you get all of this?” She wandered forward, her mouth open in amazement.
    William chuckled and patted her naked bottom lightly. “There are markets where food is sold.”
    She darted in, grabbed the first thing to come to hand, which happened to be an apple, and made a full speed retreat back to the closet, leaving William scratching his head. He followed after her and found her wolfing down the fruit in her self-made den.
    “That’s not how we eat here. We sit at a table and we converse.”
    She shoved as much of the apple into her mouth as she could and shook her head.
    “Come on,” he said. “You have to have been taught better than this. Tell me how you came to be in the wilds.”
    He sat outside the closet while she chewed her mouthful, then began to talk. “When they started looking for people with the mutation, my parents took me into the wilds. I was very young.”
    “Ah, but they raised you like a citizen, taught you the language of the cities, and some of the customs too, I’ll warrant.”
    “They tried.” Sarah shrugged. “But they got sick and they died and then I was on my own and I looked after myself.”
    “You survived.”
    “Yeah.” She took another bite of the apple. “I survived without a city and without a family.” She gave him a defiant stare over the remaining red round of the fruit.
    “There is more to life than just surviving,” William said gently. “I’m going to show you that. There’s going to be rules you won’t like, and there will be consequences you’ll like even less if you break those rules, but there are going to be plenty of new things to enjoy. Pleasures you haven’t dreamed of.”
    Her expression was skeptical, but she had finished the apple and she was obviously still hungry.
    “First of those pleasures,” he said. “Chocolate ice cream.”
    “That sounds disgusting.”
    “Mhm.” William returned to the kitchen and prepared a small bowl of ice cream. Sarah approached it cautiously, sniffing the air. He pushed it toward her and was about to add a spoon when she lowered her head and licked the surface. There was a moment of silence, then she raised her head and smiled broadly.
    “That is good.”
    “It is,” he said, stopping her before she could dive face-first