Zoë walked past the empty room where her daughter would ordinarily still be sleeping. The sunlight was pouring in through the stained glass window Kya had chosen when the second extension had been built only last year, leaving an odd assortment of colored shapes dancing across the hardwood floor. Dolls and books were stacked neatly on the shelves - the results of Zoë's efforts, not the eight-year-old dreamer who was more wont to leave them scattered about the floor.

She walked down the stairs her daughter had once learned to climb, and where stacks of freshly folded linens would usually wait for the child to carry to wardrobes and closets, her dark curls bouncing as she would hurry through the chore. These same steps would creak lightly when Kya would attempt to sneak downstairs after bedtime, looking for a reason to stay up with her mother, and would creak loudly when Zoë would carry the sleeping child back upstairs hours later, threatening to wake the girl once more.

Zoë went into the kitchen where her daughter would often sit brooding over the unwanted vegetables on her plate, uncaring that fresh foods like that were treasures in the black, and often offered to send her unwanted greens to those starving families floating beyond the stars above the house. Her father's blue eyes would glare defiantly each time Zoë would insist the girl ate them herself and count herself lucky. It stood empty now, not even a cloth covering the shine of freshly polished tabletop. The morning sun reflected a glare into Zoë's eyes, blinding her for a moment. She did not stop moving.

Zoë went to the stove where she was teaching her only child to cook and set the kettle to boil on the far burner - a habit formed out of fear a toddler would attempt to pull herself up to see using the taunting grillwork of the nearest burners. She reached into the cupboard, past the pink mug usually containing some sugary liquid, but now - like the rest of the house - empty and found her own sage colored mug and placed it on the counter near th