Serpent-folk mum here, and we are one of the families that packed up quiet last week. I cannot say where, you understand. Tell your girl the true thing: her friend did not go because of anything either of them did, and she is loved, and she is missed. The Downs children still asking after ours is the thing keeping some of us upright.

When mine asks when someone is coming back, I have learned not to promise a day I cannot keep. "They had to go somewhere safer for a while, I do not know for how long, and I miss them too, and it is not fair" is honest, and a child can hold it. Let her be sad with you rather than managed out of it. That is the whole of the trick, if there is one.

I am sorry but someone has to say it. The office looked into the strip and said plain that the death started on the serpent-folk's own ground. They are being hunted to make sure it does not happen to us next.

Downvote me all you like. You do not breed hunting animals and put them on the roads unless there is something out there that wants hunting. I keep my little ones well clear of the serpent-folk and I sleep the better for it. The Ondrys did not run for no cause, and you all know it, you are just too polite to say so in front of one another.

Mod here. I have removed the worst of it and I am watching this thread, we have been brigaded all week by folk who do not have a child in this channel to their name. Harmon, Gale, the office blaming a dying strip on the people it is starving is not evidence, it is an alibi, and you are repeating it in front of frightened mothers. One more and you are gone. Nell, ignore them. A few of us are quietly getting letters and parcels out to the families who have left, and looking in on their cottages so there is a home to come back to. Sit your girl down and let her draw something for Saphie. We will see that it reaches her.