It was embarrassing. I tried holding my arms high at first, trying to keep the feathers from trailing the steps, and it looked like I was pantomiming being led off in chains. But then I came to the landing, and even though it was on the outside of the motel it had an enclosed ceiling that my feathers were brushing against. So I had to backtrack and try again, walking backwards while holding my hands in front of me as though I were jogging or boxing.

“You look like Rocky in reverse,” Jen said, watching me from the landing.

“Hush.” I gritted my teeth, as I felt my wings brush the walls of the stairwell. I couldn’t see them, but I already knew they were curved outwards from my arms. I’d found that out yesterday.

I pressed my hands together like I was praying, trying to keep my wings close enough together that they didn’t bump into anything. “Now you look like you’re doing penance,” Jen observed, as I got up to the landing.

“Hush.” She went up the stairs the rest of the way, as I carefully rounded the landing without bumping my wings into anything. I stopped for a moment to look out over the parking lot, at the sides of buildings and the freeway in the distance, and I started to feel claustrophobic. I focused on the white puffs of breath in front of me instead, and started working my way up the second flight of stairs.

“I’m serious, Arrow.” Jen still called me by my screen name. “You’re being OCD about this. It’s like Mister Monk Becomes a Yokai or something.”

“I am not a yokai.” I finally got up to the second floor, beside her. “And I didn’t ask to have my nerves backfire like this. If my insurance was any good I’d be seeing a doctor about it, not this … this … friend of yours.”

Beneath her scarf and stocking cap, she was trying not to smile. I followed her eyes down to my hands, which I was still holding out in front of me.

“This isn’t funny!”

“Okay, then.” She started off down the walkway, on the side of the motel. “This way.”

I followed her past the rows of numbered doors. Trying to calm my nerves, and ignore the strain in my wrists from holding my hands up so long. I could just let my “wings” drag, of course, but it didn’t feel right. It was like walking up to a wall, and feeling your face plant into it from a foot away. I didn’t know how to describe it, except that it was just really unnerving.

I rounded the corner, and saw Jen stop in front of her friend’s room. I hurried to join her, but just as I did one of the housekeepers came out of a door ahead of me, and started pushing her cart past. I pressed myself to the railing with my arms out in front of me, but my inside wing wasn’t close enough, and I felt the cart slide slowly and painfully past it. My face contorted, as I felt my feathers get pulled back and break, and I squeaked in pain just as she went past.

Jen stood there a moment watching me from down the walkway, as the housekeeper rounded the corner. Then she came up and saw the pained look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts,” I said through my teeth, my eyes still locked on the ceiling.

“Do you need me to scratch it for you again?”

“Yes!”

She started to do so, and I recoiled. “Not that way!”

“Which way, then?”

“Towards … that way,” I said, pointing. “Away from me.”

She moved her hands through the air out in front of me, trying to smooth my feathers back into place without being able to see or feel them. It stung at first, but after a moment I let out my breath as the pain stopped.

I stifled a grin. I could feel her massaging my wing, and it actually felt kind of nice.

“Is that better?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She stepped back, and I stood away from the railing, still holding my hands out. “Let’s go.”

Her friend wore a white sweater and blue jeans, and had vaguely asian features. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, sweeping food wrappers into the trash from the desk where her laptop was set up. “I’ve got ten more articles to write if I want to make this week’s rent.”

I looked around at the inside of the room … cardboard boxes piled against one wall, canned goods stacked next to the microwave. The coat rack was crammed full of clothing on hangers, and her laptop was old and beat up. She switched off the TV, then tossed the remote on the bed before looking up at me. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

Jen took a deep breath. “Arrow, this is Katherine Sato; Kath, Arrow Quivershaft.”

She held out her hand, and I looked back down at her. I’d been peering at the display set up on the nightstand … it looked like there were ceramic figurines of some kind, set up around a large “jewel” that I was pretty sure was made of glass.

I shook her hand carefully, stepping back a bit so that my feathers didn’t bump into anything. “Uh, hey … ”

“So you decided to take a new name?” she asked, letting go.

I just looked at her blankly.

Jen coughed. “I think it’d work great for him … but no, that’s just his screen name.”

“Oh.” Kath cocked her head at her. “I thought you said he was a yo-”

Jen coughed again, louder and more insistent, and I could feel my face turning red. “I see,” Kath said, examining me as if she were looking for something. Looking closely at my hands and arms.

I clenched my fists, and tried to think of a polite way to put this. “Can you help me, or not?”

“That depends,” she said, “on what you want to be helped with.”

“I want this to stop.” My eyes were drawn to the jewel on the nightstand again. “I want these feelings to go away, so I can get back to my life without worrying about … bumping into things with nonexistent body parts.” My face was still red. “Can you help me with that?”

“Absolutely.” Kath nodded.

“You can?” I stared at her. After getting talked at by Jen on the ride here, I’d thought I was going to get a hard sell on converting to yokaiism.

“Yep.” She sat down at her laptop, and typed in a URL. “I just want to make sure that you know what you’re dealing with, first.”

I sideyed Jen, as she sat down on a bed piled with more clothes. Then I looked back at the screen. It was a website for an Android app, and there was a big QR code — like a blocky bar code — to the side of the page. “You’ve got a smartphone, right?” Kath looked up.

“Yeah, one sec … ” I raised one of my arms, stepping around awkwardly to keep my wing from brushing the wall, and carefully got out my phone from its case. Then I brought up the barcode reader and scanned her laptop’s screen, and my phone asked me if I wanted to install the app. I tapped “Okay.”

“What is this?” I asked.

“An augmented reality app. It layers a visual overlay onto your phone’s camera view, so you can see things that you otherwise couldn’t.”

“Like what?” I watched the progress bar as it installed.

“Try it and find out.”

I started the app, holding my phone towards the wall in both hands. It was dark there, so I turned towards Jen where she sat on the bed. Then I stared.

She was looking up at me, bemused, but that’s not what I was staring at. I could see my wings — huge brown and tan primary feathers, protruding out from my arms. One of my fingers got in front of the screen, and I could see a bird’s scaly, taloned digit. (The jewel on the nightstand looked normal, though … I checked.)

“How is this possible?” I asked, waving one hand in front of the lens. My hand felt the same as I clenched it, and wiggled my fingers around. But it looked like a hawk’s foot, shaped like a hand.

“It isn’t,” Kath said.

“What do you-” I jumped back, dropping my phone. I’d turned to look through it at her, and had seen a white fox’s face, and three fluffy tails right behind her.

I stared at her, pressed back up against the door, as Jen reached down and picked up my phone. “That wasn’t because of the app,” Kath said, calmly, as though she’d expected my reaction. “You can already see people’s real selves. You just needed an excuse to try.”

My heart pounded, and I could feel sweat form on my fists as I kept them held out in front of me. “But you didn’t even tell me that that’s what it’s for,” I argued. “How was I supposed to know?”

“You knew.”

Jen was holding my phone out to me. I took it, carefully, and looked through it at Kath again. Her fox-form seemed blurred and out of focus now, and it hurt my eyes to look at it. I turned the phone off.

“Okay … ” I took a deep breath, trying to make the words come out right. Fighting down panic, and fidgeting with the phone in my hands to distract myself. “This is not what I came here for. I don’t want a lesson in yokaiism or what I’m ‘supposed’ to be. I just want to go back to being myself.”

Kath was unperturbed. “This is yourself.”

“I’m leaving now.” I reached for the door, feeling my feathers rustle as I did so.

“No, Arrow, wait … ” Jen stood up, and put her hand on my wrist. “She’s right, one way or another. Even if this is just your brain playing tricks on you, then that’s still a part of yourself.”

I looked at her, trying to control my breathing, and wondered if she could see just how scared I was.

“You know they’d just put you on drugs at the hospital, even if you could afford to be treated. So let’s see what Kath has to say, alright? Why don’t you sit down and tell her how this all started.”

I let Jen guide me to where she’d been sitting, on the bed next to the heater, careful not to bump my feathers against things. Then, slowly, I let out my breath and let my arms rest at my sides, feeling my wings touch the bed. Jen stepped over them, and came to sit down a few feet away.

I looked up at Kath. Just for a moment, I could see the fox muzzle that I’d seen through my phone. Then I saw her face, expectant and nonjudgmental. Waiting for me to begin.

I looked away and closed my eyes, trying to think how to start. “I’m not sure if you know what I do for a living … ”

“I don’t.”

“I give tours on an historic submarine. An old naval vessel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The sailors who lived there … it wasn’t like Star Trek or something. It wasn’t even like today’s subs. They were crammed in with barely enough room to move. There’s a reason that we can’t give tours to handicapped or overweight people. The corridor’s only a couple feet wide, and just getting in and out of the bunks, or the tables in the ship’s mess … it takes some doing.”

“Are you claustrophobic?” I heard her ask.

“I wasn’t before this … ”

“What happened?”

I swallowed, tensing up as I remembered. “I was giving a tour … ”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was in front of everyone else. A whole tour group … like a homeschool group or something. Kids and younger teens. They weren’t playing on the equipment or anything, but they were asking a ton of questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like … how the equipment worked, and stuff. I don’t remember. It was getting harder and harder to think.”

I couldn’t hear her say anything, so I just went on. “It started with this itching, all over my forearms. I couldn’t stop scratching. I was getting embarrassed; I mean, I was wearing short sleeves and all. Then I felt them.”

“Your wings?”

“Yes.” My heart pounded harder as I said that. Up to that point, I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that that’s what they were.

I went on, starting to shake and to sweat. “I could feel them pressed against things, crammed up against the walls. I couldn’t reach out and demonstrate stuff anymore. I couldn’t … I could barely move.” I was losing control of my breathing, and had to take a couple of deep breaths. “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t explain why, I just needed to. The whole tour group had to go back outside and make way for me. And the kids made rude jokes about what they thought I needed to do, but I didn’t go to the bathroom; I didn’t even head for my car. I walked.”

“You walked off the park grounds?”

“Yes. I didn’t even explain to the manager. I couldn’t, I was messed up so bad. I was scared, I didn’t know what was happening to me … I mean … okay, I knew. Okay? I knew what was going on, but I was scared. I was scared that it’d keep going, and I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

“I had to give him a ride back to the dorms,” Jen said. “He called me when he was halfway there.”

As long as I was spilling my guts in front of them anyway, I decided to just keep going. Opening my eyes now, and fidgeting more with my phone. “It was knowing that made it so terrifying. If my legs had just given out all of a sudden, I wouldn’t have been afraid; not at first. I would’ve been upset, and confused, and then heartbroken when I realized I’d have to adjust. But this … ” I moved my hands to gesture at myself, and could feel my wings as I did so. “This is what I … what I’ve … ”

“What you’ve always wanted?” Kath asked.

“Yes, and I know it makes no sense for me to be so upset like this. Okay?” I fought back a shiver, as I saw her tails swish in my peripheral vision. “I’ve been a furry for years now. And awhile back I was on a huge reading kick about yokai … wondering what it’d be like, and stuff. Reading people’s stories.”

“Did you know what species you were?”

“Nnn … ” I gritted my teeth. Then I sighed, slumping my shoulders. “I knew what species I wanted to be. What caught my attention the most. I made my fursona a red-tailed hawk … ” I started sweating again, as I said it. It felt like the words were sacred.

“And?”

“And that’s it. I never ‘came out;’ I never posted on any yokai boards or anything. I just went back to being a furry.”

“How come?”

A chime sounded on Kath’s laptop. She walked over and closed the lid, and I looked away so that I wouldn’t see her; her fox muzzle, and her tails. I swallowed, waiting for her to go back to her chair, and went on. “Well, partly because of how silly it was. They never prove anything, I mean; it’s just like a religion that way. And besides that, they’re always some cool, awe-inspiring species, like raptors or dragons or something. How come there aren’t any cockroach or warthog yokai?”

“Maybe the kinds of people who are born with those spirits aren’t given to introspection,” Kath offered.

“Yeah, see?” I held up my wing. “That’s a ‘faithful’ answer. That doesn’t answer my question.”

Kath ignored that. “You said that was only part of the reason. What was the rest of it?”

I looked down at the floor, as my face turned red. “Because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.”

“Oh?”

I was turning the phone over and over in my hands. “I’ve been up close, next to an injured red-tailed hawk, before. They’re not … they’re huge,” I blurted out, talking until my brain caught up. “They’re like two feet tall, and they look so streamlined and perfect. They can fly, for goodness’ sake! I see them soaring overhead, and it’s like I remember what it was like. And I want to join them, so bad.”

“So because it meant so much to you, that’s why you had so much trouble accepting yourself as one.”

“Yeah, I-” I paused. I felt my skin crawl, as sweat broke out all across it. She hadn’t talked about turning into a hawk, she’d talked about accepting that I already was one.

“I don’t know,” I made myself say, my voice shaky.

“So what do you want to do?” Jen asked.

And I knew the answer, of course. I knew what I’d dreamed and fantasized about. I just wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t; not with my job, not with the classes I needed to take. Not with my life the way that it was. But more than that, it was scary because I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know what I’d become, or what it would feel like. I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to go back.

A change like this sounds wonderful when you dream about it. But when you have to face it, it’s terrifying.

I took a deep breath, then another. Trying to calm my nerves, and to think of a reasonable course of action. “I … I want-”

The power went out.

The heater shut down, and stopped blowing hot air behind me. The only light in the room came from the curtains, filtered through shade trees outside, and the soft glow of Kath’s sleep-mode laptop. She sighed, and I saw her outline facepalm.

“A brownout?” Jen asked.

“Looks like it,” Kath deadpanned.

I squirmed. “I should go … ”

I heard a puff like a furnace starting, and saw a flickering glow. Kath was holding out one hand, with a … cigarette lighter? … in it, but I only saw the flame, as though it was dancing on her fingertips. And as she talked, I saw the outline of a thin, vulpine muzzle, and saw hints of movement in the air behind her. Where her three tails were swishing.

“Listen.” My heart pounded, as I strained to hear what she was saying. “Your ‘problem’ is not going to just go away. I tried, when I was younger. But something always reminded me, and I fought and fought until I broke down, and realized I couldn’t anymore. Not and still be myself. I’ve seen people who’ve put this behind them, but they had to become someone totally different, so you’re going to change one way or another. It’s your choice what form that takes.”

“Okay … ” I was shivering, and not from the cold. My gaze was fixed on the twitching outlines of her tails, because I couldn’t look up at her face.

“Maybe you don’t have to change all the way right now. Maybe there’s a way you can live with yourself and still be this self. But whatever it is, you’re not doing it right now, because if you were this wouldn’t have happened.”

“So you think I should-” I stopped, as Kath got up. She walked right in front of me, to open the door, and as she did her tails smacked me in the face. I saw them, and felt them, and I jumped in my seat and tried to brush the fur out of my face.

When I looked up, and saw her in the light from outside, she just looked like a normal woman. “I don’t know what you should do,” she said, putting one hand on her hip. “But my guess? You’re a bird of prey, and your instincts triggered when you were locked in a submarine. Maybe that’s not natural for you.

“Maybe you need to fly.”

Blades of grass under my pawpads, which I was sure I didn’t have before. Tree branches scraping through my fur. The painful burning of overexertion in my chest.

“It’s just a dream.”

The bitter cold night air. The heavy panting of the beast behind me, a brief glimpse over my shoulder revealing little more than it was much bigger than me and probably much stronger. All of my instincts screaming at me to run for my life.

“It’s just a–”

The creature’s very real jaws snapping at my heels, causing very real scrapes. A fresh burst of adrenaline coursed through me, and I was able to surge forward again, just out of reach of the thing.

“…A very realistic dream.”

I squinted into the distance. There was something weird with my eyesight, all I could see was black and white. It did have its advantages– I was able to see in contrasts well. No wonder I could see in the dark this well. The disadvantage was I could very clearly see I was about to run off a cliff.

“Oh God. Ohgodohgodohgod…”

It extended as far as I could see. Looking back, I was probably on a mesa or something, but my geographical location was the least of my concerns then.

“It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream.”

My own thoughts set a cadence for my run. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore how incredibly vivid everything was, and hoped it would all be over soon. And finally my paws hit thin air.

I didn’t fall. I was soaring above the ground, clumsily flapping the wings I didn’t know I had before. I laughed in spite of myself, a strangely human sound given I didn’t feel human at all. Despite the muscle strain and stress, I was half-crazed with relief and beyond feeling pain.

Or at least I was until I heard the beating of wings not my own. I didn’t even have time to look behind me before a great, clawed, heavy something slamming into me, sending me spiraling to the ground as its jaws bit into my neck, making it impossible to breathe. With oxygen deprivation creeping in and strangling rational thought, I had about enough time to note that the ground was rushing up much too fast for asphyxiation to be a concern.

I was wrong. Just when I was inches from the ground, I flinched. And when I opened my eyes again, I was on the kitchen floor, tangled in my bedsheets, and not breathing.

I’d almost drowned once– hit my head on the edge of a pool when I was diving in. That was almost peaceful, because I didn’t even realize I was dying until they dragged me out of the water, with everyone but me screaming and panicking. I was numb and far away and (in retrospect) way too comfortable with it all.

And this was nothing like that. It felt like there was something crushing my chest, even though there was nothing there, my muscles ached like I’d ran for miles, something was grabbing my throat, and my lungs were burning in agony.

Somewhere inbetween me frantically thrashing around, a tiny bit of air forced its way through my windpipe, and the pain subsided just a bit. Then a little more, and a little more, and finally I was breathing normally again.

Even after all that, I still couldn’t move. I knew I probably looked ridiculous, but my parents knew about my “sleepwalking.” They didn’t know I was having nightmares all the time– nobody did. I just couldn’t tell anyone. Scary dreams were things that little kids got worked up over, not someone in high school.

It’d never been this bad, though. Then again, I’d never died either. Weren’t you supposed to die in real life if you died in your dreams? I’d come so close, so maybe that was why…

The clock caught my attention. Four in the morning. My mom was going to be up soon, and the last thing I wanted was for him to see me like this. I picked myself off the ground, bundled the blankets around me, and trudged back to my room so I could pretend to sleep for another four hours until I had to get ready for school.

The nice thing about having attention span issues is you can entertain yourself for hours with your own thoughts. The downside is it’s very easy to have those thoughts interrupted by things like a dog jumping on your bed and otherwise trying to get your attention.

“Go away, Soraya.” I shoved my head under the covers and tried my best to ignore her. So she tried to hide under the covers with me.

It’d never occurred to me before, but her name now struck me as strange. Soraya was an Arabic name, and she was an American Water Spaniel– not true to her heritage. And it always seemed like such a noble name. Noble was something American Water Spaniels aren’t. They’re silly-looking dogs whose main purpose in being was to bring back dead animals to hunters who would be otherwise too lazy or preoccupied to pick up what they shoot in the first place.

She’d always been something of a neurotic dog, which was why she was hiding in the first place. Half the time I didn’t even bother trying to find out what spooked her, but I was always the one who had to calm her down.

I felt her nudging in closer to me, so I reached out to pat her head in kind. “You’ve got it so easy.” It was true– I guess on some level I envied dogs, I had for a while. It was on some emotional or spiritual level I couldn’t quite describe. Dogs made sense in a way people didn’t, and they seemed so carefree.

I didn’t want to be a dog though, much as I liked them. There was something else out there that was better, I realized in a half-asleep epiphany. Something more me. Something like…

There was a loud creak as the bedroom door opened, and whatever answer I had slipped away. Mom was up. And I needed to pretend to be asleep. I closed my eyes and I drifted into periods of brief, fitful minutes of sleep interrupted by jerking awake, and then starting the cycle anew.

I shouldn’t have to tell you how incredibly miserable I was when I had to wake up. But energy drinks were made for people like me, and after a highly nutritious breakfast of Saltines (I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep any other solids down) and a combination of liquid sugar, fruit juice, and lots and lots of caffeine, I had about enough to make myself go to school without fainting along the way.

To my credit, I’d only ever fainted once, and that was attributed to a terrible diet. I can’t remember the last time I’d stepped into the cafeteria. I usually just skipped lunch. It was too noisy there, too loud, and too much high school politics. I didn’t want to bother with all the cliques. So I just hid out in the library. The librarians liked the company, I liked the books and relative solitude. It was mutually beneficial, so they never told the SROs.

The forty-five minutes I got to spend in there were almost always the best part of the school day. But it was over three hours away. And I had Advanced Algebra first period. I already hated today.

Of course, therein lies the advantage of being hungry and tired most of the time. It’s really easy to zone out when you’re like that.I could just glide through all my classes, not needing to comprehend anything because you’d have to be lobotomized to not at least marginally pass core classes, and I’d be fine with just marginal. If you haven’t inferred as much, I just want out of school.

So I shuffled into class, collapsed in the desk, and hoped the teacher wouldn’t notice me dozing off. They usually don’t. As long as you show up and don’t fail the tests, they’re not to concerned. I like things that way.

I had my head nestled in the comfiest part of my hoodie when I saw someone walk in out of the corner of my eye. A very tall someone with nondescript black clothing who I’d never seen before at school. He was wearing sunglasses, but I could tell he was staring right at me. Usually I don’t care if someone is, but there was something just wrong about that guy. I don’t know how to put it, he just weirded me out– there was something predatory about him. And he didn’t look strong, he was built like a scarecrow, but I got the impression he could rip me apart without trying. So much for my nap.

The teacher ran through the roll. There weren’t any new names on there, and he didn’t even address the creepy guy. Nobody else even seemed to notice him; the kid behind him seemed to just stare right through him.

I looked up the clock. Only five minutes into class. On the bright side, I was starting to feel a bit sick. Maybe I could call home and say I was coming down with something. It wouldn’t even be a lie for once, because the clock was now sliding in and out of focus. And my chest was tightening and my heart felt like it was going to explode I was starting to feel like I would be sick in the middle of class.

I staggered out the door without bothering to give an explanation. I think the teacher was yelling at me to get a hall pass, but I was beyond the point of paying attention. The world wasn’t just blurring now, it was sliding completely out of focus. The colors were all starting to blend together. The only reason I wasn’t running into anything was I’d been through these halls too many times to count.

I rubbed my eyes– it didn’t help. And I wasn’t tearing up or anything like that, so there wasn’t anything in my eyes. I still managed to stumble into the bathroom and turn on the faucet. I splashed water onto my face– it was ice cold and I didn’t really care. If anything, it made me feel a little better.

I took deep breaths in and out. The panic and sickness started to subside. I checked the mirror– I looked pale and gaunt and sickly and…

…And I was seeing things, because my ears had gone all pointy and furry. I stumbled back, blinked…and they were still there. I slumped against a wall, not daring to look at the mirror as if pretending they weren’t there would make them go away. Morbid curiosity drove me to touch the side of my head.

But nothing was there. Nothing weird, anyway. So of course when I looked in the mirror just to make sure, there was something weird behind me. Or someone, rather. He was only there for a second, his eyes seeming to bore right through me beneath his sunglasses. And then he was gone.

It took a few moments to sink in. And then I ran. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t what was happening, but it was just the only thing it seemed like I could do.

Next thing I knew I was hiding between some lockers on ground floor practically hyperventilating. “Deep breaths. Deep breaths.” I told myself. “It was just a panic attack, it’s over now. Calm down. Nothing’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong nothing’s wrong nothing’s wrong…” I eventually was able to make myself believe it, enough I could shakily stand up.

The intercom crackled to life. “Connor Glendon, please report to the administrative building, Connor Glendon, to the administrative building, please.”

Awesome. My truant ways were catching up to me.

“Doctor Reese is expecting you.” Or not. I guess the little incident earlier could have just been passed off as one big panic attack (and maybe that was what it was in the first place? Though I’d never felt like I was sick during one) and he was just worried about me. That didn’t seem so bad.

I flashed my ID at the SRO standing in front of the administrative building. It was probably unnecessary, I had to go here a lot, but policies are policies. I was halfway down the hall when the SRO yelled “Stop!”

I spun around– but it wasn’t me he was addressing, thankfully. It was two girls I didn’t recognize. One blonde with baggy shirt bearing the name of a band I didn’t recognize and a redhead with a scowl that seemed permanently set on her face.

The blonde girl smiled at the SRO. “I’m sorry. We’re new here, we just haven’t had a chance to get our IDs.” Her eyes flashed for a moment, and they turned bright yellow all over, with tiny, slitted snake-like pupils in the center. “Trust us.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. Actually, that was an understatement. I’m not sure how to describe how seeing that felt otherwise, but I’ll try. It’s like looking at something that can’t exist, but does. Yeah, I know some people will wear weird contacts that look kind of like that just to shock people, but this was different, more natural-looking.

And just a few minutes ago, I’d grown dog ears. Either I was going crazy or…well, I was probably just going crazy. But I was running a fever, maybe that just meant the heat was frying my brain. Which meant I was probably going to die soon. That didn’t seem much better.

The SRO’s eyes glazed over. “Well, alright.” And just like that, he let them by. Now that just wasn’t right. I mean, everything about it, right down to this weird gut feeling that she was scary and dangerous. And the officers here were supposed to be really strict, thanks to the fact we’d gotten school shooting threats and things like that. They strolled on right by me. The blonde one smiled and waved at me before they both disappeared down a corridor.

God, what a day. And I had to think of a way to diplomatically express the fact I might be having hallucinations to Doctor Reese really fast. I slumped into a chair outside his office. I just needed a few minutes–

“Connor!” He was standing right in front of me. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Sorry.” He did one of those fake-y laughs. “Didn’t mean to scare you. But we’ve been calling you for the past ten minutes, I was getting worried.”

“Sorry…” Was all I could come up with.

“Well, come on in.” He gestured inside. “I’ve got some things I’d like to talk to you about.”

I had a sinking feeling about that. But I went inside anyway, it was better than being in class. Reese was shuffling some papers at his desk, one of those ‘I-know-something-about-you-and-I’m-not-going-to-rest-until-you-tell-me’ smiles about him. “You missed some of you classes today.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah.” I stared out the window. Eye contact just felt uncomfortable.

“Have you been feeling well lately?” More paper rustling.

“Well…” Diplomacy or honesty? “I’ve been having nightmares again, so I didn’t sleep much. And I think I had another panic attack in class today.” Mom always said honesty was the best policy, and it’d be a nice change of pace.

A glint of concern flashed through his dark eyes. “You haven’t been having panic attacks often, have you?”

“This was the first one in a while.” Several months, really, I’d had one the first time I tried to take the SAT.

“And the dreams?”

“A lot. Almost every other day.” I tried not to think about the jaws closing around my windpipe. And failed. I reached my hand to my throat. “They’re usually vivid. But sometimes I just wake up afraid of something and don’t know what.” He seemed to take notice of that, his eyes settling on my neck. I jerked my hand back down.

He still got the picture. He was really good at that. “Are there any recurring themes to these?”

“I guess. I’m usually running from something.” This was getting uncomfortably Freudian for me. I took Intro to Psych, I knew where dream analysis went.

“And do you escape, or…?”

“I don’t.” And I wanted to leave it at that.

He went ‘hmmm’ again and leaned back in his seat. “So your anxiety’s been worse than usual?”

Well, thank God, and here I was thinking he’d ask be about what my relationship with my mother was like. “I guess, yeah.”

“It’s entirely possible that’s just a reflection of that.” He steepled his hands. “You see, dreams often resemble our waking experiences and parallel then, though sometimes in abstract ways. If you’d like, you could tell me a bit more about them.”

I sighed. “I don’t know, it’s pretty generic. I’m running through a forest trying to get away from a monster, and I…I don’t get away. Then I wake up. But I’m pretty sure I sleepwalk during them. I don’t wake up in my bed.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Have you gotten this checked out by a doctor?”

“The medicine didn’t help any.” And it made me sleep so deeply my alarm clock didn’t wake me up.

His phone rang. “Sorry, one second…” He checked the screen and went ‘hmmm’ for what must have been the tenth time in the past five minutes. “I have a question for you that might seem strange, so I’d like to apologize in advance if I’m off-base here.”

“Shoot.”

“In addition to these dreams, have you been having any hallucinations?”

My stomach lurched. “How’d he know?”

And of course he noticed that too. “Perhaps that you’re becoming something else. Maybe you’ve even felt like that was true for a while, and it’s only just now these hallucinations have started happening.”

I was still too stunned to say much of anything.

He paused as if waiting for the inevitable confirmation. “It’s alright if you are. It isn’t your fault. But these are symptoms of a rare mental disorder–”

“So what? I’m schizophrenic?” I cut in.

“No, nothing like that.” He held up his hands. “This is much less permanent and much more manageable. It’s called therianthropic psychosis, I’ve worked with it before.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It hasn’t passed DSM review yet. But it’s very real, I’m sure of that. I get the feeling you can attest to that.”

“If I have this, what am I supposed to do–” Someone started slamming at the door. Reese jerked up, looking stunned. Obviously this wasn’t part of his script. Whoever it was– sounded like a she– started yelling, though it was too muffled to make out. “Shouldn’t you, like, call security or something?” There was a shrill edge to my voice I really didn’t like.

He was already reaching for his phone again when the door broke open. Literally. It just splintered.

The red-haired girl standing in the doorway seemed innocuous enough, except for the shards of wood in her hands. I’d seen her a few minutes ago trying a more subtle approach to breaking and entering. “You!” She hissed. She lunged at Reese, yowling like some kind of animal…and she looked like one too, she’d grown ears and a tail. Like I had earlier, except feline instead.

To be continued…

I woke up to a soft,‭ ‬red glow all around me,‭ ‬and the sound of air rushing past my ears.‭ ‬The glow looked like flames,‭ ‬and the wind was blowing them past but they weren’t touching me.‭ ‬It looked like I was inside a bubble‭ ‬…

800‎ ‏feet

…‎ ‏and it‭ ‬felt like I was standing inside of a hurricane.‭ ‬Except that my feet weren’t on the ground.‭ ‬I was still drowsy,‭ ‬so it felt surreal.‭ ‬Where was I‭? ‬Why couldn’t I remember how I’d gotten here‭?

600‎ ‏feet

What’d happened to my‭ ‬arms‭?‬ I looked down at them,‭ ‬dimly lit by the fire in front of me.‭ ‬They were bare and covered in fur.‭ ‬That didn’t seem right at all.

400‎ ‏feet

If my arms were covered in fur,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬then why weren’t they burning‭? ‬Why wasn’t‭ ‬I burning‭? ‬Where were the flames even coming from‭?

200‎ ‏feet

And what was that‭ ‬thing‭ ‬coming at me‭? ‬It looked like an enormous black wall,‭ ‬its surface rippling like‭ ‬…‭ ‬water‭ ‬…

20‎ ‏feet

OH CR-

Ugh.

My whole body felt heavy,‭ ‬like I’d just been dragged out of a‭ ‬swimming pool.‭ ‬I was sprawled out on top of something hard and damp,‭ ‬unable to get up,‭ ‬barely able to think.‭ ‬Water crawled past my feet up to my chest,‭ ‬and back again.‭ ‬It was warm.

Okay,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬so I washed up on shore somewhere.‭ ‬There were about a million things that could’ve gone wrong with this.‭ ‬I could be on a deserted island someplace‭; ‬I could have some huge gash or internal injury,‭ ‬that I wouldn’t even know about until I tried to move.‭ ‬Then I wouldn’t just be tired and limp,‭ ‬I’d be tired and limp and bleeding to death.

The thought made me scared enough to try moving to check,‭ ‬but I managed to lift my face about an inch from the sand before flopping back down and wincing.‭ ‬Wet sand shifted and ground beneath me,‭ ‬and there was something‭ ‬on top of my face,‭ ‬like a washcloth covering my eyes.‭ ‬I could hear waves and seabirds,‭ ‬but I couldn’t see anything even when I opened my eyes,‭ ‬and I‭ ‬smelled something salty and briny.

I lay there just breathing for a long moment.‭ ‬Then‭ ‬I made myself flop my arm up, from down at my side to over my shoulder,‭ ‬all in one motion.‭ ‬I could feel my hand hit the hard sand,‭ ‬but the pain barely registered.‭ ‬Slowly,‭ ‬I reached up with my fingers without moving my arm,‭ ‬and peeled wet,‭ ‬sickly orange seaweed off of my face.

I tried to toss it aside with a flick of my limp hand‭ ‬but just ended up dragging it farther over me.‭ ‬At least it wasn’t covering my eyes,‭ ‬though,‭ ‬and the sun seemed to be behind me.‭ ‬I could see down the beach‭; ‬there were tree-lined cliffs not far away,‭ ‬and what looked like a lighthouse past them.

You’d think I would’ve been happy to see a sign that I wasn’t alone here.‭ ‬But‭ the lighthouse ‬wasn’t what caught my eye.‭ ‬Instead,‭ ‬I was staring at my arm.‭ ‬It was covered in black fur,‭ ‬just like when I was falling.‭ ‬And it was matted,‭ ‬salty,‭ ‬and wet,‭ ‬but it was still fur.

There was something in front of my vision‭; ‬a muzzle,‭ ‬with a tiny black nose.‭ ‬I groaned and closed my eyes again.‭ ‬I wondered if I should feel hurt or betrayed‭ ‬…‭ ‬or giddy.‭ ‬But all I could feel was shock,‭ ‬and my heart beating fast against the sand.

I wasn’t stupid‭; ‬I knew what had happened to me.‭ ‬But for the life of me,‭ ‬I couldn’t remember how my transformation had happened.‭ ‬I couldn’t even remember if this kind of thing was unheard of,‭ ‬or if there were other people like this.‭ ‬I couldn’t remember my name.‭ ‬But it wasn’t like total amnesia‭; ‬it was like trying to recall how to say‭ “‬Hello‭” ‬in some language you’d barely heard of.‭ ‬There were hints of it there‭; ‬I could taste them.‭ ‬But my brain had somehow misfiled it.‭ ‬I couldn’t‭ ‬clearly remember anything‭ ‬…‭ ‬anything,‭ ‬that is,‭ ‬except falling.

Those had been re-entry flames around me.‭ ‬How the heck had I survived‭ ‬that‭?

Minutes passed.‭ ‬I focused on the soothing water behind me, still lapping at my legs,‭ ‬and I felt my heart rate go down. But the briny,‭ ‬seaweed smell was starting to get to me,‭ ‬and it was hard to breathe while laying on my chest.‭ ‬Worse,‭ ‬my back was getting warm from where the sun was shining on it.

I didn’t want to move.‭ ‬I knew I could make myself,‭ ‬but I didn’t want to.‭ ‬I just wanted the uncomfortable things to go away,‭ ‬so I could go back to sleep.‭ ‬But I knew that that wasn’t going to happen,‭ ‬so I groaned and tried to get up.

My arm lifted for a second,‭ ‬before flopping back down to the sand beside me.

Okay,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬let’s try that again.‭ ‬I got my other arm into position,‭ ‬then I tried to push off of the sand to sit up,‭ ‬grunting with the exertion.‭ ‬It worked,‭ ‬and the seaweed slid off down my back.‭ ‬Then I looked down at myself,‭ ‬just to get an idea of what’d happened to me.

Fur covered my whole body‭; ‬which was good,‭ ‬because I wasn’t wearing any clothes besides my gloves and my shoes.‭ ‬It was a glossy,‭ ‬unnatural shade of black,‭ ‬with tufts of white on my flat,‭ ‬male chest.‭ ‬Neon‭ ‬teal‭ ‬accents rimmed my arms and legs.

Those do not look like natural colors,‭ ‬I thought.‭ ‬What am I‭?

I felt something thick and bushy on the back of my head as I turned it to look around at myself.‭ ‬Not hair‭; ‬more substantial than that.‭ ‬I reached behind me to feel what it was,‭ ‬and my hand came back with stiff quills.‭ ‬Was I a porcupine‭? ‬Maybe a hedgehog‭; ‬the quills weren’t that pointy.

Then I looked up.‭ ‬There were people,‭ ‬a ways down the beach.‭ ‬Lots of them.‭ ‬Humans.

For a second,‭ ‬my heart leaped.‭ ‬There were people here‭! ‬I could get help‭! ‬I could remember I’d used to be human,‭ ‬too‭; ‬that had to count for something,‭ ‬right‭? ‬But then I remembered something else‭ ‬…‭ ‬a feeling of suspicion,‭ ‬of distrust.‭ ‬Like a hurt,‭ ‬upset animal would have.‭ ‬I remembered not liking humans.‭ ‬How could I not like them if I’d used to‭ ‬be one‭? ‬Was it even safe to approach them‭?

It’d better be,‭ ‬I thought.‭ ‬My energy was starting to come back,‭ ‬and I felt more clear-headed now that I was sitting upright.‭ ‬But I still felt tired and thirsty,‭ ‬and my fur was too thick for this weather.‭ ‬I realized that I was panting,‭ ‬even though my tongue was dry‭; ‬I was probably dehydrated.

Slowly,‭ ‬I made myself stand up,‭ ‬then started out down the beach‭; ‬limping at first,‭ ‬as pins and needles left my feet,‭ ‬then at a steady pace.‭ ‬I tried to think through the haze,‭ ‬to figure out what I should do when I got up to them‭ ‬…‭ ‬who I should talk to,‭ ‬what I should say.‭ ‬Unwritten rules came back to me:‭ ‬Don’t ask random strangers for help.‭ ‬Don’t talk to them,‭ ‬don’t look at them,‭ ‬don’t bother them with your presence.‭ ‬Especially since you’re not normal.‭ ‬It’s your fault that you’re not normal. You’re being weird just to offend.

Wow.‭ ‬No wonder I didn’t like humans.

Sure enough,‭ ‬no one offered to help me,‭ ‬even as I limped right past them.‭ ‬Instead I got lifted sunglasses and bewildered stares,‭ ‬from people laying on their towels.‭ ‬Parents called their kids to come away from me,‭ ‬and the kids stared,‭ ‬too,‭ ‬once they saw me.

This is ridiculous,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬my face turning red beneath my fur.‭ ‬I wanted to just ask one of them if I could have something to drink,‭ ‬or if they’d seen me fall from the sky or wash up on the beach or knew what had happened to me.‭ ‬But what I guessed had to be a lifetime of conditioning prevented me,‭ ‬and made me feel their stares on my back.

I wanted to just grab someone and start asking questions.‭ ‬Somehow,‭ ‬I wasn’t afraid of doing so‭ ‬…‭ ‬they didn’t seem like a threat.‭ ‬I just felt like it wouldn’t be worth it.‭ ‬As long as there were humans around,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬there’d be humans in charge that I could talk to.‭ ‬Humans in uniforms,‭ ‬or sitting behind counters.‭ ‬Those were okay to demand things from,‭ ‬I remembered.‭ ‬Even unreasonable things.

There were shacks set up,‭ ‬farther down the beach.‭ ‬Their signs advertised hot dogs,‭ ‬ice cream and sno-cones.‭ ‬And once I got in line,‭ ‬the family in front of me quickly got out.‭ ‬It made my face burn again,‭ ‬but I was okay with that,‭ ‬I thought,‭ ‬as I strode to the head of the line.‭ ‬At least now I could get some ans-

“Justin‎!”

That was my name‭! ‬And I was a human,‭ ‬wearing a t-shirt and jeans.‭ ‬The otter who was calling it was being pulled away towards a cage,‭ ‬his arms and legs bound to his sides,‭ ‬tail limply brushing the black metal beneath.‭ ‬But what was doing it‭? ‬I couldn’t see anything‭!

I ran to him,‭ ‬my footsteps clanking on metal deck plates,‭ ‬and tried to free his arms from whatever was holding him.‭ ‬I felt‭ ‬something around him,‭ ‬like invisible claws wrapped tight around his fuzzy chest and his arms,‭ ‬and I tried to pry them away but they wouldn’t budge.‭ ‬I couldn’t even get a firm grip on them‭; ‬they felt like fast-rushing air,‭ ‬and they were slippery like ice.

I dug in my feet and strained,‭ ‬trying to pull him away,‭ ‬my face turned towards the stars past the consoles.‭ ‬Then I saw him:‭ ‬a bird of prey,‭ ‬with grey and white feathers and a black‭ “‬mask‭” ‬of feathers around his sharp beak.‭ ‬One of his taloned hands was clutching a deep blue jewel on a chain around his neck,‭ ‬and the other was stretched out towards‭ ‬–‭ ‬what was my otter‭ ‬friend’s name again‭? ‬–‭ ‬and gripping the air in its claws.

I could put two and two together.‭ ‬I ran at the falcon,‭ ‬head down,‭ ‬getting ready to tackle him-

WHAM.‭ ‬Something hit my side while I was running at him.‭ ‬I was sent sprawling on the floor,‭ ‬hands and feet twitching,‭ ‬smoke coming out of my charred clothing.

‎“‏Can’t let you do that,‭ ‬human.‭”

Smugness dripped from the silky male voice.‭ ‬I wanted to look,‭ ‬to see who it was,‭ ‬but I was paralyzed‭; ‬my limbs and my head just weren’t working.‭ ‬Besides that,‭ ‬I thought I remembered.‭ ‬It was right there just past-

Cage bars slammed into place,‭ ‬outside my field of vision.‭ ‬All I could see were the windows,‭ ‬and the blue arc of the world beneath us.‭ ‬The falcon relaxed his grip,‭ ‬and turned to look as a black cat stepped into view‭ ‬…‭ ‬the one who had just‭ ‬shot me.

Something was wrong about him.‭ ‬Something was crawling across his sleek fur,‭ ‬something black and oily and alive.‭ ‬It turned into a belt and a holster,‭ ‬as soon as he put his gun by his waist.‭ ‬I remembered that wasn’t the real threat,‭ ‬though.‭ ‬It was something I couldn’t see right now,‭ ‬something-

The room began to glow green,‭ ‬from somewhere past where I could turn my head.‭ “‬Oh hey,‭” ‬the cat said,‭ ‬turning to look.‭ “‬What do you know‭! ‬Brighter than ever,‭ ‬this time.‭ ‬The God of Destruction must like it when we‭ ‬destroy things.‭” ‬He grinned.

The falcon coughed,‭ ‬one fist to his beak.‭ “‬The human is still alive,‭ ‬sir.‭”

It was true‭ ‬…‭ ‬I was struggling to my feet,‭ ‬shaking my head to clear it.‭ ‬Ignoring the ringing in my ears,‭ ‬and the stinging pain in my side.‭ ‬The cat just gave me an amused look.‭ “‬Chaos must favor this one‭!” ‬he remarked,‭ ‬to the falcon.‭ “‬Or else‭ ‬you are more than you appear,‭” ‬he told me.‭ “‬Some kind of Adept‭? ‬A wild Talent‭?”

I looked to see where the glow was coming from.‭ ‬There was a dark,‭ ‬green gem,‭ ‬the size of a grapefruit,‭ ‬set into a console in front of the wall.‭ ‬And the ringing in my ears got louder‭ ‬as I squinted into its bright glow.

‎“‏You could always just shoot him again,‭ ‬sir‭ ‬…‭ ”

“Quiet,‎ ‏Tachyon.‭” ‬The cat waved one hand to hush his pet‭ (‬how did I know that‭?)‬.‭ ‬Then he looked at me.‭ “‬Well‭?” ‬the cat asked.‭ “‬Chaos has given you another chance.‭ ‬What are you going to do with it‭?”

I looked between him and my friend,‭ ‬inside the cage.‭ ‬His eyes were wide and staring at me.‭ ‬Then‭ ‬my eyes fixed on the gem again,‭ ‬now glowing brighter.‭ ‬It seemed familiar somehow‭ ‬…‭ ‬I remembered my friend finding it,‭ ‬showing it to me,‭ ‬wondering what he should do with it.‭ ‬Being kidnapped because of it.‭ ‬But the familiarity was more than that‭; ‬it was more like seeing your favorite old keyboard,‭ ‬or game controller,‭ ‬after digging it up in the attic.‭ ‬Remembering it,‭ ‬and realizing what it was for.

I began to stagger towards it.

‎“‏Ooh‭! ‬Going for the prize,‭ ‬are we‭?”

“Sir‎ ‏…‎ ”

“Hush‎!”

I was still staggering toward it,‭ ‬wishing that I could move faster.‭ ‬Then I stepped over a circle design on the floor,‭ ‬and a glass tube shot out from it all around me,‭ ‬going right up to the ceiling.‭ ‬The cat had his hand on a button,‭ ‬on one of the consoles,‭ ‬and the falcon had clasped his hands behind his back and was looking away.

‎“‏Chaos seemed to like it when you got shot,‭” ‬the cat said,‭ ‬his voice muffled and echoey.‭ “‬Let’s see how he likes this‭!”

My friend screamed,‭ ‬as I got shot out into space.

Everything was quiet for a moment.‭ ‬I floated there inside the tube,‭ ‬my hair and clothes drifting,‭ ‬no longer held down.‭ ‬I could see the huge planet below me,‭ ‬blue and white,‭ ‬and could see the tiny space station we’d left,‭ ‬tethered down to the world by a thread.

Then I saw something glow,‭ ‬on its surface.‭ ‬And a second later everything was fire and noise.

“Can I help you‎?” ‏the otter girl asked,‭ ‬from behind the counter.‭ ‬She was wearing an apron and cap.

I blinked,‭ ‬uncomprehending.‭ ‬Then something caught my eye,‭ ‬from below.‭ ‬A tablet,‭ ‬still turned on,‭ ‬that someone had left on their towel.‭ ‬Its screen was in the shadow of a nearby umbrella,‭ ‬and it was open to a news website,‭ ‬with a familiar picture on the front page.

‎“‏Sir‭?”

I picked up the tablet and looked at the picture,‭ ‬holding it beneath the umbrella.‭ ‬It was a grainy,‭ ‬satellite photo of the space station I had just left,‭ ‬and the explosion that I remembered.‭ ‬The headline read‭ “‬Hostage Meets Tragic End.‭”

“Sir‎ ‏…‎ ”

I caught a glimpse of my name,‭ ‬there in the first sentence.‭ ‬It was still bright out, so it was hard to read‭ ‬…‭ ‬and the shock I was now feeling was making it surreal.‭ ‬But even though I was distracted,‭ ‬my eyes scanned over the article looking for clues.‭ ‬Cultists‭ ‬…‭ ‬Tether Station‭ ‬…‭ ‬God of Destruction‭ ‬…‭ ‬Chaos.

‎“‏Hostage Meets Tragic End.‭”

The shock was beginning to crystallize,‭ ‬as I looked down at my arms holding the tablet.‭ ‬I could remember who I’d been,‭ ‬but it seemed so far away now.‭ ‬What’d happened‭? ‬Why did I look like this‭? ‬How the heck had I survived‭?

Somehow,‭ ‬I wasn’t sure it was important.‭ ‬It felt like I‭ ‬had died up there.‭ ‬Or the person I’d been had died,‭ ‬anyway.‭ ‬All that mattered was saving my friend‭, and beating the daylights out of that stupid cat‬.‭ ‬All that mattered was getting back to that station.

The otter behind the counter had gone back to cleaning it off.‭ ‬I held up the tablet to her, and pointed at the picture on it.‭ “‬Tell me how to get here,‭” ‬I said.‭ ‬My human life seemed like a blur,‭ ‬and I couldn’t remember things like that.

‎“‏Tether Station‭? ‬Um‭ ‬…‭ ” ‬Her eyes flicked out to the horizon,‭ ‬and I looked behind myself out where she was looking.‭ ‬There was an island,‭ ‬out there in the bay.‭ ‬And a thin,‭ ‬black line,‭ ‬stretching up from it into the sky.

‎“‏Thank you,‭” ‬I told her,‭ ‬remembering my manners.‭ ‬I set the tablet back down on the towel,‭ ‬before another phrase came back to me.‭ “‬Do you have free ice water‭?”

For some reason,‭ ‬my instinct was still to try things the human way first.‭ ‬That’s why I spent the next hour or so trudging through grassy sand,‭ ‬heading towards the dock for the ferry that went to the island.

Of course,‭ ‬it was closed.‭ ‬It‭ ‬would be closed,‭ ‬given what was happening up there.

The boat sat there moored in the water,‭ ‬past a shack and the vacant parking lot.‭ “‬It looks kinda low-scale and tourist-y,‭” ‬my human memories told me.‭ “‬The people who can actually afford a ticket to the Station probably get to the island by air.‭”

Well,‭ ‬that wasn’t an option,‭ ‬seeing as how I couldn’t fly.‭ ‬For a moment I thought of commandeering the boat,‭ ‬but my human memories protested that I wouldn’t know how to operate it.‭ ‬So that ruled that out,‭ ‬too.

I stood‭ ‬there at the top of the hill overlooking the parking lot,‭ ‬my arms folded,‭ ‬looking out at the island.‭ ‬The sun was behind clouds now and the wind was starting to pick up,‭ ‬and the breeze fluffed out my quills.‭ ‬It was refreshing,‭ ‬and I closed my eyes and enjoyed it for a few seconds.‭ ‬I was still hungry,‭ ‬but I was more impatient.‭ ‬Somehow,‭ ‬I needed to get out there.

Seagulls called overhead as I‭ ‬hopped the barrier across the road and walked down to the parking lot.‭ ‬Then I sat down on one of those concrete speed bumps‭ ‬at the end of each parking space,‭ ‬took off my shoes and emptied them of sand.‭ ‬As I did so,‭ ‬something clicked,‭ ‬and I knew how I was going to get across.‭ ‬And for a moment it was surprising,‭ ‬but then I realized it shouldn’t be.

Looking back on it,‭ ‬I’m surprised I didn’t have an existential crisis right there.‭ ‬What did this all mean‭? ‬What had I become‭? ‬Was I myself anymore‭? ‬As it turned out,‭ ‬I had been all along,‭ ‬not that I knew that at the time.‭ ‬I just wasn’t concerned with thinking about things like that.‭ ‬All that I was concerned with was getting up to that station and saving my friend.‭ ‬I could worry about the hard questions later.‭ ‬For now,‭ ‬if my instincts helped me get up there,‭ ‬I would act on them.

I put my shoes back on and walked back up to the gatehouse,‭ ‬then turned around and fixed my eyes on the island out in the distance.‭ ‬I leaned over and assumed a runner’s crouch,‭ ‬my mind clear of distractions,‭ ‬my eyes still locked on the island.‭ ‬Then I started counting in my head.

3‎ ‏…

Go.

I took off.

It felt like riding a bicycle downhill.‭ ‬In seconds I’d cleared the parking lot,‭ ‬and was out on a sandbar running past the boat.‭ ‬I was going fast and my feet were pumping like mad,‭ ‬but it felt like they weighed nothing.‭ ‬There was no effort involved.

I pushed myself,‭ ‬as my feet touched wet sand.‭ ‬Wind screamed past my ears and flattened my quills to my forehead,‭ ‬and it began to feel like a physical barrier that I needed to push past.‭ ‬So I did,‭ ‬putting on a sudden burst of energy right as I cleared the shoreline.‭ ‬I shot out over the water like a rocket,‭ ‬a comet-like field of energy flowing around my front half like a bubble and trailing behind me in streaks.‭ ‬The air around me felt calm,‭ ‬and the water felt like it was solid,‭ ‬even though I was barely touching it.

I put on another burst of speed,‭ ‬suddenly afraid of the water,‭ ‬not wanting to slow down and drown.‭ ‬When I got within sight of the island’s shoreline,‭ ‬I could see it was much bigger than it’d looked‭ ‬…‭ ‬there were boats,‭ ‬landed airplanes,‭ ‬a whole slew of buildings.‭ ‬And there were army vehicles parked just past the beach.‭ ‬Would I have to fight my way past them to get up there‭?

Not if they can’t catch me,‭ ‬I thought.

The lines and dots on the beach resolved into fences,‭ ‬vans with antennae on top,‭ ‬and camouflage-colored vehicles.‭ ‬I jumped as soon as my feet touched the sand and then I somersaulted in midair,‭ ‬clearing the barbed-wire fence and landing back in a run without breaking my stride.‭ ‬A person carrying a microphone and talking into a camera had her hair blown back as I ran past,‭ ‬ignoring them and the soldiers in uniform and making my way towards the tether.

Alarm sirens sounded as I ran in a spiral,‭ ‬up the road that led to the tether.‭ ‬A truck was blocking my way,‭ ‬right up next to the gate,‭ ‬so I sidestepped around it and ducked under the road barrier.‭ ‬Then I ran towards the base of the tether:‭ ‬a big,‭ ‬square platform,‭ ‬indented into the ground and made of black metal.‭ ‬It reminded me of subway tracks.‭ ‬Something that traveled the tether was meant to land here,‭ ‬I thought.‭ ‬Something big.‭ ‬And it wasn’t parked here,‭ ‬so that meant it was still up there.‭ ‬Because I took it up there,‭ ‬I thought.

The sirens kept wailing as I stopped at the edge of the platform,‭ ‬looking down at the bowl-like indentation inside it and at the exposed machinery.‭ ‬Then I looked up at the tether itself.‭ ‬It was less than an inch thick,‭ ‬and made of black cable.‭ ‬How was I supposed to get up that‭? ‬Would I even be able to survive if I could‭? ‬That shield I’d created had seemed to trap air around me‭ ‬…‭ ‬would it block out cosmic rays,‭ ‬and scorching temperatures‭?

Somehow,‭ ‬I still wasn’t worried.‭ ‬I was still just acting on instinct.‭ ‬People were shouting at me from behind,‭ ‬and I heard weapons being cocked and machines being moved into position,‭ ‬but none of it bothered me as much as the fact that my friend was still in trouble.

I remembered reading about how the tether tram used magnetic levitation,‭ ‬like trains.‭ ‬Somehow,‭ ‬that was all that my instincts needed.‭ ‬I jumped down into the‭ “‬bowl‭” ‬inside the platform and curled into a ball as I did so,‭ ‬rolling inside it and starting to pick up speed.‭ ‬My fur and my quills stood on end,‭ ‬and the air around my ears crackled,‭ ‬as something inside me reacted with what I was rolling on.

I kept going around in circles,‭ ‬faster and faster,‭ ‬propelled by the reaction.‭ ‬And the crackling became more intense‭ ‬until I broke through just like I had while running,‭ ‬and could feel myself surrounded by the comet trail again.‭ ‬I couldn’t see or hear anything outside of the ball I was rolled in,‭ ‬but just felt the rush of speed and energy,‭ ‬and the circular track I was rolling in.

I leaned myself towards the inside of the track,‭ ‬towards the tether itself.‭ ‬Then gravity shifted,‭ ‬and all of a sudden I was flying upwards,‭ ‬not even touching the tether but somehow guided along it … rolling around it in circles, as I continued to shoot upwards.

I did not‭ ‬dare open my eyes.‭ ‬I didn’t do anything except try to force myself to keep making that field around me,‭ ‬and it didn’t help that I didn’t know how.‭ ‬All I know is that as I kept going the light around me got brighter and brighter,‭ ‬and I could feel burning warmth on one side of me and freezing cold on the other.‭ ‬The only thing that kept me from dying to either was the fact that I was still spinning around so fast.‭ ‬It felt like a carnival ride,‭ ‬and I was pretty sure I was going to throw up afterwards.

I don’t know how long it lasted.‭ ‬I just remember long minutes of silence.

Eventually I thought‭ “‬What am I going to do when I reach the end‭?‬” Then I reached it,‭ ‬as the tether drifted away behind me and I reflexively uncurled.‭ ‬To one side of me was a bright,‭ ‬white and blue wall,‭ ‬three-dimensional wisps of cloud casting shadows on the world beneath.‭ ‬To the other side was the Milky Way,‭ ‬every last star visible.

There was no station in sight.‭ ‬And the shield still around me was dim,‭ ‬and starting to flicker.

Now,‭ ‬you know I survived,‭ ‬or I wouldn’t be telling you this.‭ ‬And frankly,‭ ‬after seeing what’s already happened,‭ ‬I doubt if you’d be surprised anyway.

At the time,‭ ‬though,‭ ‬I was freaked out.‭ ‬My backside was numbing with frostbite, while my face‭ ‬–‭ ‬and the hand I‭ was ‬shielding my eyes with‭ ‬–‭ ‬felt like it was next to the oven,‭ ‬with the door left hanging open.‭ ‬I had only seconds to figure out what to do,‭ ‬but I couldn’t think of anything.‭ ‬I was really scared for my life.

But on another level,‭ ‬I was annoyed.‭ ‬I didn’t feel like I’d just been spaced,‭ ‬I felt like I had been cut off in traffic.‭ ‬Or scratched by an annoying black cat.‭ ‬It was running off with something important to me,‭ ‬and I wanted it back.

I could feel the emerald out there.‭ ‬And as the station crossed between me and the sun,‭ ‬I looked up at its silhouette,‭ ‬and‭ ‬…‭ ‬it’s like I grabbed onto the emerald,‭ ‬somehow,‭ ‬and started pulling myself towards it.

‎“‏Um,‭ ‬sir‭?‬” It was that bird’s voice! Tachyon’s. It sounded tinny and metallic. Was I hearing what was inside the room where the emerald was?

“One step ahead of you,‭” the cat said.

I saw bright flashes on the underside of the station.‭ ‬Then there was fire and noise again,‭ ‬deep rumblings as my shield shook.‭ ‬Sparks filled my vision as I was sent tumbling.

I didn’t care.‭ ‬I made the gem inside the station‭ “‬down‭” ‬and fell towards it again,‭ ‬face-first,‭ ‬my shield glowing like a comet’s trail.‭ ‬Sparks flew off of it,‭ ‬and I could feel myself being deflected by whatever that thing was shooting at me.‭ ‬But as it floated past the sun,‭ ‬and everything‭ “‬beneath‭” ‬me turned into a blaze of light,‭ ‬I just made myself keep falling towards it.‭ ‬Pulled to it by the emerald.

The sun was blocked out by black metal,‭ ‬a solid shape in the light.‭ ‬It got bigger and bigger,‭ ‬until finally-

SLAM

I‭ ‬bounced off of it.‭ ‬Well,‭ ‬not exactly bounced‭ ‬…‭ ‬I smashed through it like a bullet.‭ ‬And I got a brief glimpse of lights and deck plates before I was shot back out the way I’d came,‭ ‬the explosive decompression sucking me out into the vacuum.

‎“‏Okay,‭” ‬I thought,‭ ‬in between being shot out and being pulled back by the emerald.‭ “‬This is a little silly.‭”

Some kind of blast doors were closing across the hole that I’d made.‭ ‬I flattened myself horizontally,‭ ‬and‭ “‬fell‭” ‬inside just as they shut,‭ ‬tumbling sideways across the deck as the station’s gravity pulled me that way.‭ ‬Then there was a sound like a dozen blow-dryers,‭ ‬and my fur and quills were fluffed out by air jets before I heard a robotic male voice:‭ “‬Hull breach in sector‭ ‬208‭ ‬sealed.‭ ‬Sector‭ ‬208‭ ‬repressurized.‭ ‬Intruder in sector‭ ‬208.‭”

I could hear the voices in the room with the emerald talking again,‭ ‬but somehow it seemed‭ ‬noisier inside the station.‭ ‬I couldn’t make them out.‭ “‬Oh well,‭” ‬I thought,‭ ‬as I stood back on my feet and my shield flickered out.‭ “‬I know what direction the emerald is in‭ ‬…‭ ‬and that’s all that I need to know.‭”

“Hull breach in sector‭ ‬114.‭ ‬Hull breach in sector‭ ‬58.‭ ‬Hull breach in sector‭ ‬27.‭”

My spines were like chainsaws.‭ ‬I made myself spin in place somehow,‭ ‬just like I did to get up there,‭ ‬then I shot myself through closed doors and uncurled on the other side.‭ ‬I tried on the walls once or twice,‭ ‬but weird liquids and sparks shot out before I’d even broke through.‭ ‬The doors just folded and clattered in pieces around me.

Everything was black metal and colored lights.‭ ‬Alarm sirens and map displays,‭ ‬in multi-level hallways with windows set into the walls.‭ ‬I couldn’t believe anyone could live someplace like this‭ ‬…‭ ‬even the potted plants were plastic.‭ ‬It was so sterile and fake. Sort of like human social rules.

Another locked door.‭ ‬I smashed through and uncurled to see silver,‭ ‬four-legged robots,‭ ‬stopped in mid-strike,‭ ‬looking at me and shining red lights in my face.‭ ‬A corner of my mind could remember being scared to death by these things‭; ‬sneaking down hallways behind them,‭ ‬shooting at them just to distract them,‭ ‬bullets clanging off of their armor.

Right now,‭ ‬I just wanted them‭ ‬gone.‭ ‬So I charged through them,‭ ‬into an explosion of noise and gunfire and shearing metal,‭ ‬and sparks flying off of my shield.‭ ‬I came out the other side and looked back at the wreckage,‭ ‬just in time to see one robot collapse.

There was a scythe in my hand,‭ ‬shining metal with a jeweled hilt.‭ ‬It weighed nothing.‭ ‬Where had it come from‭? ‬I guessed that it must have appeared somehow,‭ ‬when I’d decided to destroy those robots.‭ ‬I tried to tear into the next door with it,‭ ‬but it got stuck there and I struggled with it.‭ ‬So I let go,‭ ‬and it disappeared.

I stopped there for a moment to catch my breath,‭ ‬and I jumped as something sparked.‭ ‬Deep down inside,‭ ‬I was still frightened and numb with shock,‭ ‬like I’d almost drowned.‭ ‬I still remembered‭ ‬running for my life from those things.‭ ‬And from Shadow,‭ ‬and Tachyon,‭ ‬and‭ ‬…‭ ‬and‭ ‬…

I looked down at myself,‭ ‬at my gloved hands and furred arms.‭ ‬What was I‭ ‬doing here‭? ‬What’d happened to me‭? ‬I’d-

Another loud spark,‭ ‬and an explosion from inside a dead robot’s chest.‭ ‬I jumped,‭ ‬and shielded my face.‭ ‬Then,‭ ‬after a long second of cringing,‭ ‬I smacked myself to snap myself out of it.‭ “‬Argh‭!” ‬I said.‭ “‬What am I thinking‭? ‬I can’t afford to have a crisis right now‭! ‬I need to get upstairs,‭ ‬to that emerald,‭ ‬to my friend‭ ‬…‭ ”

SLAM.‭ “‬Hull breach in sector‭ ‬8.‭”

I didn’t want to accidentally maim my friend‭ (‬what was his name,‭ ‬anyway‭?)‬,‭ ‬so instead of sawing through the door with my spines I took the scythe to it.‭ ‬It took me a second to get it to appear‭; ‬I had to just want to break down the door, without thinking about how.

I lodged my scythe in the door,‭ ‬then tore it out of the wall and sent it flying down the hallway.‭ ‬On the other side was a startled-looking Tachyon,‭ ‬his feathers ruffled and wingtips clutching the gem around his neck‭ ‬…‭ ‬and past him,‭ ‬a cat giving me an angry glare,‭ ‬next to the cage that my friend was in.

‎“‏Tachyon,‭” ‬Shadow said,‭ “‬destroy him.‭”

The falcon looked up at my scythe,‭ ‬then back at Shadow.‭ ‬After that he stepped out of the way.‭ “‬You first,‭” ‬he said.

‎“‏Fine.‭” ‬Shadow grabbed up Chaos‭’ ‬Emerald,‭ ‬from the console it was set into.‭ “‬I’ll just kill you next.‭”

He held out the emerald,‭ ‬clawing it in a vicelike grip.‭ ‬And my fur and my quills stood on end,‭ ‬as there was this rush like air across a cave entrance,‭ ‬and everything in the room except him and the glowing gem faded out and became dark.‭ ‬It was surreal,‭ ‬and I think that if he’d done that when I was human‭ ‬I would’ve grovelled for mercy right there.

I could remember being afraid of Shadow.‭ ‬There was part of me that was still scared of him.‭ ‬But even as ominous as he seemed,‭ ‬I didn’t feel like I was heading for certain death,‭ ‬or even a climactic showdown.‭ ‬It felt more like I’d cornered an unruly cat beneath a stairwell. He’d scratched my friend and run off with something of mine,‭ ‬and I wanted it back.

I launched myself across the void at him, and brought my scythe down hard enough to pierce metal.‭ ‬A shield bubble came up around him out of the gem,‭ ‬like mine but emerald green,‭ ‬and it rippled like water but didn’t break.‭ ‬Streamers of energy danced between it and the gem in Shadow’s claws.

I swung my scythe at his shield again and again,‭ ‬and I could see Shadow strain but his shield wasn’t breaking.‭ ‬Then it disappeared and he leaped at me,‭ ‬his claws slashing bright green arcs through the darkness.‭ ‬The trails of light burned into my retinas and nearly blinded me,‭ ‬as I tried to sidestep and parry using my scythe.

Sparks flew,‭ ‬as his claws clashed with my shield and the handle.‭ ‬Then he tore my scythe’s handle in two and brought his claws across my chest,‭ ‬before pouncing me with his back feet and jumping off that way,‭ ‬rolling and coming up in a crouch.

I touched my chest,‭ ‬where his foot-claws had drawn blood,‭ ‬and it stung. My gloves came up stained red.

I looked up at Shadow,‭ ‬and he hissed and held out the gem at me.‭ ‬And it began to draw energy into it,‭ ‬as if focusing for an attack.

‎“‏To heck with this,‭” ‬I thought,‭ ‬and tossed the pieces of my scythe away.‭ ‬I spun in place the way that I’d done to break down the doors,‭ ‬revving and charging and building my shield around me.‭ ‬Then I let myself fly at him,‭ ‬right as he released the energy he’d been building up.

There was a smashing noise,‭ ‬loud as a thunderclap,‭ ‬as I bounced off of him and across the floor and smacked into the wall.‭ ‬When I came up on one elbow the room was normally lighted,‭ ‬and there was a black scorch mark on the floor where we had collided.‭ ‬I had a headache,‭ ‬but Shadow looked even more out of it than I was.‭ ‬He was on his back moaning,‭ ‬his tail twitching,‭ ‬the gem a foot away from his hand.

Tachyon‭ stood ‬right next to me,‭ ‬watching the gem.‭ ‬He looked down at me nervously,‭ ‬and for a second it looked like he was going to go help Shadow.‭ ‬I grunted and got to my feet before he could move,‭ ‬and went over and picked up the emerald in one gloved hand.‭ ‬I tucked it under my elbow before grabbing Shadow by the scruff of his neck,‭ ‬holding him out in front of me and shaking him.

‎“‏I don’t remember why this blasted gem is so important.‭ ‬But I remember I used to be human.‭” ‬Somehow,‭ ‬I couldn’t look at my friend while I said that.‭ “‬Tell me what’s happened to me‭!”

“ …‎ ‏hwah‭?” ‬It looked like he was cross-eyed.‭ ‬He tried to rub his face with both hands,‭ ‬but his movements were slow and sluggish.

‎“‏Tell me what’s going on‭!‬” I screamed it at him.‭ ‬I hadn’t realized how mad I was,‭ ‬or how scared.

He just giggled,‭ ‬drunkenly,‭ ‬and made a clumsy attempt to reach for the emerald in my other arm.‭ ‬I threw him over the consoles,‭ ‬and he smacked into the floor next to the window.‭ ‬Then I stood there fuming,‭ ‬still unable to face my friend,‭ ‬still unable to so much as remember his name.‭ ‬After a long moment of this I realized I was clutching the gem in both arms and hugging it like a plushie,‭ ‬but I didn’t care.

‎“‏He thinks he’s Chaos,‭” ‬said a quiet voice.‭ ‬I looked over to see Tachyon next to the door,‭ ‬one wingtip pressed to the edge like he was getting ready to leave.

‎“ ‏…‎ ‏and he isn’t‭?” ‬I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

‎“‏Chaos,‭” ‬Tachyon repeated.‭ “‬The God of Destruction.‭” ‬He said it like this was supposed to clear things up.

I gave him a long,‭ ‬annoyed look.‭ ‬He gulped audibly,‭ ‬and tried to explain,‭ ‬looking away and edging closer to the door.‭ “‬Shadow believes that he’s Chaos reborn.‭ ‬There are legends‭ ‬…‭ ‬and things‭ ‬…‭ ” ‬A sweatdrop had formed on his feathers.‭ “‬He was trying to fulfill them.‭ ‬He thought he’d assume his true form.‭”

“What‎ ‘‏true form‭?’”

Tachyon brought his eyes up from the floor,‭ ‬and gave me a long,‭ ‬meaningful look.‭ ‬And my face turned red beneath my new fur,‭ ‬as‭ ‬I realized what he meant. I had become this Chaos that they were obsessed with. That Shadow had thought he was.

It felt like I’d just been told I was on a hidden-camera show.‭ ‬Everything I’d done up to that point,‭ ‬everything since I’d fallen from the sky,‭ ‬all of it was living out this cat’s dreams.‭ ‬My friend had been used,‭ ‬I had been‭ ‬killed,‭ ‬and the only reason they were taking me seriously now was because I wasn’t‭ ‬me anymore.‭ ‬I was‭ ‬…

But wait.‭ ‬Hadn’t he said‭ ‘‬true form‭’? ‬Then that would explain why everything came so naturally‭ ‬…‭ ‬and why my memories were so hazy.‭ ‬It wasn’t like normal amnesia,‭ ‬it was more like I’d just woken up from a dream.‭ ‬And the dream world was starting to fade,‭ ‬as I remembered the waking world.

In that case,‭ ‬this‭ was what‬ I’d always been,‭ ‬before I’d fallen asleep somehow.‭ ‬And these jerks had some kind of whole stupid belief system where I was an icon to them.‭ ‬Because I couldn’t care less if that cat didn’t get to live out his precious power fantasies,‭ ‬and pretend to be me‭ ‬–‭ ‬or try to become me‭ ‬–‭ ‬and hurt people like my friend.‭ ‬I just wanted to get him out of there,‭ ‬and wait for my head to clear and my memories to return before I decided what to do next.

God of Destruction‭? ‬If I met any more people like that cat,‭ ‬I’d show‭ ‬them a God of Destruction.

I gave the falcon a cold glare,‭ ‬and he cringed,‭ ‬literally hugging the edge of the doorway and trying to shield himself from me.

‎“‏Tell me the quickest way off of this station,‭” ‬I told him.

‎“‏C-‭” ‬He coughed.‭ “‬Chaos‭’ ‬Control‭?”

“Which is‎?”

He cringed even further,‭ ‬as though unable to speak.‭ ‬But his eyes locked on the emerald, and memories of how to use it came back to me.‭ ‬“Okay,‭” ‬I said.‭ “‬Get out of here.‭”

He stumbled around the corner and fled,‭ ‬claws clicking.‭ ‬Then I turned around,‭ ‬and looked down at the cage that my friend the otter was crouched in.‭ “‬Hey,‭” ‬I said.

‎“ ‏…‎ ‏Justin‭?” ‬His eyes were wide.

‎“‏Kinda.‭” ‬I made the scythe appear again,‭ ‬and he jumped back.‭ ‬But I just used it to cut off the padlock,‭ ‬then tossed it away and pulled open the door before helping my friend out.‭ ‬He was a little taller than I was,‭ ‬and his fur was ragged and unwashed.‭ ‬I hugged him anyway,‭ ‬and while I could feel his heart racing it seemed to have settled down a bit by the time that I let go.

‎“‏W-what happened to you‭?” ‬he asked.

‎“‏I don’t know,‭ ‬and I don’t care.‭ ‬Now,‭ ‬hold still.‭ ‬We’re getting out of here.‭”

I held the gem up in one hand,‭ ‬and took his hand in the other.‭ ‬The cat started moaning again,‭ ‬and I turned to glare at him for a second before closing my eyes‭ ‬…

…‎ ‏and vanishing.

His black shoes and brass buttons shine, and the blue collar of his uniform is neatly pressed. A wrinkled hand comes up to the brim of his spotless cap, and beneath it eyes narrow, and a pinched mouth frowns. She is late, and he does not like to be kept waiting.

Two sets of tapping sounds echo all around him, then come up beside him. The tapping of metal legs stops as the tiny robot arrives next to him, but its fingers keep on tapping the typewriter keys attached to its front, as though it were programming itself. No paper comes out the top, but its lamp-like head looks up at him, questioningly.

He ignores it and turns around, as though to go back inside. But then …

“Hello?”

The man across the ledge from Feather squinted up at her, and frowned. For a moment she thought Is there something wrong with my dress? and adjusted her straw hat nervously. Then she realized that she’d kept him waiting awhile, and strode up to where he was.

“Hello!” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Feather-”

“Cowl,” he said, barely moving her hand with his own. “Mister Cowl.”

“Do you have a first name?” she asked, letting go hesitantly.

“Yes.”

She stood at attention, starting to sweat, as he examined her as if inspecting a uniform. “Your appearance is not appropriate for the inside of the Machine,” he said, as he paced around to her side.

Oh heck, there really is something wrong with my dress! “W-what’s wrong?” she asked, and wondered if the small creature beside her was typing out a list of demerits.

“This,” he said, and pulled off her beak with a THOCK. A human nose and mouth were beneath it, and she looked startled. “You’re meant to be a Handler, not an animal yourself. Please try to remember that.”

“Y-yes, sir!” she said. Her leonine tail whipped back into the folds of her dress as though it had never existed, just as he walked back behind her.

He made a full circle, grim and dispassionate, the typewriting robot hurrying out of his way as he did so. Finally, Cowl nodded to her, then turned around and started walking back inside. “This way,” he said.

She hurried after him, low heels clicking on the metal floor, and looked over her shoulder at the small creature carrying the typewriter. It looked so out of place. She wondered if it was lost.

They step inside the steel elevator, and the folding door slides shut accordion-like. Then he pulls the lever, and it lurches to a start and descends. He’s already steadied himself on the handrail, but she stumbles a bit and nearly trips on her low heels.

Part of the elevator car is floor to ceiling glass. It looks out on a cavern, brown rock receding into the darkness, lights shone on its face by small spidery robots with welding tools. They’re patching up bundles of wire, soldering some of them together and removing others. And there are lights that play in the darkness, like tiny fireflies. They’re hard to make out until you look out there and realize they’re more robots, way off in the distance, so far away you can barely see them.

One of them does something to join two wires, and the whole network lights up brilliantly, multicolored light streaming out into the distance. Flickering, glowing, gleaming to life across a space as big as a world. And the spiders all look up and take notice for a moment, before getting back to their work.

The woman stares outside at it all, her breath fogging up the window. She’s captivated, he notes. And she continues to stare, transfixed, gripping the rail as the elevator car shakes.

She turns away and looks at him, a moment before another spider gets shocked by the wire it’s holding. It falls off the rock face and smashes into the ground, just as the surface comes up and obscures the window. “It’s beautiful,” she says to him.

“The Machine is possessed of a terrible beauty,” Cowl says, running his finger along the doorframe and frowning at the oil that stains it. “But which parts are beautiful and which parts are terrible is not for me to say.”

He braces himself again, and she notices a second too late and trips and falls backwards as the car slams to a stop. The door opens, and he steps forward and holds out one hand for her. She takes it, and he pulls her back upright, then steps out as she’s getting her feet back into her shoes. “This way,” he says.

They stepped out into a damp, underground grotto, phosphorescent moss and glowing mushrooms covering the walls about five feet out from the metal path. Their footsteps clanked on it, and her gaze lingered on sparkling spores drifting out from a cap. It wasn’t as spectacular as the cave she’d looked out on, but it had its own beauty.

They followed the glowing vines in the ceiling, around the bend towards the sound of water. Then they came to the source. The walkway hung out over a deep stream that went past, and turned into a roaring waterfall just below them. It was only about ten feet high, but the sound reverberated inside the chamber.

There was movement on the edge of her vision, and she looked out to see what it was. Then she rubbed her eyes, and did a double-take. There were flying snails, all throughout the cavern, hovering over the walkways and the bridge over the stream. One eyestalk stuck out from their shells, and they paddled the air briskly using tiny feet-like things beneath.

“What are they?” Feather said, stepping back as one floated past. It turned to look for a second and blinked at her, then resumed staring straight ahead as it paddled.

“Cordbiters,” Cowl said, frowning.

“Why are they called that?”

There was a shower of sparks, as one of them bit into the glowing vines using a mouth just beneath its eyestalk.

” … oh.”

“Kindly place them all in the cart, please,” he said, and she saw what looked like a mine cart on rails just past the walkway over the bridge.

“How do I get them in there?” she said, turning around. But he’d already stepped around the corner.

“You’re the Handler. It’s your job to figure that out.” His voice echoed, and his shadow receded across the wall.

Feather took a deep breath, then turned back around to face her task.

It wasn’t hard to move the “cordbiters” at all. They were light — as a feather, she thought — and their eyes widened and feet paddled frantically when she pulled them from their places. She turned one over in her hands to look at it, but it just retracted and huddled inside its shell.

The ‘biters were just big enough that it was awkward for her to grab hold of them in one hand, so she had to use both hands to move them. For a few minutes she ran back and forth, grabbing them up one at a time and putting them into the cart. But after she’d done this a few times, she came back and saw that they were just swimming lazily back out. The only things to keep them secure were two straps across the top, and the flying snails just swam around them.

A spark-spray lit up the cavern, as one of them bit into the vines again. Feather mopped at her forehead, chilly and sweating at the same time, and turned on the indigo backlight on her watch to check the time. A ‘biter peeked over her shoulder, curious, and stared at it for a long moment, the light reflecting off of its glassy eye. It turned to look at her just as she turned to look at it, and after a second it whipped back into its shell and lay still.

Feather’s eyes lit up.

A moment later she whistled, and it echoed off of the rock as all of the snails turned to look at her. “Hey! Over here!” she said, and held up her glowing watch in one hand.

As one, the snails stared at it. Then they started swimming towards her.

“That’s right … ” she said, moving slowly, leaning her arm down into the cart. The slower she moved, the less the snails noticed her, and the more they focused on her watch.

Steadily they moved towards her, crowding around and into the cart. The first ones made a circle around her watch and stared at it, transfixed. The next ones inside jostled to try to get a close view of it, and ended up peeking over the shells of the others.

Feather watched as the last of the ‘biters swam closer slowly, unable to see the source of the glow anymore. As she waited on it, one of the ones in the circle around her hand opened its mouth, inch-long needles shining in the glow.

She yanked her hand out just as it bit down on the air, then grabbed hold of the straggler and stuffed it down into the cart with the others. They all yanked back into their shells as she pulled the straps tight, and the shells clacked into each other with a sound like billiard balls.

Feather leaned up against the cart to catch her breath, tense and exhausted. Then she put her watch back on and checked the time again, before heading back towards the elevator.

Just before she rounded the corner, she looked back towards the cart full of ‘biters. Eyestalks peeked out of it, and blinked at her. She turned away, hoping that they’d be alright until somebody else could take care of them.

As she left, the cart began to move.

“Go on, shoo!”

A gothic-looking towering vault, with a high, domed ceiling far up ahead. Metal coils snake in and out of old windows, and long rays of light shine in, through the arches supporting the dome overhead. There are large, flamingo-like mechanical birds in Feather’s way, clustering around her on the floor, flapping their feathered wings agitatedly. More of them line the galleries, high above, looking down at her and the movement around her.

Mister Cowl sets his tea down, on a stand just beside the cart, and strides swiftly over to where she’s trying to get the birds to move. Some of them see him, and they start waddling away, their clumsy, hopping gait and bobbing heads making them move much more slowly than him. One doesn’t make it in time, and he kicks it out of the way with a “SQUAWK!” before gesturing towards the tea cart.

“After you,” he says, to a shocked-looking Feather.

She steps towards it hesitantly, looking back towards the limping bird. “Why don’t they just fly away?” she asks. “They don’t look like they’re meant to walk very far … “

“Because they’re stupid,” Cowl says, stepping back up to the cart and taking his tea and sipping at it. Behind him, a couple of birds awkwardly hop up spiral steps towards the galleries, right next to a door that’s marked “ELEVATOR.”

“They seem pretty animated for stupid creatures … ” Feather looks up, at the ones watching her still.

“A lot of things are.” He lifts a teaspoon. “Sugar?”

“Oh … uh, no thanks. I drink coffee.”

“Your loss.” He takes another sip.

The birds are still watching her. A few of them flutter their wings.

She looks away. “Anyway, uh … the ‘cordbiters’ are all taken care of. Did you need me to do anything with these birds, here … ?”

“No, thank you, madam. That will be all.”

She’s startled. “Are you-”

“Yes.”

“But it’s been less than an hour … ” She squints at the screen of her digital watch.

“There are more things in heaven and earth than you could dream of, and more situations in the Machine than you could ever attend to. But your time is tied to mine right now, and my time is limited.” He takes a long sip, and then checks the gold pocketwatch at his waist.

“Oh … “

Cowl snaps the watch shut, and pockets it. “Come back tomorrow at the same time,” he says.

“Alright … ” She nods. “I will, thank you.”

“Mind the birds.”

They cluster around her again, as she walks to the door that’s marked “EXIT,” and he finishes his tea as he watches her elbow through them. She’s still trying to be polite to them, he thinks. She’ll learn soon enough.

Feather disembarked next to her mailbox. A huge thing like a cross between a bus and an elephant galumphed away just beside her, smog coming out of its trunk. She coughed and waved it away, setting out across the dirt path, the forested hills in the distance just outlines against the sunset.

Gravel crunched beneath her shoes. She passed by a pond, and heard frogs singing and saw glowing dots floating in midair. One of her feet stepped in a puddle, but she shrugged and smiled as she walked past.

Her cottage was tiny, with circular windows and a treated roof that looked like brightly-colored clay. The electric light outside the front door buzzed as her silhouette walked up to the porch, growing lighter until her beak, tufted cat ears and lion’s tail could be seen clearly. She started to open the screen door, then saw her reflection in it and laughed, shaking her head to herself.

Kicking off her shoes, Feather dug out the keys from her purse and fumbled with them for a moment, trying to unlock the door. Then from inside the cottage came a pained moan, like a person struggling to keep from emptying her stomach. Feather’s eyes widened, and her beak fell off, revealing an open mouth. She hurried to unlock the door as her ears folded back into her hair, and her tail whipped back into her dress.

She left the door open, walking past the fireplace embers and holding her hands out to keep from bumping into furniture silhouettes. “Rissa-” she called out, before stubbing her toe on something and hopping around it. “Rissa, dear, are you alright?”

The door to her room was most of the way closed, a sliver of light all around it. It creaked as Feather pushed it open, and crept around it into Rissa’s room.

It wasn’t much bigger than a large closet, with barely enough room to stand behind her chair. Her shelves were lined with strangely-shaped toy models, and pictures and thick books of all different sizes. In her enormous chair, nearly swallowed up by it, a young girl in a white t-shirt and shorts was slumped back, taking deep breaths with her eyes closed.

Feather stood there for a long moment, watching Rissa fight off her latest attack. Rissa’s face was pale white, and just as the color seemed to be gone from her skin, it was gone from the rest of the room as well. The wallpaper was dull gray, and the shadows behind her bright telescreen and between the raised keys of her touch-typer were ominous. Crumpled up pieces of paper and old dirty dishes littered the desk, and even the toys and pictureframes on it seemed dark and menacing as they loomed over her.

There was no sound except for her breathing.

Finally she swallowed, spent another few seconds breathing fast to catch up and then tried to sit back upright. Feather moved in quick to help her, but she brushed Feather off and brought herself up, pulling the chair back towards her desk as she did so.

Feather tried to step up beside her, but the room was too narrow. It was a long second before she spoke. “Are you doing okay?”

The corner of Rissa’s head that she could see shook side-to-side. No.

“Is there anything I can get you?”

No.

“I made some soup this morning, before I left … ”

No. No. No.

Feather reached around carefully, to take the dirty dishes from her desk. As she did so, her eyes fixed on a (fading, black and white) photograph, of a very young girl standing in front of a magnificent four-legged gryphon. The gryphon’s beak and eyes were shining and its wings were spread proudly, and the girl was grinning and holding onto tufts of its fur.

Feather smiled, sadly. “Remember when we … ”

Her voice trailed off. She saw Rissa double-click on something, and begin to type on her ‘typer. The words appeared on the screen: Yes, I remember what it was like. You’re an excellent flier, when you let yourself be a gryphon.

“Someday, do you think we could … ”

But Rissa had already started to type. No, I don’t. Gryphons weren’t allowed at your school.

“Or at work.” Feather sighed, and looked down while Rissa kept typing. When she looked up, she’d already finished a sentence.

Or more or less anywhere. But it was fun while it lasted, she wrote. Kids should have fun and games. Grown-ups have more important things to worry about. Like tending the Machine, and their sick little sisters.

It’s okay. I’ll be alright. I’ve got schoolwork to do anyway.

Her eyes were still looking straight ahead, up at the screen, and her limp arms rested on the desk that was too tall for her.

Feather played with a strand of her hair for a moment; dry, dull, and lifeless. She let it settle, and remembered that it hadn’t always been that way.

“I’ll get you some water,” she said.

Rissa said nothing.

Feather finally stepped back around her chair, and went out and closed the door softly.

The next day, Feather got dressed in her work clothes (a pair of ratty old sweats and mudboots, perfect for the underground parts of the Machine) while Rissa was still asleep. Tossing her keys and other essentials into a fanny pack, she stepped out the front door quietly, into the cold air and hard dirt path lit by the sunrise. Then she jogged out to the stop at the end of the road, past the pond where the frogs were still singing; past the mailbox that hadn’t been visited yet.

And there she waited.

She set two new high scores on the games on her phone while she waited.

She kept checking the time, so she knew how long it was taking. After an hour and a half the sun had risen, and the frogs had hidden, and the air was starting to get warm. The mist had disappeared from the road, and so she stepped out and looked in both directions. Nothing.

If only she hadn’t had to sell her jalopy! Or maybe … but no. As much trouble as she’d get into for showing up late, Feather would be in even more trouble for showing up as a gryphon. It wasn’t just a thought, or even a feeling; it was a state of mind, and it was hard to break into and out of. It stayed with you all day, or all week even, and it got in the way when you tried to do things. Things like get along with people who weren’t as fond of magical creatures as Rissa was.

Feather waited a long time.

She spent the next few hours pacing up and down the path that led up to the stop, looking up from her phone whenever she heard an engine noise but never seeing the right one. Pretty soon it was getting uncomfortably warm outside, for someone who was wearing sweats, and she was getting uncomfortably hungry. So with a last look over her shoulder, she headed back towards her house, half relieved and half disappointed.

Feather considered calling her workplace to tell them what’d happened, but she knew that it’d do her no good; they almost never answered the phone, and even if they did they wouldn’t listen. So she was just putting her phone up as she got up to the front porch. The main door past the screen was open, and the smell of frying bacon was coming from inside.

She pulled the screen open, and took a deep breath of the sizzling grease smell. She thought she detected eggs, too. “Rissa?” she called out. “Are you making breakfast?”

“Brunch.” It was the electronic voice of her assistive communications device. “Would You Like Some.”

“Yes, thank you … ”

Feather stepped into the kitchen, and saw her thin, wispy sibling up next to the stove, one hand slowly stirring the eggs and the other hand typing on a small keyboard she had up on the counter. “What Are You Doing Home,” it asked.

She sighed. “They didn’t show up.”

“That’s Too Bad.” Rissa turned over the bacon without looking up.

“Do you need any help?”

They talked, and made and ate brunch together. Feather realized how much she’d missed talking to her; all these hours they could’ve spent with each other put into the both of their classes, instead. Then her job search, and now her new job. How much longer did they even have left? How much longer did she have left?

After brunch, Feather asked Rissa if she wanted to go out to the pond together. Rissa’s face was impassive as always, and her hair was tangled and unwashed. But she finally nodded to Feather, and after a few moments’ preparation the two of them stepped outside.

Rissa’s footsteps were fragile and awkward, and she was hesitant about leaving her sandals behind. But she finally stepped out onto the cool, wet grass; then, nearer the pond, let the mud squish between her toes. She ran her fingers contemplatively over a willow branch, her other arm holding her lightweight keyboard, while Feather picked ripe white swampmallows. Then the two of them ate them, sitting down by the pond, getting their feet wet and behinds muddy.

“Remember when Brianna was here?”

“Yes.”

“Those were the days.” Feather grinned, and splashed her feet into the water.

Rissa typed for a moment before hitting Enter. “I Was Thinking Of Different Days.”

“Oh?” Feather looked over at her.

“Before I Was Stuck In This House. Before I Was Stuck In This Sick Body.”

“I’m sorry … ” Feather said, but Rissa’s face was still blank. And she was still typing.

“It Doesn’t Matter. None Of It Matters. You Have Your Work. I Have My School. The World Isn’t Here For Us To Experience. We Are Here To Survive In It. Anything Else Is Secondary.” Rissa slammed the Delete key a couple of times, as she corrected what she was saying. Someone else might have dismissed that, but Feather knew she was frustrated.

A Nipper grabbed onto Feather’s foot, in the pond, and she kicked it away before looking back at her sister. “Aren’t there things that you’d like to experience?”

Rissa sat there for a long moment, staring straight ahead, before typing it out without looking. “Yes.”

“What are they?”

“It Doesn’t Matter.”

“Rissa … ”

“Your Work Is More Important.”

Feather knew then what she was talking about. But she had to weigh the consequences, in her mind. Would she be able to show up for work tomorrow that way? Would she be able to show up at all?

Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she hid her beak and her tail.

Maybe a coat would cover up the feathers.

Maybe shoes for her claws, and gloves for her talons, and wings pressed close to her sides …

“And I Have Work To Do As Well,” Rissa finished.

Feather took a deep breath before speaking. “Rissa,” she said, “would you like to fly today?”

Rissa was silent a long moment. Then she lowered her head and closed her eyes. “Yes,” she typed, long fingers stabbing the keys.

“Alright … ” Feather stood.

She closed her eyes and imagined flight; silky fur, and downy white feathers, and pointed ears and a beak. She imagined walking on all fours, wings outstretched on her back, seeing farther than anyone else can. She imagined herself as she’d once been, as she’d once let herself be, as-

HONK!

She jumped, and her leonine features grew back into themselves, retracting so fast she had whiplash and leaving her in a cloud of feathers. She was on hands and knees in the grass, breathing hard with exertion, looking up to see what had …

The bus.

The bus.

HO~ONK!

Feather looked up past her beak at Rissa, tail swishing behind her. Rissa’s face was impassive; guarded, again. She looked up at Feather, and then looked down the path towards the stop.

Feather jumped to her feet, brushing herself off and trying to get mud and grass stains off of her clothes. She walk-hopped towards her shoes and socks, one paw still leonine, then grabbed them up in one hand and hobbled towards the dirt path. “I’m sorry … ” she said, out of breath. “I’m sorry … ”

Rissa watched her go, barely moving or blinking, and waited until the engine had roared and then died away into the distance. Then she typed out a word, and hit Enter.

“Goodbye.”

Feather spent the entire ride next to a large, impressive man in a suitcoat. He sideyed her while reading his newspaper, as she tried to brush off the grass stains from her knees and mud stains from her hands and her bottom. And she grinned sheepishly up at him, sweating profusely and trying to make her beak and her tail go away.

They were still there when she showed up at work. Mister Cowl tugged on both, trying to get them to come off, but nothing happened except that it hurt. So instead he just frowned at her, and gave her a look that said What am I going to do with you now?

If he hadn’t seemed to have much time to babysit her yesterday, he had all the time in the world today. Cowl watched her wrangle the cordbiters, sweep up the dustbunnies, and shoo all the pogo-stickbugs into their pens. He took his tea while he watched her wrestle the birds in the atrium, the ones who were too stupid to know they could just fly up to where she was trying to get them to. He didn’t offer her a cup this time, and she didn’t ask for one, either.

He let her go at midnight on the dot, and by then Feather was hot and dirty and exhausted. She nodded off on the bus, and nearly missed her stop when they called it out. Finally she made her way up the long and winding dirt path toward her house, each step heavier than the last, and took a long, warm shower before tiptoeing into the kitchen to get something to eat.

There were no lights on in the house. Quiet snoring came from the door to Rissa’s room. Feather took an electric candlestick from the wall and flicked it on to look in the cupboards for dishes, then set it aside to get some leftovers out of the fridge. There were still cherry buns left over from yesterday’s breakfast, and she devoured two of them before realizing what she was doing.

As she threw her trash away, looking close with the light to see what she was doing, she saw something that caught her up short. It was the package to this morning’s bacon. The label said that it had expired awhile ago.

At this, Feather had to stop. Do I feel sick? she asked herself. I don’t think so … what if it takes awhile, though?

Then her eyes widened. What about Rissa? Is she doing okay? If something happens to her-

A loud snore punctuated her musings.

Feather looked up, and sighed. Calm down, Feather … you were always a worrier. She’s going to be alright, and you probably are too. If anything, waking her up in the middle of the night will be bad for her.

More snoring.

I’ll get up early and check on her tomorrow … I’ll set an alarm, and if her breathing seems irregular I’ll make sure she’s okay before leaving for work. And if something happens, I’ll take her straight to hospital. That’s what I’ll do …

SNO~ORE.

Feather took a deep breath. Right, then. On to bed …

Five minutes later she crawled under the covers, having forgotten to set the alarm.

A sound startled Feather awake. She jumped, under the covers, then flailed about for a moment, knocking things off of her nightstand before finding the lamp’s “on” switch. It took her another long moment of sitting upright, waking her brain back up, before she realized that what she’d heard was a pained human moan.

“Rissa?”

Another moan, louder this time.

“Rissa!” She got up.

The moans were coming from Rissa’s bedroom, but Feather didn’t go there right at first. There was a special tea Rissa drank, one that helped her with her digestive problems. If there was anything Feather could do to help, making that would be it.

“I’m coming … ” Feather called out, sliding her pink slippers on and shuffling into the house’s cold main room. She made for the kitchen and hurried to get the tea ready, as the moans became more frequent and more intense. This was the worst that Rissa had been in awhile, and it worried Feather.

Teacup and saucer in hand, Feather shuffled back out of the kitchen. As she did so, Rissa gave the most awful, pained, gagging moan that she’d ever heard, trailing off only slowly.

Feather laughed nervously as she pushed the door open, trying to quell her own fear. “I’m sorry, I know it’s taking awhile … ”

The sheets were rumpled, and the quilt had been thrown off. Rissa lay on her side, motionless, clutching her stomach with both arms. And it took Feather until she’d set the tea down on the nightstand to notice that she wasn’t moving. Or breathing.

” … Rissa?”

Feather nudged her arm gently. She did not move.

“Oh. Oh … ” Feather started to shake.

What was it? asked a voice in her head. Was it the bacon? But it couldn’t have been, because I don’t feel sick …”

Her feet had already started to move. She’d made it back to the kitchen and started dialing the emergency numbers on the phone when she realized she had to give CPR. So she ran back to the bedroom, falling and kicking off her slippers and stretching the phone cord, and got to the foot of Rissa’s bed before remembering she had a beak.

Hello? Hello? the phone said.

Feather tugged at her beak with her free hand, then smashed it into the door frame a couple of times. Nothing.

Sweat poured down her sides.

Hello?

Feather threw the phone down and screamed.

Insects glow and sing outside. The pond’s still surface reflects the moon, and a frog eyes one of the hovering motes of light and licks her lips.

Suddenly there is a noise, shrill and piercing and angry and pained. The frogs are silent, some of them turning to look towards the noise. Then there is another scream, a sound like an angry predator, and its dull bass roar shakes the earth. The frogs scatter, hopping and splashing to get away, and after a moment even the insects are silent.

Drywall smashes, wood splinters, and panes of glass break into shards. A taloned arm crashes through one of the outer walls of the house, then a whole section of roof lifts up, as an angry gryphon rears back and cries into the darkness. Its ears are pointed, its eyes are glowing teal gems, and its fur and feathers are pearly white.

Finally it reaches up and tears down the wall, revealing a bed with a crumpled human form on it — one which is now all covered in sawdust. The gryphon reaches down and tenderly takes it by its clothes in its beak, and then steps outside before transferring it to one taloned arm. Then it spreads its wings wide, wider even than the house itself, and takes off, turning around in midair and speeding towards the road and the bus route.

Feather knew the general direction the town was in, but she didn’t know any way to get to it except by following the road. There were no cars or streetlights beneath her, and the trees obscured the road markings. Moonlight glinted off of the upper branches of the trees, and their brightness stung her eyes. She could see in such detail; could feel the wind slice through her fur and feathers, and hear its roar over her racing heart. But the light on the trees nearly blinded her, as she tried to squint down at them to see where the road had gone, realizing too late that she’d lost it.

Feather looked back for a moment, dismayed, beak hanging open and wingbeats slowing. Then she looked down at the limp form in her claws, and held it close to herself as she pressed on, determined. She could feel Rissa’s body up next to her heartbeat, and she willed her own vitality to affect her somehow, to give life to her failing organs.

The lights of the town were far in the distance. She could see them just past the lights of the Machine. From here it was a giant shape, black and ominous, which blocked out a big chunk of the sky and blotted out the glow of moonlight beneath. Feather flew over the edge of the Machine to get to the distant town, and she found herself coughing from its noxious fumes. Then whiplike organic tendrils snaked out from below and tried to grab hold of her limbs, and of Rissa. She grappled with them, cutting them with her claws, and pressed herself even harder to fly past.

She kicked the last one free just as she finally cleared the dark area. But by now Feather was exhausted. The lights of the town were ahead, but they were still far away. Feather found her wingbeats slowing, her head drooping, her eyes squeezing shut in spite of herself. Feather shook her head and pressed on, conserving her energy, trying to stretch it to last until she arrived.

A whole minute passed as she barely flew at all, gasping air into her lungs, catching her breath. That minute stretched into two, and then three. The lights were closer, but not close enough.

Feather took a deep breath and then pushed herself toward the lights, flying bulletlike at them with her limbs (and with Rissa) held close to her sides. After a minute the town spread out underneath her, buildings and lights and parked carriages, and she flew in between wisps of smoke coming up from the stacks of the buildings that were just near the hospital. As she was about to touch down she spread her wings like a parachute and flapped them with all her might, trying to slow down enough to land safely.

It didn’t work. She clutched Rissa to her chest as she tumbled end over end on the cobblestone street, crashing through men-at-work barricades and smashing a melon cart next to a wall.

Feather unfolded onto her back, her ears ringing and her feet covered in sticky juice. And on her downy chest lay her sister’s form, laying still as if sleeping.

Cowl opens one eyelid, unamused, at the flapping and beating sounds over his roof. Then he sits up in bed, at the bashing, crashing noises outside, which go on for a second and end in a THUD.

He lights a match over his nightstand, then touches it to the stub of a candle that’s still in its holder. After that he takes it and stands up, feet finding his slippers, and huddles in his nightclothes all the way to the front door, where he looks out the glass window. The window is murky and it’s dark outside to boot, but he can see something large just across the street, and people all ’round running up to it.

A hand grabs his coat and his blue cap, and he puts them on before taking his candlestick back up and shuffling on outside. Now he can hear people calling to each other, and he can see the commotion: There’s an enormous gryphon laying prone on the street, its wings flat to the ground and its chest heaving with exertion. It looks to see what the people around it are doing, as men run from the hospital carrying a stretcher.

One of Cowl’s eyebrows rises.

The doctors and nurses lay someone out on the stretcher, right there on the street, and start working on him or her. After a long moment, the gryphon heaves and stands up on all fours, scraping melon rinds from its feet and shaking itself dry. Cowl holds up a hand to protect himself, but he’s too far away to get wet, and the doctors don’t seem to mind.

They continue to work, and the gryphon watches them closely, its feathery head just over their shoulders. Cowl looks around at the street, at the dim lamps overhead casting shadows on them, and shivers before fumbling to check his watch. Another long minute passes.

Finally one of the doctors shakes his head and removes his stethoscope, and closes the fallen form’s eyes with one hand. The gryphon blinks, as through disbelieving, then again as it fights back tears. It screams, and the sound is so loud that everyone jumps, as it echoes off buildings and across town. Cowl drops his candlestick and cringes, peering through his arms as the gryphon’s scream dissolves into screeching sobs.

It takes Cowl a moment to realize what’s happened. Then he closes his eyes, and places his hat over his heart.

Wind blasts through the upper reaches of the Machine’s atrium, as “stupid” birds flock together from floor to rafters, huddling to stay warm. In the cold winter light Cowl takes his tea from beneath a thick coat, sipping at the hot liquid and stirring to cool it down.

A huge creature behind him snorts. Cowl’s teacup smashes to the ground, as he whirls around and presses himself up against the cart to look. Across the room from him is a feathery white gryphon, the same one from that night. The same one from the papers.

“H … ” He coughs. “Hello, Feather! G-good to see you again!”

Her claws click on the floor as she paces up to him. “Things h-haven’t been the same without you … ” he goes on. “How have you been? I’d offer you a cup of tea if you could take it that way … “

She glances over at the tea cart, then back at him, unamused. By now he is wringing his hat in his hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t express my condolences … about your sister.” He coughs. “Terrible tragedy, really … “

Feather looks away, and closes her eyes.

“You’re welcome to take time off for grieving purposes … ” He’s backing away, putting the cart between him and her. “Take as much as you like! And you can come back any time … “

Feather snorts again, derisively. Then she spreads her wings wide, feathers gleaming in the sunlight, eyes closed and head held high. Her beak shines.

She takes off, wingbeats echoing throughout the room, blasts of displaced air knocking Cowl onto his back and nearly tipping the cart. In lazy circles she flies upwards, through rays of light coming from tiny windows. And as she does so, the birds all look up at her, their glassy eyes comprehending.

They take off after Feather, circling with her, flying up into the light. And as she leaves the Machine and looks out on its vast gray expanse, giant tentacles stir but flop back to the roof, exhausted. They don’t have any strength in the sun. Not enough to fight back.

The birds land on them, and pick at them with their beaks. A second later, Feather joins in, her claws gleaming as she pounces.

I’m writing that down first because it’s the hardest thing for me to say. You know how it is with some things. They mean so much to you that even if no one would think them odd to say, you feel like you’re exposing yourself just by saying them.

You’re probably scratching your head right now, wondering what’s got me so worked up. Okay, let’s back up and try this again …

I love wolves. Not in that way, you. I’m in awe of them. And I’m … I …

Oh, man. I can’t say that part yet. I’m sorry.

It wasn’t like this when I was little. When I was little wolves were just fun. I liked them a lot, but that’s all they were, was fun. My parents took me to the zoo and I’d read the whole plaque in front of the wolf exhibit. And I’d howl at them and they’d howl right back, and I’d grin to myself.

It wasn’t until life got hard that wolves started to mean more to me. The things I was going through, in high school and with my parents, were so taxing that I had to come up with a whole new way of coping with them. I didn’t have any human role models, because I didn’t know any humans like me … none that I wanted to be, anyway. So when I imagined something surviving what I was going through, it was a wolf.

They’re survivors, you know. Not bloodthirsty killers, survivors. And you could say that that takes away from their beauty … that they’re not mystic fairy-creatures, either. Just animals struggling to stay alive. But at the time, I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful than a creature that could live through anything, without losing sight of the goal of survival. Without losing — or needing — hope, because it just kept going no matter what.

Wolves are beautiful because of the stress nature puts on them. And I knew I wasn’t … I couldn’t be as awe-inspiring as they were. But I could try. And in my best moments, I saw myself as one. I didn’t draw or write or roleplay online, but I invented my own separate life where I was a wolf on the inside, who just happened to have a human appearance and human reasoning powers. And my wolf-self didn’t understand why all these things were happening to me, or why people were so cruel to each other. But I forced myself to accept that I was this world’s omega, or punching bag. And that someday I’d get through it, and find my own pack.

That’s how much wolves meant to me … how much they still do. So whenever I find a wolf plushie in stores, or hear people talking about wolves on TV, or see anything else about wolves, I have to hide how interested I am. I don’t wear wolf t-shirts or accessories, and I don’t ever talk about wolves in casual conversation. Not because they’re not important to me, but because they’re so important I’m afraid of embarrassing myself. At best I’d get tongue-tied, and at worst I’d be making myself vulnerable to someone who could use that to hurt me. It’d be like a real wolf baring her throat to a wild dog.

That may seem surprising to you. But high school’s just as dangerous as any natural environment. Except that there’s nothing natural about it, and there’s no beauty or reason to it.

Wolves are shaped by their circumstances, and I was shaped by mine. That’s why they’re all majestic beings, and I was an unhealthy young human female, with a bad sleep schedule and a lousy chemical-filled diet. And that’s why I knew, deep down, that no matter how hard I tried I could never be like one of them.

So when I actually became one, I freaked right out.

There. I said it. I became a wolf.

As near as I can tell, I am one right now, in exactly the sense that I imagined it to help me to get through high school. I look like a human, and I’m pretty sure I think like I always have too. But I physically changed into a wolf, a real flesh-and-blood one that walks on four legs. Also some kind of two-legged hybrid. And whatever let me do that, I still have it inside of me. I’m a wolf inside right now, and I was outside just a few hours ago.

Does that make me a were-wolf? Or a skin-changer, or some kind of anime nature spirit? I don’t know, and I’m scared right now and I’m sweating a lot and I’m trying to write this all down really fast before I can lose my nerve. And I’ve got wolf ears and a tail right now, so maybe I am an anime character. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what’s happened to me. I’m grateful beyond words and terrified at the same time, and it makes my throat seize up and I start whimpering just to think about it.

Can’t write, I’m too scared …

Deep breaths. Deep, shuddering breaths … letting myself calm down. Swallowing, and gasping for breath afterward, still trying to settle down.

Settling … settling …

Okay … as you can see, I’m kind of a wreck right now. Hopefully, by writing this down I’ll be able to think clearly about it.

Let’s start with what happened last week …

It started last Sunday. I made the mistake of deciding not to go to church with my parents, and that set them off. We’ve been having these “discussions” about religion lately, and I really don’t want to describe this one except to say it was bad. They had a lot to say to me when they got back, and because I’m … er, because I was still living with them, I had to sit there and listen.

I should’ve known better than to protest. I should’ve known better than to do anything other than what they wanted me to. That’s what omegas do, they’re punching bags and they just take what they’re given …

Okay, that sounds really self-pitying on paper. But I’ve never been much of a rebel. I just happened to disagree with my parents, on religion, politics … just about everything. But I didn’t want to pick fights, I just wanted to ask honest questions. First so I could understand what was going on, and then later, when I’d made up my mind, to try to get my parents to consider a viewpoint besides their own.

That got them really upset, and every single time I’d be kicking myself afterwards. I’d tell myself how stupid I was for opening my mouth to them, or for being / believing differently from them. But no matter how many times I did this to myself, I couldn’t make myself not be different. I was stuck with my feelings and conscience just like I was with my hair or my legs, and in the house where I lived they were disabilities.

You could ask why I didn’t leave sooner. The fact that I was in high school and did not have a job helped. But that night, while they were watching TV, I put my boots and coat on and slipped out the back door. I had to get out and be by myself, and I was hoping not to come back until they had both gone to bed.

It was cold and wet out in the sticks where we lived. Fog shrouded the trees and obscured the road, dark grey in the dim evening light. I did not have a flashlight, but I knew where to go. I’d gone out like this many times.

Do you know what it’s like, out in the woods in upstate New York in midwinter? I mean when it’s not snowy. Inside it’s all warm, sickly smells, and angry guys talking on TV. But outside it’s just … quiet. You’re the noisiest thing out there, crashing through brush and crunching on fallen leaves, and every time you stand still you can hear lots of nothing. Your own breath is the loudest thing out there, and it freezes your lungs just like your fingers and toe-tips are already becoming cold. So you start moving and making noise again, and thinking about where you’re headed.

There’s a tiny clearing I like to spend time in. I mean tiny as in “about the size of your living room.” There’s a big rock in the center of it, like the size of a sofa or love seat, and there are pine needles all over the ground. The trees are so close together you can only see bits of the sky even when standing on top of the rock, which you shouldn’t do when it’s wet and dark out or you might fall and hit your head on something. But I sat on it and pulled my knees to my chest, and rocked back and forth just a bit.

It looked weird, but there was no one around and it helped me to destress. So I sat there awhile, rocking on top of my rock. And I’m trying to think of more ways to use “rock” in that sentence, but you’re groaning at me so I’ll just continue.

Anyway, that’s where it happened. Not a werewolf attack … nothing bit me, as far as I can remember. I just got started thinking about what it’d be like to be a wolf. Even a lone wolf, without a pack. This place would be my reality, I thought … this cold outside would be my daily experience. Not the noise inside. Not my parents.

I had no illusions about it. I spend lots of time outdoors. I’ve even been camping before, and not in a motorhome. I knew it’d be cold, and wet, and windy, and if I found some kind of shelter I’d have to defend it. I’d have to struggle for food and kill things to get it, and deal with things that wanted to kill me. I might even have to deal with humans, and they’d fear me worse and hate me more than they already do in real life.

I probably wouldn’t have lived as long as I already had, if I’d been a wolf. But somehow, it seemed more real to imagine myself as one, out here. It wasn’t “communing with nature” so much as reminding myself that wildness still existed, and it was out here all around us. And our little soap bubble of civilization, of organized cruelty, would be gone someday … whether because it popped or I left.

Someday I would live where it’s quiet, I thought. Someday I’d be myself, and do things that mattered, and actually live like the things out here do. Instead of living this fake high school life.

Like a wolf, maybe? came the thought. And I nodded, and unfolded and crouched up there on the rock, as if surveying the darkness for prey. I felt so alert out there, so alive and aware. So un-sheltered. And young things ought to be sheltered … but then, my parents’ lives seemed as fake as mine. I knew I didn’t want to end up like them.

What do you want to end up like? It’s like I imagined the words. So the next thing I imagined was myself as a wolf, standing there on the rock.

“Okay.”

This time I heard it. Not out loud, but so clear in my mind that I had to check, to see if someone was near me. I was slightly creeped out …

… but not so much as I was just a second or two later.

It started with a strange feeling in my stomach, and an itching on top of my head and in the small of my back. I reached up and around to scratch, and one hand brushed pointed, furry ears on top of my head, while the other took hold of a tail. It pulled, and felt it attached to my spine.

I froze. My brain took long seconds to process this. And before my conscious mind even knew what was happening, I became uncomfortably warm, and started sweating all over.

After that the real changes came, slow enough that I felt them happening but fast enough that they all blended together. And my mind underwent a change, too. It was called a nervous breakdown.

My thoughts were like “No … no, please! I don’t want this! I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry … help! Please help me!” And I started screaming and crying, but I don’t know what I said, or if any words even came out. I was scared to death, because this felt as bad as dying, if not worse.

I don’t remember everything that happened. I don’t even know where my clothes went. I just remember that my screams ended with a howl. And then I choked up and covered my head with my front-paws, crying and shaking and whimpering.

The feelings did not go away. My four-legged body was still there, and I was still in it, and nothing was changing or undoing itself. I screamed in anguish, and it came out as another, long howl. Then I started pacing the top of the rock, back and forth, bare paw-pads feeling the rough stone and lichen.

It’s over, I thought. Everything’s over. My dreams are shot, my life is … is … I tried to look back at myself, and saw only black, fluffy fur, and a nervously-wagging tail. I whimpered again.

This is not me, I thought. It can’t be! I mean, it’s something I like, but … how? Why? What happened? I’d planned to spend that evening outside in the cold, and then go back inside to dream about living this way. Not to actually be a … a …

It was too much. I broke down and started shaking and whimpering again, huddling there on top of the rock. The awe of seeing, of being this animal, just made what was happening all the more cruel. I could no longer use the thought of creatures like this to inspire me to face my challenges. Instead I had to face its challenges, and would probably die in less than a year. And everything I had looked forward to was gone.

Wolves in the wild can be playful and happy, and live what seem to be fulfilling lives. But if you’d told me that right then, I would’ve bitten your throat out.

I’m not sure how long I was there. Long enough to get cold, I know … long enough to feel the freezing cold wind start to blow around me, and fill my cupped ears and chill me through my fur. I flattened my ears and huddled there, paws and neck pressed down to the rock, tail twitching and freezing off out in the cold. (At least, that’s what it felt like. You know how your fingers and toes always turn into lumps of pain in the cold, even when you’ve got gloves and boots on? With tails, it’s worse.)

I knew I needed to take shelter. Even being just beside the rock, instead of on top of it, would have helped. But I was so scared that I didn’t want to move. It was like my brain had locked up.

It didn’t help that the whole world seemed alien now. I could see farther into the darkness, because it didn’t seem as dark anymore … more like a muted gray. But that only made me more conscious of how alone I was, and how there could be anything out there. I could see a dim glow through the trees — the light from a streetlamp, I eventually realized, way down by the road — and I could hear the car engines, whenever anything drove by off at the edge of our land. They hadn’t used to bother me, but now they sounded different; louder, more menacing. Angrier. At first I thought I was imagining things, but then I realized I was hearing frequencies humans did not. No one had bothered to make things appeal to a wolf’s senses, so even the familiar seemed jarring to me.

Don’t get me started on the smells.

I could only imagine what it’d be like to try to go home. I remembered when Eustace got turned into a dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and how he’d spelled things out in the sand. Some of the people I knew could get away with that, I thought. They had friends, parents, or siblings who would listen to them, even then. But I knew my parents wouldn’t. Everything they listened to, from their TV shows to their religious leader, taught them that things that weren’t normal ought to be hated and feared. They already didn’t like me that much, and I could only imagine how they’d react to this … if I even got the chance to explain.

So what options did I have left? Wolves had hard lives, and they needed years of practice to be able to live them. Even then, they didn’t live as long, and they rarely died of natural causes. I seemed to be healthy, but for how long? Was I seventeen in wolf years or human years?

I knew what I’d have to do to survive, if I couldn’t turn human again. I’d watched enough documentaries. And I was pretty sure I could live off of raw meat, if it was that or starve to death. I wasn’t sure if I knew how to do all those things, though. And beyond that was a bigger problem: I didn’t belong here.

There haven’t been wolves in New York in forever. So how long until some human saw me and decided to get rid of me, I wondered? It didn’t help that I looked distinctive — curse my fantasies of having a glossy black coat! And even if I stayed far away from humans, and managed not to get shot during hunting season, I’d still have to deal with packs of wild dogs and other dangerous animals. Animals that I wasn’t equipped to deal with, physically or mentally … any more than I was equipped to deal with what had just happened.

I say this because I also felt like I didn’t belong there, in that body. I was trying my best to ignore every feeling I got from it, because I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be having them. The sights and the sounds and the smells were inescapable, because they were part of the nightmare that I’d gotten into. But the feel of my pawpads and claws on the rock, of the shivers that ran down my spine to my tail, of breathing and swallowing inside my muzzle … these were all things that I tried to block out. I just couldn’t handle them.

That was another big part of the reason that I did not want to move. It was like acknowledging that this wolf body was there. And I knew that I had to, but I was so scared that I couldn’t make myself.

I finally had to disassociate. I was like “Okay, there’s this wolf here, and I need to move her down out of the cold.” Then I took a deep breath, and jumped down without looking, the wind rushing fast through my ears.

I nearly twisted my paw. As it was, I landed on it the wrong way. So I hobbled into the lee of the rock, walk-jumping over cold ground and feeling sharp pain that I tried to ignore.

It didn’t work. I whined, and flattened my ears, and pressed my feet, neck and stomach to the icy ground, trying to warm it up. I felt cold wind blowing across my nose, so I kind of scooted backwards a bit. Then I felt it on the tip of my tail, and I tried to move it out of the way but it just didn’t want to stay still. It was so cold that it had to keep twitching.

I whined again. Why couldn’t I be inside?

There wasn’t anything else I could do, so I waited. I waited for the ground to warm up … I waited for the wind to stop blowing. I waited for this wolf form I didn’t deserve (in a bad or good sense) to go away, and be replaced by my old one.

All that happened was the ground warmed a little, even as the moisture on the tip of my muzzle turned into ice. Despite that, I started to drift off, and I didn’t know if it was because I was sleepy or freezing to death. Would I be able to tell? I wondered.

In the end, I decided that it didn’t matter. Nothing made any sense anymore, and I didn’t have any better ideas for where to go to find shelter anyway. I let myself drift, and I welcomed oblivion, because it meant that I wouldn’t have to deal with this any longer …

… or so I thought.

I was still a wolf in my dreams. I can’t tell you how much that disappointed me.

I was in a huge clearing, the trees packed close in around it. The air was still, and the moon was full, and there were howls in the very near distance. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled around me, and I turned every way, trying to see where they were. But I only caught fleeting shadows.

I eventually heard crashing footsteps, but they were all headed away from me. The howls went into the distance. I sat there on my back legs, looking in the direction they’d gone, and feeling awful self-doubt. What was that? Who were they? Was I supposed to be going with them or not? I felt like I’d made the wrong decision, and I didn’t even know I was supposed to be deciding something.

The air all around me was quiet. I finally got up and paced towards the moonlight, towards a glint of it on the ground.

It was a lake. Either that, or a really big pond. I could see the treetops across it, but just barely, because the light on the surface was so bright. It would’ve been mesmerizing if it wasn’t so painful to look at.

I looked beneath it and saw my reflection, and my breath just stopped in my throat. It was black and fluffy and beautiful, with bright green eyes and a moist, healthy muzzle. It was me … the way that I’d always imagined myself. And its eyes were wide open with shock.

I stood there, frozen, not moving or taking a breath. And slowly, those eyes began to water.

I broke down and cried. And it felt weird and sounded unearthly, but I had to do it anyway. I wasn’t in a panic from what was happening to me, like last time. Instead, I knew what had happened, and I was tortured by it.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t always wanted this. If I hadn’t spent half my childhood pretending, and dreaming that I was a wolf. If I hadn’t read books and played games and watched TV shows about wolves, and lurked on online forums where people pretended to be wolves and kicked myself for not having the courage to join in. It wouldn’t have been as bad if they weren’t so beautiful that I knew I could never be anything like them.

And yet, here I was. It was too much for me. I cried my eyes out, and wished that I knew what I was or what’d happened or what I was supposed to do.

That’s when I heard the voice.

It was speaking in words, real words that I could hear with my ears. I just couldn’t hear them well enough to make them out distinctly. But it sounded like the one that’d spoken in my mind just before I had changed, soft and patient and kind.

Try as I might, I couldn’t tell what it was saying to me. But somehow, it didn’t matter. I stopped crying and sat there and listened, perfectly still from my ears to my tail. And it was like my whole insides melted, and became pure peace and contentment.

After all the fights I’d had with my parents, I didn’t know if God existed, what he was like, or even if he was a he. But it felt like I was sitting on his lap. And everything that I’d been worried about did not seem to matter anymore.

You could’ve told me right then that I was a wolf from now on, and I’d never be human again, and I would’ve been okay with that. As it was, I just knew that everything was going to be alright. It was okay for me to be this way, I was supposed to be this way, and I had always been this way inside … I think. That last part was a bit fuzzy, perhaps because it was so hard to accept. But I felt like I had been given a gift, and I was grateful enough to accept it. Sublimely grateful, and flattered.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

When the howls started again, my ears perked. Then I looked up and caught sight of them, in the distance. Eyes and ears and noses, and tufts of fur and wagging tails. I gave a happy bark and got up and ran towards them, and they ran off and I followed this time, followed them into …

Something tickled my nose. I woke up.

I was human again, and was huddled up next to the rock, with my clothes and my coat all in place. The wind had stopped, and the air was barely moving. And the ground was all covered in snow, at least a half-inch of it.

Another huge puff of it drifted right into my face, and started to melt. I reached up to brush it aside, but my mittened hand was all covered in snow, too.

I jumped up and shook myself off. There was a tiny brown patch of grass where I’d been sitting, and a lot of snow came off my back, my arms, the cap on my head. How long had I been there? It was still dark, but the sky seemed brighter somehow. Was it because of the snow?

The snow kept falling around me, quiet and drifty and wet. And I remembered my dream, and what’d come before it.

There was a poignant sense of loss, like I’d been handed a beautiful Christmas present and dropped it. But then I wondered if that all hadn’t been the present … if I hadn’t been meant to feel what it was like. If I hadn’t needed to, after those past few weeks.

I wondered who or what that voice had been, and what had really just happened to me. Then I started walking back towards the house.

A few minutes later, laying back in my warm, fuzzy bed, I couldn’t help but grin to myself. I tried to forget the transformation, and the feelings of terror and shock, because they’d been so traumatic that I didn’t want to relive them. They’d felt real, on a level that I didn’t want to acknowledge just yet. So instead I thought of the feeling of being a wolf.

I knew what it was like. If it hadn’t just been a hallucination, I’d physically been one. It was the greatest gift I could ever have asked for. I just never would have, because I’d known it couldn’t have been. And yet it had.

The feeling of peace I’d had afterwards overrode my desire to figure out what had happened … or rather, the nagging worries that I would’ve otherwise had, since there was no way I could figure it out. I didn’t know what had happened, and I was okay with that. I was just extremely grateful for it. And I knew that I’d always treasure it.

That night, when I fell back asleep, I thought that it’d been just a one-shot occurrence … like seeing a UFO, or being visited by a dead relative. The kind of thing that’s once in a lifetime, if that, and would never happen again.

I was wrong.

You know how mortifying it is when you get to school, and you find out you had your shirt on backwards and the tag’s sticking out? Okay … now imagine you had real wolf ears and a tail, and you didn’t know it.

I was in tears in the girls’ bathroom. I thought for sure that my life was over. And I was glad there was no one there to see me, not only because I kept tearing off more paper towels and blowing my nose onto them but because they were still there, and I didn’t know how to make them go away. I concentrated on them and tried to make them go away, and they finally did, but then they came back a minute later when I wasn’t paying attention. I had to consciously hold them in, while I was walking through public areas, then finally get outside the building.

I got so many absences that day.

For the rest of the week, I wore a cap and a long, baggy jacket into class. I looked like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia or something. The only reason I got away with it was because the heating was flaky and everyone else was dressing warm too … they were just doing it in a way that made them less likely to get picked on. I still got odd looks and smirks and pointed comments and things, but at least now I knew why. I was just glad that apparently no one had realized what they had seen, and called in spacesuited government agents to take me away.

If that Sunday night had been the high point of my life, then the following week was one of the lowest. I still spent it the same way, trying not to be noticed at school and then trying not to be noticed at home. But I was more afraid than ever, and persistently depressed. And I didn’t dare go outside.

You’d think that after what I went through, I wouldn’t be like that anymore. But that’s the thing about … for lack of a better word, spiritual experiences. When you have them they’re amazing, and you feel like you’re on top of the world. And you are. But then you have to go back down into the world, and get slowly taken apart by the futility and despair. High school and what I went through in that clearing may as well have been in separate universes.

Okay … it did help me once. I was at school, and I was stressed out and scared, and I needed to be by myself but I had to stay there in class. And I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, because all I could think was how unbearable life was going to be if it was always going to be this pointless and cruel, and I was always going to have to hide these wolf ears and tail.

I started imagining some really creative ways of killing myself, because I hated it all and I was scared and tired and sick of it. But then I thought Why don’t I just run off and become a wolf instead? And, I mean, I didn’t know for sure if I could … but after that night, the world seemed just magical enough that I could believe it could happen.

Obviously, I didn’t do that. But just the thought that I could, that it was even an option, made me feel so much better. I just barely got through the rest of that Friday, and stayed up late that night researching wolves online.

(Did you know that the whole thing about pack organization, with alphas and betas and constant fighting for dominance, and omegas as Acceptable Targets and all … it’s never been seen in the wild? It only exists in captive wolves, when they’ve been thrown together against their will from all different families and backgrounds and made to stay there for no apparent reason. Then the assertive ones start jockeying for position, and the most passive ones get picked on cruelly. Remind you of anything?)

Anyway, I slept in late that Saturday, and when I got up my family was out of the house. Which meant I got to play my music really loud, and bake cookies and watch whatever I wanted on TV (which was usually nothing). Except this time, I drew all the curtains and let my wolf ears and tail show the whole time. It felt daring, but the longer I went that way the more comfortable I felt with it … I actually thought they looked nice, when I saw them in the mirror.

Of course I about had a heart attack when my family showed up, and had to pack up and clear out really fast. But that’s just par for the course.

I stayed up late again that night. This time I actually posted on one of those role-playing forums, and created a character and everything. I wanted to put what I’d learned to good use, and maybe become a bit more comfortable with myself and what’d happened to me. I was still living from day to day, and had only the faintest idea of what I had become. But I thought that this was a step in the right direction … and that at any rate, I’d have a while to figure things out.

As it turned out, I had only a few hours left.

I woke up to pounding on my door. My brain was still half-asleep, and it took me a long second to realize I was not still in my dream. The inside of my muzzle was completely dry, and it hurt when I tried to swallow.

Then I realized I had a muzzle.

“Rebecca!” More pounding. My dad’s voice. “Get up. You’re coming to church with us.”

I sat up with a start and looked down at myself. There was a muzzle in front of my field of vision, just like when I was a wolf. And my hands and my arms were covered in fur, the same black fur that I’d had then. My fingers looked gnarled and had dull claws at their tips, and they and my hands had thick pawpads.

The sensible thing to do would have been to try to change myself back, the way that I’d made my ears and my tail retract. The intelligent thing to do would have been to tell my parents I was sick, or come up with some other excuse.

Instead, I started to hyperventilate.

“Rebecca?” The pounding stopped. “What are you doing in there?”

I couldn’t control my breathing. I didn’t even have the strength to sit up, and just barely managed to scoot backwards and lean up against the headboard. I was having a panic attack, and there was nothing that I could do about it.

“Do you have someone in there with you?” He was stern.

I wanted to try to communicate, but I was so scared that I didn’t know what to say. And I was taking such deep breaths so fast that I couldn’t have made words come out, muzzle or no. Instead I whined like a dog, loudly, then stopped and held my breath because I realized what I’d just done.

“She’s got a dog in there,” my mom said. “Get the keys.”

I heard his footsteps go fast down the hall, and the jangle of keys on a keyring. The whole time, my breath was still caught in my throat, and my lungs convulsed and tried to draw air but it was like I was underwater. Then I heard the footsteps on their way back, and finally I took a deep breath before screaming “Don’t come in!”

It was the worst thing I could have done. Not that I had many options.

When they opened the door and saw me, they screamed. I screamed, and started to cry. Then my dad dragged my mom down the hall, and I got up and followed them all the way to their bedroom, trying to say something, anything coherent. Begging them to listen, to understand.

When I saw my dad loading the shotgun, I ran. I tripped and fell all the way down the stairs, got up without even feeling the pain, then wrenched the front door open and took off.

I almost made it to the end of the driveway.

I lay in a writhing heap in the snow. It felt like my whole back was torn open, raw skin and flesh exposed to the cold. I screamed and convulsed, as my blood stained the snow and my heat escaped into the air. Snow got into the wounds on my back. My pawpads were sticky and red.

My dad could have finished me off. I don’t know why he didn’t. I’m not sure what he was thinking. Did he realize what he’d done? Did he regret it? I may never know.

All I could think of was how hurt I was, physically and emotionally. My whole life, everything around me had made me feel that I was not welcome. That I was an aberration which shouldn’t exist. Now I knew that the world had finally killed me, and the fact that the blow had been dealt by my family just made it even worse. I wanted to die, to just make this awful thing that I was go away. And I was so furious at myself for still living, and for still feeling this pain, that I did the impossible.

I got up, on hands and knees. Then just my knees, arms wrapped tight around myself, claws pressed into my shoulders so hard that I drew blood. I shook, with fury and self-hatred. And I could feel something happening, but I didn’t know what it was until I finally stood up and screamed; at myself, at the whole world, at everything.

I wanted to make it all die.

For as long as I’ve lived at my parents’ house, there’s been this huge rock at the end of our driveway. I mean huge like the size of a coffee table. Except that it seemed smaller now.

I walked over and picked it up in both hands, and I flung it back towards the house.

My parents ducked, but my aim was off. It clipped the corner of the house, sending splinters flying, and demolished the swing set that had sat there broken since I was little. I screamed again, filled with hatred, and looked for more things to throw. But the only thing I could see that wasn’t attached to the ground was the old station wagon, and it was up too close to the house.

From the wagon my gaze went up to the porch, and my parents. And our eyes met.

I could have killed them. I wanted to kill them. But the fear in their eyes stopped me. They were helpless and terrified, and that made me hate myself even more.

I screamed at them, but it came out as a roar, awful and pained. If I could’ve translated it, it would’ve been something like “See what you did to me!?” And I couldn’t have, but I think they got the message.

After that I took off on all fours, down the road and into the brush.

I’m sweating and uncomfortable right now, just thinking about what I did and what must have happened to me. But I’m going to try to finish this, before I … do anything else.

I’m sitting in my “friend” Laurel’s house. And I used quotation marks there because I really don’t know her that well. She’s one of the popular girls, and we’ve barely spoken to each other. But she’s shared her lunch with me before, and she’s told her friends to stop teasing me. More importantly, she invited me to a party once, which is how I knew her address.

I showed up there naked and injured, completely in human form, and when she answered the door I begged her for help. She got a blanket for me and took me inside, and her mom checked on my wounds. My arms were still bleeding from where I had gripped them, but my back had completely healed over.

This was just a few hours ago. I’m staying here with her mom right now, writing this on their dining room table while she’s doing something in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure that she’s cooking, because something smells good. Anyway, she volunteered to stay here and look after me while Laurel and her brothers and dad are at church. My wolf ears and tail are out, because I can’t keep them in all the time … she hasn’t seen them yet, but I’m not going to try to hide them from her. I just don’t have the energy.

Laurel said that she’d try to find help for me while she’s at church. She goes to a different one than my parents do, so I believe her. I don’t know what she’s going to do; maybe they’ve got a battered women’s shelter or something. I told her my dad had fired a shotgun at me. I didn’t say what else happened.

They’ve been gone for a long time now. Long enough for me to finish all this. What kind of church is this they go to?

I hope she’s not talking to the police.

*sigh*

*deep breath*

*struggle to hold back tears*

I’m not going to be here when she gets back. And I don’t mean I’m going to run away. I wanted to, when I was at school, but I can’t anymore because now I know that I’m dangerous. I’m not just a wolf, I’m a wolf who’s not afraid of people, not as much as she ought to be. Who tried to kill them, and could do so again.

I’m scared that I’ll hurt someone. I’m scared that the rest of my life will be short and violent, and end with somebody showing me why I ought to be scared of humans. And I’m cursing myself for not learning that to begin with. For not accepting my place and the scraps I was given, and for begging and being uncooperative instead of thanking them for it. I should have done that. I should have learned. And now I won’t have the chance.

I’m not giving myself the chance.

I’m going to

Hello, Rebecca.

Thank you for listening.

I cut off there because they got back from church. Then we ate, and played on their Wii, and I spent the whole day at their house. I was tired and depressed at first, but somewhere along the line I forgot what I was planning to do. I’m sitting in bed now, in their guest room, huddled up next to the nightlight.

I don’t know who wrote that last part in here. It’s not my handwriting. And somehow I was able to keep my wolf ears from showing to Laurel’s family, so they can’t have known what I am.

My heart tells me it’s the same voice that spoke in my dream, only it’s taken me this long to make out the words. I believe it.

I don’t know if I’ll talk to my parents again. Or go back to school, or their church, or anything. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m going to keep on living. Whatever that voice is, it gave me a beautiful gift, twice. The least I can do is to do what it asks.

I’m sorry for what I wrote earlier, and for the damage I caused. But I’m not sorry for being myself, right now. Maybe I will be again, later on, but I’ll try not to be. I’ll try.

If that voice is listening, thank you. I’ll wait until I hear from the person like me to decide what I’m going to do. And I hope that I hear from you again soon.

Good night.

There’s one right now, crawling along the slow lane. Minivans zoom right past it. Enormous tractor-trailers rush past, nearly blowing it off the road.

It doesn’t seem to care. The driver doesn’t, either. He tilts his weather-beaten hat to block out more of the sun, then turns up the AM radio as another tractor-trailer roars past. A high-pitched whine comes out of his speakers, intermingled with static.

He nods. “Right,” he says, even though no one is with him. “Uh-huh.

“Two of them? Wow. And one is a-

“Oh, heck.”

He looks up at the roadsign, promising food and lodging from six major brands. “Okay, I’m coming up on it now.”

The exit’s in a quarter of a mile. Driving one-handed, he reaches down and unzips the duffel bag next to him, before getting out a short-barreled shotgun. He touches a silver icon to it and breathes a short prayer, before returning his gaze to the road.

Two cars scream past him, driving the wrong way up to the Interstate, just before he gets to the exit. Honking and screeching sounds come from behind him, and he holds onto his hat, looking out the window for a split-second before coming down off the highway. More cars tear past at the intersection, and in the distance he hears screaming.

He turns left, heading towards the big travel plaza that’s emptying of all of its customers. Cars are pulling out fast and rear-ending each other, and people are throwing the building’s doors open and running for their lives.

He pulls into the parking lot just as it empties, and takes a spot around the corner from the entrance. Now he can hear snarling and animal breathing, and then a roar right before sounds of crashing and towers of things tumbling over.

He cuts the engine and leaves the keys in the ignition, then unbuckles his seatbelt and pushes the door open, grabbing his shotgun on the way out …

FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO

*squaaawk*

“I’m sorry, what?”

Rachel sighed, and looked around the main prep area to where Tara was staffing the drive-thru window. Her friend was busy counting out change for someone waiting outside, while trying to talk to someone else on her headset.

“Uh, it comes with pinto beans, cheese, guacamole, rice …

“Rice.

“Rice, with an ‘r’.

“No, not ice. Rice!” She dropped the lid to the cup she was filling, and kicked it aside before getting a new one and cramming it on top. “Rice!”

“What are you doing just standing there?”

Rachel jumped, almost ruining the order she was working on, and turned around to see the store manager — all 4’10″ of her. She had Hispanic features, and her nametag read “Alice.”

“Sorry … ” Rachel grabbed up handfuls of lettuce and cheese, and tossed them on before wrapping up the tortilla.

“The evening rush is starting,” Alice reminded her, in accented English. “I know this is hard for you and your friend, but you need to stay on task. You can take a break afterward.”

“I know, it’s just … ” How to explain Tara’s disability?

Rachel finished her prep work, then brought the tray to the counter. “Thirty-four!” she shouted, and someone standing two feet away took it. Without acknowledging him, she walked back to the line, stealing a glance at the drive-thru window as she walked back. Tara had her eyes closed and both fists clenched, and was silently counting to ten.

Rachel glanced up at the screen and began work on the next order automatically. She had it bagged up and ready for the take-out customer when she spotted the manager again. “Um, Alice … ”

Alice coughed, and indicated the bag. Rachel handed it to the man waiting at the counter before trying again. “Listen, my friend’s having a hard time over there … ”

An entire cup of ice and soda fell off the machine where Tara was trying to fill it, and she threw the handful of sauce packets she’d grabbed at the floor in frustration.

Rachel went on hurriedly. “Can I take over from her for a few? She can go get … something … from the stock room … ” Her voice trailed off.

She saw the look on Alice’s face as she considered her friend, and knew what it meant. “If she can’t even handle this, how is she ever going to make it here?” But Alice finally looked up at her and said “You take over for her, then. I’ll get the mop.”

Rachel let out her breath in relief.

She walked over to where Tara was leaning her forehead against the soda machine, eyes closed. Rachel could hear the static of the radio in her headset. “Tara?”

No answer.

Rachel took a deep breath, knowing how much Tara hated this, and shook her gently by the shoulder. She recoiled as if shot, and her radio headset fell to the floor. “-ello? Hello?” it squawked.

“Tara, I’m going to take over for you now.”

“I can’t do this,” she said, in a quiet and just slightly quavering voice that showed that she meant it.

“I know.” Rachel kept her hands to herself, even though she wanted to comfort her. “But tomorrow’s the weekend, and-”

“I hate the weekend.” She stared daggers into the soda machine, not looking at Rachel as she spoke. “I hate our stupid apartment we can’t even pay for.”

“Tara … ”

“Yes, I know how lucky we are to have jobs, but I just can’t do this!”

A car horn honked, outside the window, and Tara jumped and nearly fell to the floor. Rachel tried to help steady her, and she fought Rachel off as if by instinct.

“Go punch something in the stock room,” Rachel said, not realizing that she’d regret it. “I’ll cover for you.”

A long second passed, and even the radio headset was silent. Then, wordlessly, Tara walked back towards the stock room, a blank expression on her face. She jumped again when the horn honked a second time, but managed to catch herself.

Rachel consulted the screen on the drive-thru cash register, and finished the order for the person waiting outside. Then she put on Tara’s headset, rubbing hand sanitizer into her palms as she spoke. “I’m sorry for the delay, can I take your order please?”

Alice came up beside her with the mop and bucket as she started filling drinks, and began to clean Tara’s mess. They both looked to the side as they heard a muffled THWACK — THWACK — THWACK from the stock room.

“I told her to go punch something,” Rachel said, helplessly. “To let out some stress.”

Alice shrugged, and went back to her mopping. “If she damages anything, you’re paying for it.”

Rachel sighed. “I know.”

Another order filled, and everything was quiet … or as quiet as it got at a fast-food restaurant approaching rush hour, she told herself. Two people were working the line, one of them bringing her orders to pass through the window, and Alice was up at the front taking orders. The drive-thru window was starting to get hectic, but Rachel had worked it during lunch hour, and she hoped she’d be able to handle it.

Then they all heard the clatter of piles of things hitting the floor, and a second later Tara screamed in frustration. The line workers held back, but both of them were still frozen, looking towards the stock room as Tara began crying loudly.

Rachel scrambled to finish her order, counting out change and reaching through the window to hand it to the person outside. She jumped, at another clatter of things hitting the floor and another scream from the stock room, and dropped half the coins on the pavement.

Without thinking, she took off her headset and hurried around the line, past the workers staring as Tara’s screams became more bloodcurdling. The door to the stock room was just a crack open, and as Rachel rounded the corner and headed up to it all she could think was dead, dying, horrible pain, crushed beneath piles of boxes …

“Tara!” She threw the door open. “Are you alagplx-”

There was something in the stock room.

It was twice her size, and covered in fur, and tipped with gleaming claws. And as soon as it saw Rachel it growled at her from behind the sack of tortillas it’d torn into, a muffled sound that just about stopped her heart.

I’m going to die, Rachel thought. She had never felt such fear before, and did not understand what was happening to her in response.

Acting on instinct, she slammed the door shut, then fumbled the lock closed just as the creature barreled into it. The metal door dented.

“Mad dog!” she called out to the store. It seemed like the most sensible thing to say. “Mad dog!”

Another slam into the door. Why isn’t anyone running? Rachel was terrified. The whole world seemed like it was spinning around her, and she found herself braced up against the door half in a futile attempt to keep it shut and half to keep from falling over.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to take off around the corner, but slipped and fell on some rags that hadn’t been there before. Her co-workers gasped and jumped backwards, when they saw.

Slipping, kicking the rags away, Rachel stood up and screamed out towards the patrons who were staring at her in shock. “Mad dog! Run for your lives!”

Now her co-workers screamed and ran, and so did the people out in the dining area. Trays got flung aside, napkins went flying, people jumped over tables and slipped on their wrappers. Somebody hit his head on a chair, and got dragged outside by someone else.

She heard Alice saying something and coming out of her office, and ran in that direction. When Alice saw her, she froze in her tracks, her mouth hanging open.

Rachel stopped and looked down at her, trying to think what was wrong. How bad did I hit my head? Am I gruesomely injured? Covered in blood?

I didn’t think she was this short …

Alice turned and tried to run, but Rachel grabbed her by the shoulder. “Alice!”

She screamed and tried to break free.

Rachel took hold of her and spun her around. “Alice, stop … stop screaming and listen to me!”

She stopped screaming and started blubbering, dropping to her knees and pleading in Spanish. Rachel had to get down on her knees too, just to talk to her face to face. “Alice, listen! There’s a-”

She kept crying, hysterical.

Rachel took a deep breath. “There’s a mad dog or something in the storeroom-”

It roared, and slammed into the door again.

“I don’t have a cellphone! You’ve got to get outside and call 911, and-”

SLAM.

“And, like, the National Guard or something! I don’t know!” Rachel looked over her shoulder towards the line, then back down at Alice. She was still crying, and was now doubled over with her face to the floor and her arms over her head.

Rachel hurriedly pulled Alice to her feet and shoved her towards the front entrance. “Go! Get going already!” Alice stumbled and ran on short, shaking legs, not looking back as she did so.

Rachel followed, knowing the stock room door couldn’t hold the thing for much longer. Then she got to the glass pull-door leading out to the main floor of the travel plaza, and she tried to pull it open but it snapped off in her hand. She stood there, shocked, holding the entire door in one hand for a split-second, before she realized that This is too heavy for me! and dropped it. She leaped backwards onto a table, as it fell to the floor and cracked.

What just happened?

She crouched on the table, staring down at the door in shock, as the pounding behind her intensified.

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM-THUNK.

Rachel turned her head towards the counter, as the rumbling, deep bass GROWL filled the restaurant.

I am going to die.

As the man from the pickup truck ran around to the front of the building, shotgun in hand, his features changed. He held his hat in place as long, drooping hound dog ears came out on either side, and a tail poked through beneath the back of his leather jacket.

He ran up to the spaces for handicapped people just as a ball of fur exploded out of the front of the building, cracking the glass on one door and knocking the other off of its hinges. An enormous gray creature was fighting a smaller brown-furred one, grabbing and clawing with its forepaws and trying to hold it down. Their snarls were muted as they tussled, the large creature biting and clamping its jaws down and trying to rip out the smaller one’s throat.

The dog-eared man felt a shiver that made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, running all the way down to his tail. He suppressed it and took aim with his shotgun, waiting for the two creatures to break apart.

They rolled around on the pavement, first towards him (he backed up) then straight into an abandoned car, breaking the windows and denting the side. The brown one broke free just then and leaped over the car in one bound, running across the parking lot towards the dumpsters.

The gray one stood and roared at it, then picked up the car and lifted it high. Nine feet of monstrous dire wolf stood a truck’s length in front of the man, vaguely female and humanoid in shape but with a countenance that was pure animal.

He shot it.

The car dropped behind it towards the man, rolling and smashing across the pavement, and he dove out of the way and looked up to see where the creature had gone. It was clutching its side as red mist vaporized out of a hole in it, not mortally wounded but startled and turning every which way to see what had just happened.

It saw the man, and their eyes met for a second.

He fired again and missed, and it took off as soon as he shot at it, bounding on all fours away and around the corner. That was his cue. He ran back to his truck-

The car had skidded to a stop right beside it, upside-down, its left front bumper nearly holding the door shut. He took a deep breath, and then heaved the car sideways about a foot, before climbing in and slamming the door shut and turning the keys. The engine roared to life, and he backed out of the parking spot and turned around, headed around the building to where the orange one had fled.

The first shot panicked Rachel. She wanted to run away from them, but she looked behind herself and the dumpsters she was hiding behind and all she could see was flat orange ground. I’m trapped! she thought.

Then she heard the second blast and the scared yelp of the monster-thing, and its feet pounding the ground as it ran off. And she thought Wait, that was the police, or a hunter or …

She backed up against the dumpster and slowly found herself settling to the ground, shaking, as the adrenalin started to wear off. She heard the engine start in the background, but it didn’t even register because she was so scared. There wasn’t anything in her but fear and panic, with a thin layer of conscious thought on top, and she found that she couldn’t control her own breathing. She couldn’t even try, she was so scared. And she didn’t understand the strange feelings all over her body — couldn’t see the claws shrinking, limbs contracting and fur growing back in on itself. She could only look straight upwards and gasp for breath and think I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m horribly maimed, all my guts are leaking out, I’m-

Something fell on top of her, obscuring her vision, and she couldn’t even move but could only think Why’s there a blanket on top of me now?

Rachel shifted position, feeling gravel and pavement beneath her bare skin. And why am I-

“Get in!” someone shouted, over the roar of the nearby engine.

She sat there for a moment, not comprehending. Then, slowly, she stood up, holding the blanket and trying to straighten it out. Parts of it felt slick and wet, and she looked and saw that she was bleeding.

“I said-”

Rachel screamed and jumped, and hurriedly wrapped the blanket around herself as a man stepped around the side of the dumpster.

He didn’t seem bothered. “You ready?”

“I … uh … ” She was still short of breath.

“This way.” He turned around and headed back to the truck, that Rachel saw on the other side of the dumpsters as she went and followed him.

She saw something else, too. Is that a tail sticking out of his pants? As if in response, it wagged.

He climbed in, and she did too, carefully. The inside was as old and beat-up as the outside, with cracks on the dashboard and exposed upholstery coming out of a thick gash in the seat.

As soon as Rachel got in, one arm still holding the door open, she thought What am I doing? Why is this man here and what does he want with me? Is he some kind of-

Out of nowhere the creature jumped on the hood, tilting the truck forward and sending Rachel up against the dashboard, her face right next to its claws. She screamed and tried to back up as it roared and tore off the driver’s side-view mirror, trying to pry the truck open.

Something exploded right next to her. The windshield shattered, held in place around the cracks by the safety glass laminate. And the wolf creature was blown backwards and sent into the grass, writhing in pain.

“Hold this.” The dog-eared man handed her the shotgun he’d just fired, and she took it before realizing the door was still open. Setting the gun on the dashboard, she slammed the door shut while the man flipped a switch to turn on the windshield wipers. They creaked to life, and she shivered.

“You ready?” The man looked over at her. It occurred to her that he was probably younger than his truck.

“Uh … ” She looked up at the hole in the dashboard. The blood on it was starting to evaporate, and was misting off into the air like it’d never existed. And behind it, out on the grass, the creature was starting to crawl back to its feet, clutching its wounds and looking mad.

“Good.” He threw the truck into reverse and backed up quickly, the creature seeming to shrink into the background, until the back of the truck hit the curb and went up it and both their heads hit the roof. Then he pushed the stick to put it in gear and spun the wheel around, taking them out of the parking lot with tires screeching just as the wolf creature stood.

It loped towards them on all fours, closing distance fast as the truck sped towards the Interstate. All Rachel could do was watch it get larger, framed by the words “OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR,” and think Hey, I’ve seen this movie before!

As they pulled onto the highway it lunged at them and grabbed on to the back of the truck. But the man spun the wheel until it was finally thrown into the grass, the back door flying off after it. Rachel looked behind her out the window, trying to see where it went, and finally spotted it standing upright and receding into the distance.

Only once it was out of sight did it occur to her that she had been panicking nonstop, and that she was about to hyperventilate. She swallowed and choked her breathing back down, taking deep, shuddering breaths and waiting for her heartbeat to settle.

“You okay?” the man said, glancing at her.

She nodded, too quickly.

“Good,” he said, and went back to driving.

When she’d caught her breath enough to talk, she looked up at him. “What was that thing?”

“Werewolf,” he said, as though it were obvious. As he spoke, his dog ears and tail shrank back into him.

She stared. “What are you?”

“Cynocephalus.” He didn’t even look at her, but kept his eyes fixed on the road.

The truck was rattling from being pushed so fast, and it was hard to hear what he said. She gave him a weird look. “You’re a snuffleupagus?”

“see-no-SEPH-uh-lus. Means weredog.”

A pause. The truck continued to rattle.

“Well, w-where did you come from?” She adjusted the blanket, trying to warm herself and stay covered at the same time. “Did you know? I mean-”

He turned on the radio, to a shower of static.

“Hey, I’m talking here!”

“And you should be listening.” He held up his hand. “Now shush.”

She did listen. “ZZZwhirhummm-her First Cha-KSSSH-cked the werecoyote, but was fought off by-rttTTrTTT-are now heading east on I-40.”

She stared at the radio, confused, trying to make sense of it. Then all of a sudden there was a deep, resonant female voice, and it drowned out all other noise in the truck. “Hello, Rachel. Thanks to you and Bryce, no one was killed during Tara’s First Change. Your friend will be detained in human form by the county sheriff in two hours, and will be held overnight before being turned over to a privately-held laboratory. There, she will be drugged and killed, and her remains will be dissected. Thank you for listening.”

The voice faded back into static, and Rachel found herself laying limp on the seat, plastered in sweat. That had taken more out of her than the entire fight had.

“What was that?” Her voice was a whisper.

“A Harbinger.” He glanced at her. “What did he say?”

“She said … ” Rachel was still in shock. She tried to make herself sit upright, then looked at him. “Bryce?”

“Yes?”

She swallowed. “Uh, my name’s Rachel, just so you know.”

“I know.” He nodded.

“She said … oh man.” Her free hand went to her forehead. “That was Tara, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She … ” Rachel tried to make herself calm down. “Tara’s going to be locked up, and put in a lab and dissected.”

“Did she say when?”

“Sometime tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“I, uh … ” She watched as he got out a water bottle from a sack on the floorboard between them, while he was driving, and sipped at it one-handed before offering it to her. She shook her head, then immediately nodded and drank from it before wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“I don’t know when,” she went on, as he took the bottle from her and put it back where he’d gotten it.

“Did she say who’s taking her?”

“The county sheriff … ”

“We know where to find her, then.” He nodded, eyes still on the road. “I can take you there tomorrow morning.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” She indicated herself. “I just … ”

Rachel stopped, because she realized that she was about to say I just fought off a werewolf one-on-one. And as Bryce slowly looked over at her, she realized what else she had heard on that radio.

Werecoyote.

After that, a peculiar feeling of numbness overtook her on their way into town. And it wasn’t her injuries; she barely managed to check (they had healed over and vanished). It was more like shock, and fear, and embarrassment.

Once they got into town Bryce stopped at a drive-thru, then let her eat while he went into a department store to pick up some clothes for her. She was so numb it took her a minute to take the food from him even when they had already parked, and then she still had to make herself speak in order to tell him her size.

Even letting a guy know how overweight she was wasn’t as mortifying as the knowledge of what had just happened. She knew what werecreatures were, or at least she thought she did from movies and pop-culture references. And they were just so … intense. Their minds were more animal than human, and they gave in to their feral sides and underwent grotesque transformations.

She’d seen it in movies, and it’d made the hair on the back of her neck bristle. The thought that it’d happened to her, that she’d been (that she was) one of those things changing on camera for shock value, was so alien that she just wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out.

Rachel glanced up at the parking lot, and at her reflection in the mirror above the windshield, and saw that she had furry, pointed ears sticking out of the top of her head.

She panicked as though a swarm of bees had landed on her, messing up her hair and pounding the ears to make them go away. It hurt, but she didn’t care. She finally felt them retract, along with the tail that’d come out at the same time, but by then she was covered in sweat again and was losing control of her breathing.

They saw- somebody- I-

Holding still with terror, she flicked her gaze to either side, scanning the parking lot. No one seemed to be watching her. And she was far enough from the main entrance that there weren’t many people there anyway.

Rachel finally took in a long, shuddering breath, and then covered her face with her hands.

I can’t deal with this …

The thought that “Rachel = horror movie creature” was still too much for her to bear. So she found herself imagining a real coyote as a defense mechanism. She’d seen them before on her mother’s land, and she knew they killed sheep and rabbits and things but she ate meat too, after all. And they’d always seemed so skittish, or at most curious. They were so small, at least compared to a wolf.

She imagined a coyote with drooping ears, looking like a forlorn puppy dog, and she laughed nervously because she knew That’s me. That’s what I am right now. She let herself be that thing, not physically but inside; she let herself identify with it, and was scared with it and scared as it. All the movies she’d seen fell away … all the monsters and grotesque transformations. All that was left was her, and she was a coyote and herself at the same time. And she let herself be okay with that.

Rachel felt like a scared animal, and all she wanted to do was curl up and wait for this all to be over. But she started to smell the food Bryce had bought her, now that she was aware of her surroundings again. So she sat upright and unwrapped it, careful to keep herself wrapped up in the blanket, and ate slowly and deliberately. It wasn’t from the kind of restaurant she worked at, but at this point she thought that was just as well.

She remembered as though through a thick haze what it’d been like in her last seconds there, and how she’d tried to get everyone to safety. Had she changed by then? She imagined herself as this monster (she didn’t know what she looked like) coming out into the kitchen and roaring at everyone, thinking she was telling them to run for cover. They must have been terrified, she thought, and laughed and shook her head sadly as she thought of Alice. She must have been terrified.

Bryce unlocked the door and got in just then, saying something about having bought multiple sizes and stashing bags full of coat hangers behind the seat. She just nodded and kept eating, not wanting to think about anything else.

By the time that she’d finished, they’d pulled up to a motel not far from the department store, and for a second Rachel was fearful. But when Bryce came back from the office, he handed her her own cardkey and told her where her room was.

“Clean up and get dressed,” he told her. “And set your alarm for an early start. We’ve got to be there first thing in the morning to keep Tara from being dissected.”

“Okay,” she said, and nodded. It seemed so unreal to her now.

He got out and went to his room, taking his shotgun and a satchel from under the seat with him. After a moment, she opened the door and got out herself. Then she grabbed up a few bags of clothes, holding them in the same hand that was holding the blanket around herself, and locked and shut the door and went up to the door to her room.

The first order of business was to clean herself off. She picked out some clothes to wear, and took a long shower. But as she was looking in the fogged-up mirror, after she’d finished drying herself, she saw the shadows of ears on the top of her head. And she felt her tail wag nervously, inside the towel she’d wrapped herself with.

By this time she wasn’t scared so much as disgusted. Are those going to keep surprising me like that?

But something occurred to Rachel. And so she thought of her ears and her tail as parts of herself, and focused on making the rest of herself like them. It happened so fast that she tripped on her new reverse-jointed legs, and just barely caught herself on the counter.

She could see her muzzle, and feel the thick fur on her hide. Her breaths came in from a long way away from her face, and her chops were held open as her tongue hanged out, sweating in the hot air.

Rachel looked down at her hands, and saw thick pawpads and dull claws. Looking at them from the back, they were shaped like human ones, but were furry and fuzzy and had strange finger-joints. It was unreal, and she knew that she was examining herself … she didn’t feel uncomfortable this way at all. But it reminded her of the times that she’d spent playing with her mom’s dogs when she was little, and feeling their paws and examining them up close and ruffling their fur before running outside.

A thought came to her, and she wiped a spot on the mirror clear so she could look into it. What looked back looked exactly like a coyote’s face, its muzzle hanging wide open and its fur all messed up and wet.

Rachel laughed, and it came out as a bark. She held the next laugh in, clutching her wet furry sides and giggling to herself. That hadn’t looked like a scary creature at all … all she was was this doglike thing crossed with a human. Dogs were okay and people were okay, so she was okay with herself. And as she looked at herself in the mirror, after cleaning the whole thing off, she couldn’t help but think that she looked nice this way, even if her fur was wet. It was thick enough that she could probably go out just like this, if it wouldn’t startle people.

She didn’t think she seemed very powerful this way, though, and could tell she was still slightly overweight even through the fur. She thought she was maybe a couple of inches taller, but that was probably because of her digitigrade legs … and she remembered being taller, back at the restaurant. And taking a door off its hinges.

Rachel opened the door a crack, trying not to let all the steam out, and tested its hinges a tiny bit. Then she pulled on them with more force, but she barely even heard them creak. It seemed just as solid as it always had. How did I do that? she wondered. That were- er, when I fought Tara, she was HUGE. How did I even survive that?

She tried making herself change further, but realized she barely knew how. Maybe it was some kind of instinct … I remember being so scared at the time. Maybe adrenalin does it? She didn’t know.

After making sure the curtains were closed, Rachel took a deep breath and stepped out that way, as her werecoyote self, her bare paws touching the carpet. Then she turned the television on, and alternated between watching it and testing her new self out, walking and moving around just to see how it felt. For a minute she jumped on one of the beds, and even jumped in between them, but she stopped there because she didn’t want to give the cleaning lady too hard of a time.

Just before she fell asleep, she lay sprawled out on top of the blankets (her fur was thick enough), watching a movie on television. A man was turning into some kind of fuzzy, plastic makeup-y creature, that she thought was supposed to be a werewolf. And his girlfriend was screaming … at how bad the special effects are, Rachel thought.

Heh, she thought, and her tail thumped onto the bed next to her a few times. That’s so dumb. She didn’t feel threatened by it at all, because she knew it was nothing like her.

Finally, she turned off the TV, then rolled over onto her side and went to sleep.

Rachel woke up to a knock at the door. She cracked open one eyelid, and cocked her ears towards it. Huh … it’s not even light out yet, she thought.

The knock again, more insistent. “Get up!” Bryce’s voice.

“Okay, I’m coming … ” She drowsily uncurled from the nest that she’d made in the covers and hopped down, only to find that her legs were not working. Rachel let out a yip as she fell to the floor, and tried to stand up but collapsed again.

What’s happening? Rachel looked up and saw herself in the mirror next to the door, and her mind went blank. Instead of the coyote / human hybrid that she’d seen last night, there was a full coyote on all fours.

“You alright?”

“I … don’t know!” She said it and then wondered how she had. My lips- er, muzzle moved, and I heard sound come out, but …

How come I can talk this way, but Alice couldn’t understand me back at the restaurant?

“Well, do you need me to come in there?”

But Rachel had already changed back to her half-coyote self. “No, thanks, I should be fine … ”

Her brain took a moment to process what’d happened. Then it took another long moment to remember what’d happened the day before. She looked herself over in the mirror, but instead of the familiarity from last night there was only a gnawing uneasiness, which threatened to escape in a whine.

She took a deep breath, holding it in for a second and letting it out. Then she shook her head. I should get dressed.

A few minutes later she’d changed back to her human self. She had just finished putting on one of the outfits that Bryce had gotten her, so that she could try it on, when he knocked on the door again. She ran out, bags of coat hangers in hand, the tags still attached to her loose shirt and jeans.

It was cold outside. Breath escaped from her nostrils in white puffs, in the light of the overhead streetlamp.

“I’ll turn the heat on in the truck,” Bryce said.

“What about the … ” But as she spoke, he pulled out a small, gleaming metal item from his pocket, and waved it over the holes in the windshield. The glass creaked and hissed as it fused back together.

” … what was that?”

“A Token of friendship.” He held it out to her. It was a tiny silver medallion. “From the Harbingers.”

“Oh … ”

He closed his palm around it, and put it back in his pocket. “Let’s go.”

Soon the bags were stashed behind the seat, and the truck was rumbling back the way they’d come at just barely the minimum speed limit. It shook, and she shook with it and the cold, and rubbed her hands right next to the heater vent.

Bryce, in his thick leather jacket, was unaffected. “You can change to anthro, if you like. To keep warm.”

“What’s that?”

“Anthro means ‘human.’ It’s like a human with animal features, or an animal walking upright.”

“Ohh, right … I tried that last night. Won’t it … ” Then she noticed she already had ears and a tail.

“Nah, it doesn’t mess up your clothes. Only the war form does that.”

Rachel looked out the windshield at the road. The sky was dark and moonless, and there were no headlights approaching. So she let herself become half-coyote. She felt her fur bunch up underneath her clothing, and her shoes tightened so she kicked them off. “How does it … ” She felt around back. There was a hole for her tail, somehow.

He glanced over and nodded. “Works every time.”

Rachel was still shivering, but she could feel her fur coat’s warmth. She’d need to ask him to turn off the heater soon. “So what’s the one with ears and a tail? Or does it have a name?”

“Kemono.”

“Kimono?”

“Kay-mo-no.”

“Uh-huh.” Rachel said it under the rumble of the truck’s engine. She raised her voice to ask “What does it mean?”

“It’s basically Japanese for ‘person with animal ears and a tail.’”

“Oh.” Rachel tried to adjust her clothing, and found a tag in the way. “Uh, could you turn the heat off please?”

He did.

She looked out the windshield, to see if there were incoming cars. It felt daring to be out in public looking like this, but if somebody saw her she knew she’d be mortified.

Something Bryce had said caught up with her, though. “What’s war form?”

“A form for war.”

She sideyed him. It was easy to do, since her eyes were more on the sides of her head.

“You know,” he said. “War. As in killing people.”

Rachel squirmed.

It seemed he could tell she didn’t understand. He looked over at her before continuing. “You know there’s this chemical called adrenalin, that puts you into fight-or-flight mode.”

She folded her arms, embarrassed and miffed. “I know.”

“When a werecreature feels that way, bad things happen.”

“Bad things?”

“Like nine feet of death cutting through everything in its way.” He looked straight ahead as he spoke to her. “Sometimes you can reason with them. Sometimes you can’t. Best to try after you’ve gotten out of the way.”

Rachel looked straight ahead too, reliving the attack. Remembering the terror. When she’d seen the monster, she hadn’t stopped to think about anything … what it was, how it’d gotten there, what’d happened to Tara or if it had eaten her. Everything she’d done, including locking the door and trying to warn everyone, she’d done on autopilot. Or if not fully on autopilot, then close.

I wonder what Tara felt like? she wondered.

I wonder how she’s feeling now?

Tara felt like a lost, forlorn puppy. She lay curled up on her cot in the concrete prison cell, wearing an orange uniform and bundled up in a thin blanket. Her eyes were closed, but she hadn’t slept the whole night.

The drunken man two cells over was still calling to her. She covered her face and her ears, squeezing tears out of her eyes. Go away, go away, go away …

In her mind’s eye, she saw the puppy she imagined herself as sitting at the table, in the “special” school she’d been sent to after her diagnosis. “Pick up the spoon,” her teacher said.

The puppy stared up at her, confused.

A hand came down and took her paw, and set it down on the utensil. “Pick. Up. The spoon.”

The puppy barked. Then a shadow loomed over her, and she cowered. The hand picked her up and tossed her into a pen, and she tumbled to a stop, shook her head and looked up. Shadows over her gestured and fought.

“Your daughter’s progress is too slow.”

“She’s not my daughter! My daughter’s been taken from me!”

She paced in circles, head low and ears and eyes towards the things casting the shadows. As she paced, she grew to the size of a small dog.

“Talk to me! Why won’t she talk?”

“She’s just too slow. Look, she doesn’t even understand what we’re saying.”

The “dog” looked up, and sighed.

She grew into a young adult wolf, gray and fluffy and lean. And she looked up, as a hand was held out towards her face. At first she held back, hesitant, but then she leaned forward and sniffed it.

It grabbed her, and she fought and squirmed as it forced her into a harness. Then she looked up at the enormous sled dogs all around her, towering over her and forming neat lines.

A whip cracked and they took off, and she ran as fast as she could trying to keep up with them. Her lungs ached, and her heart pounded, and her legs felt like they would give out. But a voice kept saying Go! Go! Faster! Faster! You think you can rest now? There is no rest! Run! Keep running! Don’t ever stop!

The voice sounded like her father. “You think I’m going to pay to support you once you turn eighteen? Think again.”

The voice sounded like her mother. “Honestly, Tara, what’s so hard about this? These are the best years of your life!”

The voice sounded like the people at school, and she cried and fought to forget what they’d said.

She lay there curled into the fetal position, arms pressing the pillow against her ears and the back of her head. Her lips moved silently as the voice found physical form. If you can’t keep up, you’re worthless. If you can’t keep up, you’re worthless. If you can’t keep up, you’re worthless. If you can’t keep up, you’re worthless.

Why can’t you just control yourself? she whispered. What are you going to do if you have one of your meltdowns in public? You could go to jail for that!

Everything turned into a haze.

Tara sat up with her back to the wall, hugging her pillow between her chest and her knees. She rocked back and forth, eyes closed and lips continuing to move.

That’s how she was an hour later, when Rachel came in to rescue her.

The door down the hall opened. But all she heard was snoring, from the drunken man two cells down. She couldn’t hear any footsteps until they were right in front of her.

“Tara,” Rachel whispered.

She looked up. And then she stared. It looked like an animal given part-human form, stuffed into clothes with the tags still attached. Tara felt her insides turn to ice.

“Tara, it’s me! Remember?”

Slowly, Tara shook her head, and clutched the pillow to herself.

“Do you remember the fight at the restaurant?”

She nodded. Then she shook her head. Her wide eyes did not leave Rachel.

Rachel sighed, and leaned her head up against the bars. “Tara, you’re a werewolf. You shifted to what’s called ‘war form,’ and you almost killed everyone there at the store.”

Tara began to shake.

“I’m a werecoyote, and I helped a cyno … cyn … a weredog hold you off. Now we’re breaking you out of here. Come on!”

Tara shook her head quickly, eyes closed, still shaking.

“Why?”

Tara’s lips started moving long before even Rachel’s furry ears could make out what she was saying. ” … should be destroyed, should be destroyed, should be destroyed … ”

“What? Tara, stop saying that!”

She shook her head, eyes still closed. ” … should be destroyed … ”

Rachel sighed, and listened for another long, painful moment before speaking. “Tara … ”

” … should be destroyed … ”

“Tara, listen to me!”

She shook her head quickly.

“It’s not your fault, okay? You didn’t know. None of us did. And you shouldn’t have been there to begin with. It was loud, it was chaotic, they wouldn’t let you sit down … it’s no wonder you lost control. There weren’t any accommodations for your-”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Tara whispered, sniffling.

“I know, that’s why we’re breaking you out!”

“I mean in the world. At all.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “If I can’t put up with the same things that everyone else can, then I just ruin things for everyone. Or end up hurting other people. And now I’ve k- … I’ve … ohh … ” She started crying into the pillow, pressing it close to her face.

It tore Rachel apart to watch her. Can coyotes cry? she thought. She found out she could.

Rachel swallowed. “Tara, you didn’t kill anyone. Okay?”

“How do you know?”

“I know you wouldn’t have. You only fought because you were frustrated and you were being held back. And a … ” She stopped, unsure how to say it.

Tara looked up.

Rachel sighed. “I heard the voice of a higher power, and it told me that you didn’t kill anyone.”

“A higher power should kill me,” Tara whispered, looking away.

“A higher power created you, Tara!” Rachel’s muzzle hung open in between sentences, because she was perspiring like mad. “It made you autistic, and it made you a wolf. And wolves aren’t meant to be caged.”

“I could hurt people … ” She looked up at the wall, as if examining it.

“And they could hurt you too. But at least you know that your actions can hurt other people. At least you try not to hurt them. They don’t even realize when they hurt you. Or when they’ve forced you into a situation where you can no longer control yourself.”

She said nothing.

Rachel’s eyes flicked up to the door leading out. “Tara, they’re going to dissect you.”

She said nothing.

“Tara, please come!”

Rachel’s ears perked, as she heard footsteps and doors opening outside the hall. But Tara just rocked back and forth, seemingly dead to the world, until the door to the hall was flung open.

The drunken man snorted, and woke up.

“Well, what have we here?” a male voice said. It didn’t sound loud and gruff, like the trooper who’d picked her up last night, but silky and polished like a city man. Tara glanced up to see it, but the cell wall blocked her view.

Rachel backed up against the wall. “I, uh … ”

“Shoot her.”

The cell block was filled with LOUD, and the wall was splashed with red. Tara instantly jumped to her feet.

He looked like a recent grad from business or law school. Clean-shaven, with a suitcoat so black it was glossy, and a large onyx gem set into a ring. It gleamed as he straightened his tie, enjoyed Rachel’s shocked look and smiled.

Beside him were two literal stuffed shirts. They wore uniforms and carried rifles, but they were not human. Inside the clothing and past the sunglasses were thick masses of water shaped like people, their features rippling with surface tension. The overhead light became swimming pool shadows around them, but they themselves didn’t look glossy enough to be CGI.

“Go in,” the man said, looking over at them. “Get them both.”

The two walked up to the bars to Tara’s cell, stopping in front of it calmly. One of them walked through the bars, its clothes folding and its rifle held in between them. The other stood outside and watched.

There was a gunshot, and the man winced. Then water came splashing out of the jail cell, drenching Rachel (who scooted back) and the other “guard,” who raised its gun. It shot twice as the bars were pulled open, then the rifle was yanked out of its hand and sent flying down the hall.

The man ducked, ignoring the startled look of the drunk in the cell just beside him, and looked up to see a female werewolf in war form biting down on the “guard”‘s neck and tearing. It splashed apart, clothes collapsing and water sloshing across the floor towards him. And the wolf looked down at the coyote for a second before looking up at him and growling, one hand pressed to the floor. It was a low sound, that shook the walls and seemed to come from the earth itself.

The man drew a gleaming silver revolver on her, sweat beading across his forehead, and took three tries to pull the catch back. Then he swung around as he heard footsteps, and saw a dog-faced man in a leather jacket.

“Boy,” the dog said, “do you think that’s going to stop her?”

The growling intensified, and there was a scrape as claws dug into concrete. The suitcoated man looked back.

“You’d better run now.”

The chase would’ve lasted about one second if Tara hadn’t had to slow down to go around Bryce. As it was, the suitcoated man barely made it out into the foyer before she grabbed him, held him up till his head hit the ceiling and roared right into his face. He screamed.

She held him there for a long moment. Breathing on him, glaring at him, remembering all the people in suits who had made her life miserable. The grip of her claws tightened.

Finally she flung him into the wall. He smacked into it and hit the floor, taking some of the plaster with him and landing next to the stunned sheriff, who was gagged and tied up behind a desk. The man did not move after that.

She stood there clenching and unclenching her fists, squeezing her pawpads with her claws. She did not move as Bryce helped Rachel out into the foyer, and then leaned down to check on the suitcoated man.

“Still alive,” Bryce said.

Rachel coughed, painfully.

“We’d better get going.” He looked up at Tara.

She followed them outside, watching as they climbed into the truck, knowing that it was too small for her now. Tara looked up, out at the mountains in the distance and the miles of flat country between them, and it was dark out but she could see as well as if it were daytime. Deep breaths of cold air cooled her tongue and chilled her insides, and she realized that she’d never felt more alive.

The wind rustled her fur and roared in her ears, and she couldn’t hear what Bryce was saying to her. She jumped into the truck’s flatbed, and it creaked angrily and she heard him yelling at her to get out. So she did, hopping down and crouching next to it.

It started up and pulled out of the parking lot, and she ran after it, out onto the highway. On two legs at first, then on instinct she switched to all fours. It wasn’t like crawling on hands and knees; it was like running, but twice as fast. Each set of limbs propelled her, and picked up where the other left off. She didn’t know how fast she was going, but the sense of speed was incredible, and she felt momentum carrying her so strongly that she knew she’d flip over if she tried to stop.

Wind pressed on her like an invisible curtain, and she squinted into it as it pressed her fur against her. Concrete wore and rubbed at her pawpads, and she veered off into the brush, the dry grass whipping her neck but the earth softer under her paws.

The truck began to speed up, and she pushed harder into the wind, grinning and enjoying the game. But then it went even faster, too fast for her to keep up, and the distance between them increased. She finally slowed down, slowed and came to a stop, just as two police cars sped by. And for a second she wanted to chase them, but she took one step and knew that she couldn’t. Tara was breathing hard, taking in deep breaths one after the other, her lungs burning and heart racing.

She forced herself to take slow, stiff steps one after the other, to keep knots from forming in her arms and legs. After what seemed like only a short time, her heart rate settled down, and she stood back upright and dusted off her hand-forepaws. Then she looked down at them, and herself.

Tara didn’t recognize herself. Her shape was still vaguely humanoid / feminine, but she was covered in thick fur. And it wasn’t just that; she was partway shaped animal-like. The joints of her arms and legs suggested a creature meant to run on all fours, even though she was standing upright.

She turned around and examined herself in the light of the crescent moon. The grass was much shorter next to her than it usually was, and she knew she was still in the war form, even though she had calmed down. Even after that run she felt like a coiled spring, powerful and ready to leap and run and climb without stopping. She had never felt anything like it … but there was this sense of familiarity, of having seen or felt or known this before. As though she was rediscovering it.

She clung to that feeling, and willed herself to believe that this was okay. That it was normal, or at least normal for her. Because if it wasn’t, she didn’t know what she would do.

Something startled her, and she whirled around, instinctively baring her claws and scanning the highway for movement. What had happened? What was it?

Tara heard it again, like a voice whose breath was the wind. She held herself still, slowly looking around with her eyes, scenting the cold air and cocking her ears in all directions.

Finally she heard it, as though the whole world was speaking to her and she stood atop its vocal chords. It was a male voice, high-pitched and gentle somewhere past the force it conveyed. It was so powerful that it shook her, and she fell on her hands and knees. “Hello, Tara.”

It was quiet for a second, and she shook her fur out of her face and tried to catch her breath. In less than a minute, she’d gone from feeling enormous to tiny and insignificant.

She coughed. “H-hello?”

It spoke again, and she braced herself against it, scared because of how strong it was. “The person you injured will recover. Your friend will recover as well. She and Bryce will escape from the people pursuing them, using the Tokens that have been prepared for them.

“You will be spoken to again tomorrow, and again as courtesy dictates. If you follow the instructions given to you, you will not hurt anyone more than is needful, and you will never be caged again.

“Your life has been a hard one. It is good that you are set free.”

“Th-thank you,” she whispered, her face now covered in tears.

“Thank you for listening.”

The voice went away.

Tara sat there in the grass for some time, huddled into a ball against the cold and the intense emotion. Crying into her own fur, and sniffling and rocking back and forth. For a moment she imagined seeing herself from the outside, and thought how hard it was to imagine a creature like this acting the way that she was. But she had to, because it was the only way she knew how to react. It was the only way she had strength to.

She finally stood up, sniffling, still taller and stronger than before. Much of the strength had left her, because of the experience that she’d just had, but she felt it returning slowly. It was only a matter of time.

As the sun rose, she started walking away from the highway, towards the mountains. The voice would speak to her again, she knew. Maybe she’d find out what to do … maybe she’d find out how to change back, or to catch up with Rachel.

Either way, maybe she would be okay.

The police were just figureheads by this point, Francisco was sure of that much. It presented a darkly amusing contrast, seeing their primitive shotguns and kevlar next to the full-body, face-covering armor of the aliens.

He wished they would just go away. There seemed to be a feeling of mutual discomfort between him and the aliens. Most of the normal people would stare in awe at the Federation soldiers, even if just for a few seconds, as if it were an instinctual reaction. Something about them drew the gaze of every human around them.

Except for him, it seemed. He’d tried to fake that reaction, of course. But there was just something missing, a level of respect or fear he simply didn’t have. And they noticed, he was sure of it. He could feel their stares beneath their helmets as he passed by.

And that was all the more reason to go straight home. A break from his classes was much welcomed, and he didn’t want to waste a moment of it.

He passed through a street filled with performance artists. Wincing at the cacophony of noise, he picked up his pace, weaving through the crowd of dancers, singers, musicians, and observers.

He was nearly in the clear when something caught the corner of his eye. Maybe it was because he hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night, maybe it was just a trick of the light. But he was sure he saw some sort of bird-human thing, sitting upon a blanket and playing a guitar.

He did a double-take. His eyes must have been fooling him, because there was just a normal person sitting there. The musician, noting the sudden attention, glanced up expectantly at him, his eyes briefly flicking down to a hat set out in front of him. It was empty, barring a few coins.

Francisco fished out a few bills and dropped them in his hat. And when he looked up again, he was staring at a pitch-black bird. “Thanks, man.” Somehow Francisco got the impression he was grinning at him, despite the fact he had a beak.

He blinked. And there was a human once again. “Y-yeah. No problem.”

The tips of claws plucked away at guitar strings, the strings somehow keeping intact. “Enjoying the festival?”

He smiled nervously. “Not really.” He heard the familiar soft clinking of Federation-issued armor. “I mean, not that I don’t like it, I was just heading home.”

The guitarist shrugged. “You don’t have to sound guilty. I’m just here to play. Gotta eat somehow.” A passerby tossed a coin into his hat without even a sidelong glance. “Doing pretty well so far. I’ve already got enough for dinner tonight.”

Francisco stared at his tail, which was fading in and out of view. “That’s good.”

“Anyway,” the musician waved his hand at him, “don’t let me keep you. I’ll be taking a break soon.”

“Yeah.” He felt a strange sense of familiarity looking at him, the same he got from meeting a distant relative he hadn’t seen in years.

The musician arched an eyebrow. “You alright?”

Francisco broke his gaze as a dull pain struck at the back of his head. “I’m fine. Just a headache. I, uh…” He tried to concoct a way of asking ‘do you ever look half-human, half-animal?’ without sounding as if he had lost his mind. He failed. “Um, bye.”

He rushed away before the crow-man could give any kind of farewell, wanting to take the incident out of his mind altogether.

He was nearly home when he heard the crackle of a voice synthesizer coming to life. He slowly turned around to face a trio of Federation soldiers, mere feet away from him.

“This area is off limits.” The one in the center said in a robotic voice.

The street ahead was oddly empty, come to think of it. Only a few soldiers walking around, but no humans. And they looked even more armed than usual.

The soldiers exchanged glances with each other. “Leave now. This area is off-limits.” It repeated.

“You could take them.” A tiny and probably insane voice in the back of his head said. But the dull whir of their energy weapons charging up quickly disabused him of that notion. “But my apartment is that way.”

He felt a strange presence in his mind, one which evoked the same kind of feeling he got whenever somebody was staring over his shoulder at his computer monitor while he was in the middle of an IM conversation. And then, without any warning, it was simply gone.

Even if their faces weren’t visible, he could tell the aliens were becoming agitated. One of them started tapping frantically at a device on its wrist.

He started feeling a very strong compulsion to run away, for he was certain nothing good could come of this. And before he could make himself consider what an incredibly bad idea running was, he did. He was not an especially athletic person, and a broken nose that had never quite healed properly made it difficult for him to breathe, but he was beyond caring about that for he was sure that it would be far worse on him to stay. And he didn’t dare look behind them, but he could hear their synthesized voices commanding him to stop. And perhaps it was the work of an overactive imagination, but he thought he heard them firing off a warning shot. That just made him run faster despite the burning in his lungs, and to take more turns through the streets in a desperate attempt to lose them, hoping all the way he wouldn’t end up trapping himself in some dead-end alleyway.

He ran blindly until he couldn’t see them anymore, or hear their demands for him to stop. When he finally did come to a halt, it was just outside a plaza, filled with market stalls and people milling about.

“Perfect.” He breathed a sigh of relief and tried to catch his breath. “Maybe hiding in plain sight will work.” His stomach growled. “And it’s not like I’ll be able to go home anytime soon…” Then the reality of his situation sunk in. “I can’t go home. I don’t know when I’ll be able to go home again. The Federation probably thinks I did some kind of horrible crime and if they catch me they’ll probably lock me away forever in a spaceship or something and I’ll never be able to escape and it’s not like I could prove them wrong even if I wanted to because I can’t afford a lawyer and my life is over.” He would have sunk to his knees if it wouldn’t have been so conspicuous.

“Calm down.” The insane side of him said. “Your life obviously isn’t over if you’re still standing here. But it will be if you don’t get something to eat.” And the smell of food was very tantalizing.

He went for the very first stall he saw without much of a line. “Wait. I can’t let anyone get a good look at my face.” He pulled the hood of his jacket further over his head, grabbed a candy bar, half-threw a few bills at the cashier, told him to keep the change, and found a tree to sit under.

The midday sun had been painfully bright, and so the shade was a welcome break. The candy bar was even more welcome, and probably had enough sugar to keep him going for another two hours. And with his blood sugar up, he was feeling better– though that wasn’t saying much.

He reclined back against the tree, looked up towards the sky, and daydreamed about flying away. He’d never liked mundane life as far back as he could remember, not that he’d let anyone know. But the nagging feeling that there was so much more to it than trudging through a school and going through the motions of social activity with people he had nearly nothing in common with was always there, and it had been getting worse lately. And it was accompanied by half-remembered dreams of somewhere far away, so painfully beautiful it made him want to cry, but these dreams eluded his grasp despite his best efforts to recall them in detail.

He knew what his family would say, that he needed to get his head out of the clouds and face reality. But it couldn’t hurt to dream just a little, could it? If he couldn’t get joy out of living in the real world, finding it in a dream world was better than nothing. And though he’d always dreamed of adventure and being a hero, this mess wasn’t quite the adventure he’d been hoping for.

His thoughts were interrupted, as that same peculiar feeling of being invaded he’d had earlier that day struck him again. He jerked his head up, and started walking if only because it seemed like the sensible thing to do. He couldn’t afford to stay still for too long, after all– the more he moved around, the less likely he was to be found.

“Citizen Francisco Gonzales.”

His blood froze in his veins, but he forced himself to keep going. He tilted his head just enough to see a squad of Federation soldiers, and found himself walking faster. It was a common enough name, after all. All he had to do was blend in, and everything would be alright. They’d never even know.

“Citizen, you are ordered to come with us.”

But now the crowd he was in wasn’t moving anymore. They were completely frozen in place, like human statues. And he had little choice but to freeze with them.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see them circling around their human flock. He felt the gaze of one of the soldiers on him. Unable to take the pressure, he ran, trying and failing not to shove the people in his way. The people he did push simply fell over like ragdolls.

He thought he was making good time until pain lanced through his shoulder. He crumpled to the ground, and try as he might to force himself to move, he couldn’t.

The aliens seemed incredibly tall up close, and even more intimidating. One of them effortlessly picked him up, and he got a very good view of the group of humans. Their blank stares were fixed on him.

His heart hammered in his chest. “Why won’t they do something? Why won’t anyone help me?“ He drew in a ragged breath, wanting nothing more than to make something move under his own power. “Why can’t I do anything?”

In that moment of desperation, he felt something growing inside of him, like a tiny spark becoming a flame.

Or maybe even a dragon spreading its wings.

Whatever it was, it caused him to surge back against his captor, kicking it away. And whatever part of him that was not reeling from shock realized that, somehow, he was flying now, and furthermore for the first time since he was a child, he was able to breathe clearly. That part of him then had to go from that to figuring out that it wasn’t in his best interests to question his fortune and that flying away would be a capital idea. Therefore, it took him a couple seconds and at least one energy blast before he finally tried.

The fourth realization was that flying was difficult, especially when you were being shot at. The energy blasts might not have been paralyzing anymore, but they still stung, even though he was covered in some kind of blue, chitinous plating. He flailed around in mid-air, panicked even more when he lost altitude, and dropped like a rock.

On the bright side, he at least landed on a soldier. Even if it wasn’t the most graceful of landings, it did break his fall and he had the comfort of taking one of his pursuers with him. But through the stars dancing in his eyes, he saw the others advancing on him. He stumbled to his feet, and backed up. His tail thudded straight into a wall, and if he hadn’t had more pressing concerns he’d have wondered when he’d gotten a tail. The soldiers were closing in on him, and the one he’d fallen on was now getting up. He got the impression from the way they moved they weren’t afraid of him in the slightest. Amused, perhaps, but certainly not afraid.

His eyes darted about, searching for an escape, but they had formed a half-circle around him. “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.” That left fighting back as his only option, and he had nothing to use against them.

The tallest soldier in the group leveled his gun at Francisco. He bared his fangs, for what little good it would do him. But he’d made up his mind to go down fighting. He lunged at the alien, his claws scraping uselessly against the armor. The squad immediately opened fire on him, but he dove to the ground, taking the soldier with him, and the energy bolts skimmed over him. He grappled with the soldier, knocking its gun out of its hands. He felt the tiniest surge of hope until something stabbed into him. The very tip of a blade was poking through his arm, dark blue smoke seeping out of the wound instead of blood.

He reflexively jerked back, though he wasn’t in that much pain. Somehow, he’d figured getting stabbed would hurt a lot more than that. He couldn’t help but stare at the hole clean through his arm with the same morbid fascination one might experience from looking at a car crash. And while he was distracted, the alien, now with a blade protruding from its wrist, kicked him in the chest, knocking the breath out of him. He staggered back, and clenched his fists.

It felt as if he was holding something. He stole a quick glance at his hand, and saw a sword, the same blue color as his armor-like skin. “Come on,” he urged himself, “use it!” He pointed the sword at the nearest alien’s throat. “B-back off!” Now the soldiers seemed more hesitant. Encouraged, he continued on. “Or I’ll…”

They opened fire on him. He dove to the ground in a desperate attempt to avoid the first volley, and it mostly worked. A few shots clipped through his shoulder, but he could still count himself among the living for now. There was a low whining sound as the guns recharged. With that tiny interval of opportunity, he scrambled to his feet, gashed through one of the aliens with the sword– peculiarly, it left no sign of injury, even though he was sure it’d gone right through the armor– and trampled over it as it fell to the street.

He jumped up, trying to fly again, only to find he couldn’t. And for the umpteenth time that day, he ran for his life, smoke trailing behind him. He could hear thunderous noises behind him. As his mind was clouded with terror, it took him a moment to work out what they were. Gunshots, the kind that used bullets and not energy bolts. And since when had anyone used those? Weren’t they illegal or something?

On top of that, he could hear shouting now. And howling, and roars. “That can’t be the aliens.” He could hear shuffling footsteps, though they were headed in the opposite direction of him. Something whooshed past him– he could have sworn it had spots. Or that could just be the dots swimming around in his field of vision. He’d been hit pretty hard, after all.

“Can’t stop now.” He was so close to the outskirts of the city, and didn’t hear any armor clinking behind him, maybe they’d finally decided to leave him alone. Meanwhile, there were other things rushing past him now– things that walked like humans, but had tails, fur and claws. And they were carrying guns.

The few humans left in the part of the city he was in were breaking out of the trance that the Federation aliens usually put them in. In fact, they were downright panicked, and an outright riot of animal-people, humans, and aliens was forming. One of the aliens took aim at the crowd mobbing him, but the instant it was about to fire, a tawny-furred feline creature bludgeoned it over the head with her gun. The soldier staggered back, and the cat-person tackled him, tearing at his armor with her claws in search for a weak point.

Most of the crowd scattered, revealing another scuffle going on– a much more one-sided one. Another soldier had a human by the throat in one hand, and a blade in the other.

Francisco didn’t dare hesitate– there wasn’t enough time for that. He charged at the soldier, shouting “Hey!” as loudly as he could. The alien had just enough time to see who was attacking it before his sword cut through its helmeted head. The soldier crumpled to the ground. Peculiarly, it still was breathing after what should have been a fatal blow, though he was still too giddy with his own successes to think too much on the properties of his new weapon.

“What did you just do?” The human he saved asked, a shrill edge to his voice.

It took a few moments for Francisco to recognize who he’d just saved– the guitarist. “I remember you!” He threw open his arms for a hug, but the guitarist jerked back.

Francisco blinked and tilted his head. It wasn’t quite the heroic welcome he’d been hoping for. But a cursory glance at his outstretched arms explained why.

“Sorry.” He sheepishly withdrew his sword-bearing hand. “I forgot I had this.” He unclenched his hand, but the sword remained levitating just above his palm. “Um.” He shook his hand around, but the sword refused to budge. “Aaaah, how do I make it go away?” He flailed around wildly while the guitarist gave him a look of utter disbelief. He ceased moving. “Don’t you remem– oh.” He tapped his rock-solid skin with his free hand. “Um, I know I don’t look like it, but you know me. Sort of. I mean, we met earlier today. I was just different then. I gave you some change…”

Francisco thought he saw a brief flash of familiarity in the man’s eyes, but then it was gone. “No.” The guitarist said under his breath. “No way.”

“Look, I know this seems crazy, but it’s true!”

“Crazy, that’s it. I’m going crazy.”

“No, that’s not it either, it’s just…” Francisco trailed off. On second thought, insanity did seem like a likely explanation for all this, especially since he didn’t have another one. But insanity didn’t explain his wounds. “Well, I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?” His volume rose with each syllable until he was shouting at the very end. “Doesn’t anyone have a clue about what’s going on here?”

“I know as much as you do!” Francisco grabbed his hand and dragged him along behind him. “But the Federation is after us! Now let’s go!”

Though he wanted to get both of them as far away as he could from the Federation soldiers, his injuries were finally starting to catch up with him, adrenaline was draining from his body, and he was getting incredibly tired. His steps grew gradually slower and slower, then he couldn’t move at all despite his best efforts to the contrary, and the world around him grew dark.

The next sensation Francisco was aware of was pain, and the next thought he had was “OWOWOWOW oh hey I’m alive?” He opened his eyes– he was well away from the city, in a small forest of some kind. And his sword was finally gone.

“Welcome back to the world of the living.” It was the guitarist’s voice. “Not that I’m sure I want to be right now.”

He turned his head to face his companion with what he hoped looked like a smile. The bird’s image seemed to be stable now, instead of flickering from human to crow. “You…”

“Yes, me.” He said. “And I have a name, you know. Though I guess we weren’t ever properly introduced. I’m Gabriel.”

“Francisco.” He paused. “Have you noticed that…well…”

“This?” Gabriel pointed to his beak. “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to miss. You were out when it happened. But you’re not looking quite right yourself.”

Francisco stared at his claw-tipped feet. “How bad is it?”

“Just…” Gabriel pulled a compact mirror out of his pocket.. “See for yourself.”

For a moment, he didn’t recognize himself in the mirror. But it had to be him, the thing in the mirror was making all the same movements he did. He looked reptilian now, with deep blue scales that covered his body in plates like the shell of a beetle, though it was pockmarked with holes where he’d been shot. And the longer he looked at his new self, the less unusual it seemed, like this had been what he was all along and he just hadn’t known up until now. He flexed his muscles and grinned. There was something oddly handsome about his new self too, in an otherworldly sort of way.

“You’re not taking this seriously!” The guitarist hissed. “I mean…what are you? What am I?”

“I’m not really sure.” He dropped his arms to his side. “And I don’t really think it matters. Whatever we are, we can help people now.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re about to say we can overthrow the Federation.” He sighed.

Francisco deflated a bit. “Well, maybe we can find other people to help us? I mean, it can’t be just us. I saw others back in the city, I’m sure of it!”

“I did too, but there weren’t that many of them.” He ran his hand through his feathers. “And the Federation outnumbers humankind, and if they outnumber humans they probably outnumber…whatever we are.”

“But we’re able to resist them.” He protested. “There are no coincidences. We must be like this for a reason, and we can’t let what we have go to waste.”

“That doesn’t mean we should go charging off blindly, though.”

“Exactly!” Francisco nodded. For a moment, Gabriel looked relieved. And then Francisco continued. “We need to find the people who were fighting them back in the city.”

“The crazy ones doing all the howling and screaming and waving guns around?”

“They were probably just trying to look scary. I don’t think they’re bad people.”

“How can you even tell?”

“I saw one of them saving a group of people from the Federation,” he said quietly. “She attacked a soldier when they were about to get shot.”

He fell quiet for a few moments. “You’re probably right. This is…” Gabriel sighed again. “I just can’t believe everything that’s happened. Weird doesn’t even cover it.”

“Maybe they know what’s going on. Look,” he pointed back to the city, which now had a few spaceships hovering over it, “it’s not like we can go back now. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

He was silent for a painfully long time. And then… “Fine. I just want answers, though.”

“Great!” Francisco sat straight up, and immediately regretted it. “Owww…”

“You’ve still got holes in you, you know.” He deadpanned in the way that only someone who’d seen considerably stranger things in a very short period of time could say. “We should be staying the night, at least.”

Francisco shook his head. “We shouldn’t. What if the Federation finds us?”

“Okay, point taken. But you’re still hurt.”

He examined his skin– there was no longer blue smoke coming out of him. “I’m not bleeding.” He ventured. “I think. And I can still move.”

“But we don’t even know how to find these other…people, or whatever they are!”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” Francisco said cheerfully. “They stand out.”

“Fine.” He threw up his hands. “If you’re crazy enough to do this, let’s go. But if you faint again, we’re stopping.”

“I’ll be fine!” He hopped off the tree root he’d been resting against. “Let’s go! There’s not a moment to lose!”

This had been more of the adventure Francisco had been hoping for– even if the odds were impossible, he had a purpose now, and at last he was no longer alone.

To be continued…

That wasn’t the name he’d been born with, of course. It was the name that he’d chosen, to represent himself online. His “real” name had hardly anything to do with who he was, but Virmir was an Urocyon cinereoargenteus; a gray fox, that walked on its hind legs and talked and grinned and wore clothes (when it felt like it). A cartoon drawing, a personal brand and an identity that felt more real than the human one he’d been born with. Or at the very least, more fun.

Some days he felt kind of silly about that. Like his first few days on the job. Maybe it’d been the gray cubicles, without so much as a potted plant. Maybe it’d been his manager’s clean haircut and firm handshake, and the way he’d gone on about “fostering world-class infrastructure” and “meeting customer-centered goals.” Or maybe it’d just been the fluorescent lighting. Either way, his first few days working there had taken a lot out of him. He’d gone home and flopped on the couch, and had barely felt like a human being, let alone Kendo Virmir the fox mage.

After he’d been there awhile, though, he’d noticed something, and it hadn’t just been that the meeting room donuts were always stale. Maybe it’d been the view out the window that’d clued him into it … the row upon row of identical offices that he saw in the skyscraper across the street. Or maybe it’d been after a few minutes of hearing his boss and his boss’ boss chatting with each other, and then turning his swivel chair to look and realizing he couldn’t tell them apart.

Here’s what the-person-who-was-Virmir realized: The people he worked for talked, groomed, and dressed that way not because they were actually like that, but because the people they worked for were like that! And so on, for as far as he could see.

Somewhere at the top, Virmir imagined, was a happy, fulfilled man, who used “infrastructure” and “customer-centered” in his daily conversation. And he had a whole lot of people working for him who were trying their best to be him, even if they didn’t have a clue what those words they kept using meant.

In other words, they were all creating their own identities too. They just weren’t being very original, and they weren’t having nearly as much fun with it as Virmir was.

He felt a lot better about imagining himself as a cartoon fox after that.

Anyway, Virmir was having a great week, and it wasn’t because the PHP web app that his team had been building was almost complete. No, it was because last night he’d put the finishing touches on his latest art project, live on streaming video. On top of that, he was expecting the commission he’d ordered to come in the mail any day now.

On days like these, he wasn’t a “team member,” or a “human resource,” or a white shirt and a tie. He was Virmir, just as much as he was when he was at home in his den. And it was not just a sense of confidence, or an amused smirk at things that would have annoyed him. It was an entire way of seeing the world.

He coded faster, because server-side scripting was simple compared to runic equations and magic. He spoke up more often in meetings, because the silly humans kept digging themselves into messes and it was up to him to help them get out. And when he looked out the windows at the end of the day, at the city of concrete and windowlight, he didn’t see a vast and impersonal maze. He saw a wondrous landscape, as fantastic as any that he had imagined. And it was a bit grittier, perhaps, but it was still just as magical.

Anything can happen here, he thought, as he turned off his monitors and put on his coat.

He had no idea how right he was.

On the fourth day of this great week, something unusual happened. You see, instead of just imagining himself as the self that he drew, Virmir actually became a cartoon gray fox.

That’s not the unusual thing, though, as surprising as it seemed to Virmir. After all, anything could — and did — happen in this magical world that he lived in, including transformations. Every day, caterpillars curled up to sleep, not knowing they’d wake up as butterflies. And people became cartoons all the time, too. How else could they ever get made?

What was unusual was that he didn’t notice. He was just going about his workday as usual, a confident anthro gray fox mage, his cape and his tail tucked behind him as he typed away on the keyboard. His legs kicked the air underneath him, and his brow furrowed as he looked up at the dual monitors, trying to make sense of his coworkers’ code. It was another day in the life of Virmir, and after these last few days he’d become so used to feeling this way that he didn’t even realize he was a couple of feet shorter, until his neck finally got a cramp in it.

“Blast,” he muttered. He reached around to massage the kinks out of his neck, wincing. Then he looked up at the screens on top of his desk in dismay, and hopped down from his chair to get something to sit on.

Reaching up towards the telephone book at the edge of his desk, he saw his fox hand and thought That’s some nice shading. Then he froze.

Two hundred lines of PHP code poured right out of Virmir’s brain.

“Hey,” his coworker said, from past the partition behind Virmir’s monitor.

I love those dynamic lighting effects, said the part of Virmir’s brain that was still working right. And look at the texturing!

“Hey,” his coworker said again, and knocked on the partition. “In line 248, what did you mean by blah blah mumble subroutine blah?”

That wasn’t what he actually said, of course, but Virmir’s brain still wasn’t working. In fact, he was more in shock than he would’ve been if he’d just walked away from a train wreck. The social part of his brain said that he needed to reply, though, and so he tried. Only to find that he’d forgotten how to make words come out. “Uhhhm … ”

Silence.

Slowly, Virmir ran his long tongue across his vulpine chops, and tried to talk naturally like he’d done just a minute ago. “I … don’t … know, uh … ” He blinked, shook his head, and unfroze from the position he’d been in when he was reaching up to the telephone book. “What was that, again?”

” … are you okay?”

“Oh! Uh, yes, uh … ” Virmir’s cape flared out and his tail swished as he looked about himself quickly, trying to find a hiding place and a clear escape route to the stairs. Had anyone already seen him? What about in the building across from his cubicle? He had to somehow-

“No, I’m serious.” His coworker’s freckled face came up over the edge of the partition, and looked down at him.

“AGH!” Virmir fell on his tail, and backed away several feet on his hands and legs before getting caught in his cape. He stared up at his coworker, and a drop of sweat the size of a golf ball formed on the side of his head.
His coworker gave him a bewildered look. “Dude, you look wired.”

Virmir misheard him. “Weird … in what way?”

“No, wired. You look like you stayed up all night and hit Starbuck’s before coming here.” He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Chill, okay? Go take a walk or something. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

He ducked back down behind the partition, and Virmir just sat there, unable to move, his heart pounding so hard it drowned out the printer down the hall. Someone walked past behind him, and while his ears automatically pivoted he could not turn his head to look. He could only sit there, and catch his breath.

What on earth just happened?

Slowly, the sweatdrop vanished and Virmir’s breathing steadied. He climbed back up to his seat, turned off the dual screens and looked into them. They weren’t glossy, so the reflection was imperfect, but even with the light from the windows in the corner of his eye he could tell. He looked just like the gray fox from his drawings. A three-dimensional, cel-shaded, hundred frames-per-second rendered gray fox, but a cartoon gray fox nonetheless. He wasn’t even wearing anything besides his cape.

Then where did … Acting on instinct, Virmir reached around behind himself and pulled out his wallet and Palm Pilot, and looked to make sure they were okay before putting them back. Then he turned around in his seat and looked. They were nowhere to be seen.

How … ?

Phones rang in the distance, and the sounds of typing and clicking and shuffling paperwork reached Virmir’s fox ears. The absurdity of his situation was not lost on him.

Now what?

After a minute’s thought, he hopped back down from his seat and walked around the side of the cubicle farm. Another sweatdrop started to form on the side of his face, as he realized he was out in public walking past people and banks of windows like this. But if he was right, then …

“Tom?” Virmir looked in at his coworker, the one who’d just talked to him. He was munching cheese puffs out of a bag while glowering at his own monitors, but he turned to look as Virmir addressed him.

“Do I, uh … ” Virmir spent a moment thinking about how to phrase himself. “Do you notice anything different about me?”

Tom squinted at him for a moment, before a look of recognition lit up his face, and he nodded. “Nice haircut,” he said.

“Totally doesn’t look like you slept on it the wrong way.” He then turned back to his monitors, and wiped his hands off on a napkin before typing something in.

Virmir’s tail stopped in mid-swish, and his face turned red. “Thanks,” he said, before ducking back out, and standing there for a moment next to the Dilbert cartoons Tom had taped to the side of his wall.

Okay, he thought. So I’m myself. I mean, Virmir, I mean … blast, this is so frustrating! How did this even happen? And is it just me, or am I really …

His thoughts trailed off as he looked behind him, at a sudden, unusual sensation. His tail had been swishing with agitation, and he could feel it thump into the cubicle wall next to him.

Maybe this is a dream? Virmir pinched his arm, and it hurt. Not only that, he could feel how furry is was, past the claws on the ends of his fingertips. And if he looked closely, he could see each individual cel-shaded hair, despite the black borders at the edges of his arms. His fur rippled as he breathed out while looking at it.

Maybe splashing my face with cold water will help …

Virmir knelt on the edge of the sink in the men’s room, the one that had been up to his neck while he’d been standing next to it, and turned the cold water tap all the way to the right. Then he scooped up a good double-handful of it, and smacked it into his face.

“Aghptbb-” He fell over on his back, on the wet sink, and sputtered and slipped as he tried to get up. His cape and his back fur got soaked through, and his foot got stuck in the sink for second before he finally slipped off and landed on the floor on his arms and knees, wincing.

A couple minutes under the blow dryer helped, although they didn’t do anything about his smarting elbows and knees. He looked over at the mirror as the warm air rustled his cape, and gave his fox face a disgusted look. “If you’re a hallucination, you’re a very persistent one.”

Someone else came in just then, and Virmir quickly walked out and got his tail out of the way before the door shut behind him. He dried off his hands the rest of the way on his fur, and looked out the full-length windows, arms folded. His foxy reflection looked back at him, stern and upset on the other side of the glass.

I don’t take anything weird, he thought. So if this is my mind playing tricks on me, either I’m going crazy or somebody drugged my cereal.

Someone walked past behind him, and brushed his tail without noticing.

But my mind playing tricks on me wouldn’t account for my having a tail. Or needing a telephone book to sit on while I’m coding. Maybe I really did change, and I’m just the only one who noticed?

It seemed so obvious, and yet it was hard for Virmir to accept, just because it was so unexpected. Even if he was remarkably good-looking this way, he thought, striking a pose to see his reflection.

Hm, maybe if I downloaded Blender I could do something like this. I’d have to learn it, of course …

He stuck out his tongue, and then tried a couple of other faces.

What if I just uploaded a video, and then didn’t tell anyone how I did it? It’d have to use real-life backgrounds, of course, but still. It’d be a hit!

He struck another pose, tossing his cape out dramatically behind him.

Hmm … but would anyone be able to see me? Would whatever is keeping other people from seeing me like this work online?

Virmir furrowed his brow and put a hand to his chin, lost in thought. Maybe that can be my first experiment, then. To find out if it’s just me, or if I really did change and no one else can see it. I could do things like take pictures of myself standing under things I’d be too tall for normally, and trying to reach for things that my human self wouldn’t need a ladder for. Then I can show them to other people, and ask them to tell me what they see.

Virmir sideyed another coworker as he walked past, and it occurred to him that he was taking this pretty well. He felt a little light-headed, but on the whole he felt comfortable as his fox self, even out here in public. It helped that he’d gotten in practice, he thought … a lot of practice. Maybe that’s what caused this?

He shook his head. Nah.

Virmir’s tail swished happily as he returned to his cubicle, and stacked a couple of manuals on top of his seat before climbing back on. Then he stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles and got back to work.

That would be a convenient end for this story. Fortunately, life is rarely convenient.

What happened next started a couple of hours later. Virmir had been coding for awhile, and his throat was feeling dry. His fox ears could hear Tom munching on salty snacks in the cubicle past his, buttered popcorn and puffs with dry cheese powder on them, and the sounds and the smells were the last straw.

He hopped down and went over to the water cooler, only to find that he wasn’t tall enough to reach the disposable cups stacked on top. If Virmir had been the kind of mage who could levitate objects by casting a spell on them, he might’ve tried it; the instincts that let you do things like that are the same kind that made him become his fox self in the first place. But Virmir’s fox-self was a fire mage, and the only thing his spells could have done to the cups was make them set off the smoke alarm.

Which is why he came back a minute later, pushing his swivel chair in front of him and muttering under his breath. It got stuck on a corner, so he turned around and carefully pulled it the rest of the way …

… only to bump into a man who was standing there already, wearing a striking black suitcoat and tie and filling a huge plastic Big Gulp cup from the water cooler.

The man smiled down at him, a plastic sort of smile, his hands not leaving the controls. “Hello, Mister Robinson.”

Virmir squinted up at the man, immediately distrusting him. Maybe it was the fact that he knew Virmir’s name, when Virmir had never seen him before. Maybe it was the fact that he’d never known anyone who wore an Italian suitcoat to shop at the 7/11. Or maybe it was the black sunglasses the man was wearing … and the fact that Virmir saw in them not his cartoon self’s reflection, but the one that he’d seen in the mirror that morning.

“Having fun imagining yourself as a fox, are you?” The sound of water pouring into his cup almost drowned out the man’s words.

Virmir gave the man an amused smirk. “Yep. You should try it sometime.”

“I don’t think you understand, Mister Robinson.” That plastic smile had not left the man’s face. “You don’t understand just how dangerous it is, to imagine something that’s not wanted.”

“Oh, I totally agree.” Virmir leaned up against his chair, and winked.

The man went on like he hadn’t heard him. “Millions of people, all imagining themselves living happy, normal, productive lives … and one maladjusted person, who tries to imagine himself as a cartoon. That sort of imagination is like a disease … a cancer, in our society. And we … ” He took a long swig from his Big Gulp, and licked at his face afterwards. ” … are the cure.”

As he was talking, two more nearly identical-looking men in black suitcoats stepped into view, one behind him and one behind Virmir. Virmir was feeling quite threatened now, so he did what a fox fire mage does when he feels threatened: He fluffed out his fur, threw out his cape, and ignited a huge fireball in his hand. “I’d like to see you try!” he snarled.

The man doused him with the rest of the water from his cup. Virmir gasped and spluttered, dripping wet, and tried to ignite another fireball in his hand. A wisp of smoke came up through his fingers. ” … blast,” he said.

The three men stepped towards him.

Virmir tensed, and got ready to spring as they advanced. Then he turned and bolted, diving around the man behind him and running past banks of windows, trying to put as much distance between him and them as possible.

Without a word, the men in black suitcoats took off after him. Virmir ducked into a hallway, sprinting towards the door to the stairwell at the far end. He looked over his shoulder, past his flapping cape, and saw the three men chasing him. But when he looked back where he was heading, all he could see was a long row of doors, and a hazy mirage at the end that receded into the distance.

Virmir blinked, looked away for a second and looked back up, but he still couldn’t make his eyes focus. “What the heck?” he snarled. There was no way that this was-

Oh. Oh. Now he knew what was going on. He’d seen this a million times in cartoons, whenever they did chase scenes indoors! Only one thing to do, then. Virmir jumped at a door shoulder-first and ran through someone’s office, ignoring the startled shouts and taking the next door he saw.

He opened it and saw another hallway … or was it the same one? He could see the men in black suitcoats pausing and fanning out to check doorways. With only a moment’s thought, Virmir dashed for the next open door that he saw, ignoring the footsteps that he heard behind him. It was like an indoor obstacle course … dodge past the furniture, run through any open door and wait for an opportunity to escape.

Which came when Virmir reached the end of the hallway. Except that there was no more door to the stairwell, unless it was cleverly hidden. There was only a windowsill.

Virmir reached up and clawed at the window, trying to pry it open, as the men saw where he was and ran towards him. Then he stopped, breathing hard with exertion, and ignited a fireball in his now-dry hands and hurled it up at the window. It shattered, the air shimmering around the empty frame in a heat distortion, and Virmir hauled himself up to the sill and scrambled through just as the men caught up and lunged at him.

The sounds of traffic and of wind rushing through skyscrapers reached Virmir’s fox ears, and the breeze rustled his fur as he edged sideways along the outside of the building. One of the men stuck his head through the window and looked out at Virmir, the light glinting off of his sunglasses. “Come back, Mister Robinson,” he said. “We want to help you.”

“Interesting way … ” Virmir gasped for breath. ” … you’ve got of showing it!” His muscles were all trying to tighten up, after the way that he’d run full-tilt, and he did not need that now when he was ten stories off the ground. He tried to control his breathing, and to move steadily towards the next window.

“Mister Robinson,” the man said, “look down.”

“Why? What’s … ” Virmir’s voice trailed off, as he looked down at his feet. There was nothing below them but thin air.
The man grinned.

Virmir flailed wildly for a second, claws scraping the outside of the building, then fell like a rock. “Blaaaaast … ”
He smacked into something, and the world went dark.

Smells crept into Virmir’s nose, of rotting fruit and decaying garbage. Car horns and engines, the sounds of city traffic, came at him from the side. Virmir cocked one fox ear towards them, and felt something on his face. He reached up and removed it. It was a banana peel.

The three men were standing around him.

“Gah!” Virmir scrambled to his feet and tried to back up, but slipped and fell. He was sitting on his tail on top of a heap of garbage bags piled up next to a dumpster, and the one behind him had split open where he’d landed on it. His left hand was deep in a pile of unpleasant things, and he removed it and brushed it off on his fur before looking up at the men in black suitcoats. They were still just standing there, watching him.

“What do you want?” Virmir asked.

“What do you want, Mister Robinson?” It was the one in the middle who spoke.

“Do you want to go your whole life looking and acting like this?” The one on the left.

“A cartoon fox, in a world designed for human beings?” The one on Virmir’s right.

“You can’t go on like this forever.” All three of them spoke at once, now.

“I’ve done a good job of it so far … ” Virmir tried to stand, and had to lean up against the dumpster for a second and wince. He had a headache so bad that it made him dizzy, and on top of that he felt exhausted.

“Because nobody else sees you as a fox,” the one in the middle said.

“Exactly,” Virmir said, rubbing his forehead, then looked up and squinted at him. “Are you saying that some people can?”

“It’s a rare person who sees himself for who he is,” the one in the middle went on, as a skeptical young human’s face reflected back at Virmir from his sunglasses. “It’s an even rarer person who sees others for who they are … Mister Robinson.”

“Instead they see … discrepancies,” the one on his left said. “Things that don’t add up. Things that contradict the person they ‘know’ that you are. Things that contradict the way that their world works. They won’t see you any differently, but they’ll know that you live in a different world than they do.”

“People don’t like their world to be threatened,” the one on Virmir’s right said, as though he knew right where the other would leave off. “They don’t like it when someone else doesn’t play by the same rules they have to. They’ll react. Violently, if necessary.”

Trying to look back and forth between them was making Virmir notice his neck ached as well. He clutched at his forehead and winced, closing his eyes and trying to put as much weight on the dumpster as possible. “So some people will notice me and attack, or something?”

“‘Attack’ is such a harsh word, Mister Robinson … ” The voice from in front of him. “More like ‘deny privileges to.’”

“Privileges like friendship.” The voice to his left.

“Money.” The voice on his right.

“A home.”

“A job.”

“A life.”

“A mate.”

Virmir’s ears pricked back and forth, trying to follow which one was speaking. When they were silent for a second, he looked up. The man in the middle was smiling that plastic smile again, and holding out one of his hands to Virmir. In his palm was a large blue pill.

Virmir took it with his clean(er) hand, and gave it a weird look. The man to his left handed him a full paper cup from the water cooler, and he took it without thinking about it. “So wait. You want me to just take something that’ll make me forget about all this?”

“Oh, no, Mister Robinson.”

The one to his left spoke up. “We have other ways to make people forget things they need not see, and places they need not be.”

Virmir gave them a droll look. “Then what’s this?”

“A choice, Mister Robinson.” The man grinned. “To have things return to the way they were-”

Virmir shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“-when you want them to be that way.”

Virmir gave the man a bewildered look. He went on. “You don’t even know what’s happened, do you? You just know that things are different now. And different is not safe.”

“This will allow you to be different when you want to … ” the man to his left said.

” … in the comfort of your own den,” the man to his right finished.

“And then to be the person that others expect, when it would be dangerous not to do so.” The man in front of him smiled.

“And that’s all it will do?” Virmir asked.

“Of course.”

Virmir had half a mind to just tell the man what he could do with that pill. But something made him hesitate. Maybe it was the fact that he really did not know what had happened, not on an intellectual level, and his instinct was hazy right now. Maybe it was the splitting headache he had, that was keeping him from thinking clearly. Or maybe it was the way the third man had said “den” … as though he were acknowledging that Virmir really was a gray fox.

Virmir saw, in the polished shoe of the man in front of him, a warped, fishbowl view of his cartoon self. And behind him, his human self in shirt and tie, waiting with arms folded to get back to work. The self that his coworkers saw … that’d he’d tried to be, every day, before he’d remembered to be his real self.

That’s when Virmir knew what he had to do.

First, he drank all the water, and tossed the cup away. Then, smiling, he placed the blue pill on the street in front of him. The men around him raised their eyebrows, and frowned. “What are you-”

WHAM.

From the same place that Virmir was storing his wallet and Palm Pilot, he produced an enormous mallet and brought it down on the pill, smashing it. Then he stood the mallet upright and leaned on the handle, and grinned. “Thanks for the help,” he said. “I feel a lot better now.”

The three men sideyed each other.

“Anything else you need?” Virmir asked.

The one in the middle coughed, and straightened his tie. “Mister Robinson,” he said. “If you’ll recall, we mentioned that some people might react … ”

“Violently?”

The men nodded.

Virmir ignited a flame in one hand, and smiled up at them. “Bring it.”

“YAAAH!”

A fireball flew past as three men in suitcoats piled unto the back seat of an unmarked black sedan, their sunglasses crooked and smashed and their faces black with soot. The last one in hastily doffed his burning jacket and slammed the door shut, just in time for a mallet-shaped indentation to appear in it.

Tires squealed and exhaust spewed as the car took off. Virmir smashed one of the taillights with his hammer before coughing, and moving out of the way of the gray cloud left behind. “Fun times,” he said, smiling weakly and coughing again. “Fun times.”

His ears perked towards the sounds of horns honking and more tires screeching in the distance. Then they faded into the background of city traffic, and Virmir was alone in the alley.

He looked up at the side of the skyscraper he worked in, leaning on his mallet and trying to catch his breath. Then, finally, he put the mallet away and walked down the alley, heading back toward the building’s front entrance.

The guard raised an eyebrow at him, as he slid his card. Inside, people waited to take the next elevator rather than share one with someone who smelled like garbage. Alone in the elevator, Virmir examined his cape and sniffed at himself, and his nose wrinkled.

The sun was beginning to set past the buildings outside the window as Virmir walked back to his workstation, in the now-empty cubicle farm. Without sitting back down, he reached up and woke his computer from sleep mode, then saved the project he was working on and logged out. One eye fell on the books stacked up on top of his chair, as he did so, and he looked at them for a long moment. Then he walked out.

The train ride home seemed to take forever. People refused to sit next to him, which was just as well since he needed someplace for his tail to go now. But they also kept glancing in his direction. A child pointed at him and whispered to her mother, and her mother whispered something back, but she continued to stare at him afterwards.

Virmir didn’t know if the attention he was getting was because he looked beat up and smelled bad, or if it was because they could tell something was different about him. Either way, after a couple of minutes he felt awkward and uncomfortable, and wished that he could just blend into the background and wait for his aches to subside.

Virmir reached around behind himself, and spend a few seconds pawing at the folds of his cape before coming back with his Palm Pilot. He turned it on and tapped on the book reader app with his claw, but then he couldn’t make himself read anything. Instead he could only look at his hand and his claws, tapping them against each other and drumming them on his leg.

Virmir fumbled with the stylus for a moment, trying to pull it out of its slot, before finally just pressing the “Home” key and then tapping the picture viewer with his claw. A list of thumbnails came up, and he tapped on one of the drawings he’d done of his cartoon self not too long ago. He looked between it and his reflection, comparing the two with an artist’s eye and not sure which one he was checking for discrepancies.

Then it hit him. His coloring had become flat, as though he’d been colored in a vector graphics program. The drawing he’d done had better shading than he himself did.

Virmir ran one hand along his arm and could feel individual furs, but he couldn’t see them anymore. He turned off his Palm Pilot and looked between himself and his reflection, scared all of a sudden and wondering if he was just going to fade away. Then he slumped back in his seat, worn out and disgusted and not even caring that he was squishing his tail. He just wanted this day to end.

It was cold and quiet outside Virmir’s house. Dried leaves crunched under his feet, and puffs of white came from his vulpine snout. His long ears heard the songs of crickets chirping, but also that blasted dog that kept coming by and barking at Terra, his German Shepherd. His ears flattened, as he spent a whole minute listening to it louder than ever before, and fumbling with the folds of his cape and the fur on his back trying to pick out his house key.

He finally got it out and walked up the driveway to the front door. The outside light came on as the motion detector “saw” him, and in it he saw that there was a package leaning against the doorstep.

Virmir’s ears perked.

He hurried up to the front door and started using the jagged edge of his house key to cut the boxing tape. Then he looked at his hands, and just tore it open with his claws. His ears were starting to freeze by the time he pulled it out of the box: His commission, just like he’d asked for, of his gray fox character looking confident and adventurous. And it was drawn even better than he could’ve done it himself.

His tail started to swish happily as he looked at it, running his thumb over the cardstock and feeling the actual materials used. His cartoon fur fluffed out and became visible again, and his cape straightened out and became shiny. By the time he got to the note that said “Keep being awesome!” his dynamic lighting effects had returned, and he noted them with approval, looking down at himself and at his reflection in the glass on the screen door. He grinned, and his eyes and fangs shone.

An hour later he was cleaned up and wrapped up in warm, fluffy towels, his tail beside him on the couch. He set his plate with the scraps on it on the floor, and patted Terra on the head as she scarfed them. Then he stretched, and woke the notebook computer on the tray in front of him from sleep mode by tapping the external keyboard.

In a chat room attached to Virmir’s website, his online self posed dramatically, spotlights shining on him as he entered.

“Hey!” someone said. “How was your day?”

“Great,” Virmir said, and winked.

She winced, and squirmed in her seat, trying to get her tails comfortable again. They were still sore from where she had fallen on them. And they were dirty and wet, and the back of her coat was dirty and wet, and her hair was all dirty and wet too. At least her side desk faced out into the lobby, so that no one would notice. But she noticed, and it grated on her like her unpaid credit card bills, and her boyfriend’s unbought Christmas gift.

She found her claws digging into the styrofoam, and forced herself to relax. Zen, she thought. Clear mind. Nothing in the world except cocoa. Nothing in the world but expensive, overpriced-

She sipped a little too deeply, and started breathing through her muzzle trying to cool off her burning tongue. Good cocoa, she thought, and fanned cool air onto her tongue. Very good.

Stupid Kath.

Something made her tails twitch and her ears perk, and she looked up to see an unusual presence enter the building. It wavered like it was out of focus, and she shifted gears back and forth with her mind to look at both sides of it, like she would have at one of those books with the 3d illusions. One side was a young man in a business suit, clean and executive looking. The other side was a Kitsune like her, with brilliant white fur that had a golden sheen. But he only had one tail, and his clothes — his real clothes — looked old and cheap. A worn out jacket covered a thin t-shirt, and a pair of jeans that went down over his shoes.

Kath raised her eyebrows, watching him from across the lobby without his noticing her, and wondered what kind of prank he was trying to pull. She remembered her older Kitsune brothers’ dumb antics back home in Vancouver, and the thought of someone like them trying to pull something at First Federal made her grin with anticipation. Go ahead, she thought. Bring it on. We’ll see who has the last laugh — the foolish young fox or the corporate behemoth.

Over the next few minutes, she kept glancing up from her paperwork to see how far he had gotten in line. A fox scent drifted towards her, on the cold air blown in by the doorway, and she detected a hint of forced confidence, overlaying an intense nervousness. She began to sweat as she realized that, because it made her recall her Becoming, and she didn’t want to remember it. Or how scared she had been, or how much her brothers had tormented her.

Her conscience began chiding her, and as always it had her mother’s thickly accented voice. “He is scared young man who has first Become, and you are just to ignoring him? You should getting up, going over there, saying hello to him. Those papers will still being there when you are to getting back.” She imagined her mother’s tails fluffed out, as she folded her arms in a huff.

Not NOW, Mother, Katherine thought, and made herself focus on work. But her mind kept drifting off. Was he really trying to prank them, she wondered, or just trying on a persona? Did he have any foxes in his family? Had anyone explained to him what had happened?

A few minutes passed, a few frustrating minutes spent writing reports in Microsoft Word. Then something loomed over the flat panel display on her desk, and she looked up to see the other fox. He was projecting a sheen of businesslike confidence, so strongly that she could only see the young man in the suit coat.

His eyes flicked down to the nameplate on her desk. “Hello, Miss Sato.” He smiled at her.

His persona was strong, but felt so fake that it was off-putting. Just like most of the real execs I know, Kath thought. She vanished her own persona for him, letting him see her fox muzzle and three bushy tails, and relished the look of shock on his face. His persona flickered a moment, and past him Kath saw someone in line staring at his fox tail.

To his credit, the young fox recovered quickly. “Do they, uh … ” His eyes flicked to the side, and when he looked back down at her he seemed sheepish. “Do they hire a lot of Kitsune here?” He grinned nervously.

“Oh yeah,” she said, and typed something into her report. “Lots. We’re just all over the place here.” She looked up at him. “Can I help you?”

“Well I, uh … ” He coughed, and pulled up a chair to her desk. “I was told you had a job for me,” he said, and sounded like he was trying to be professional.

“Ah, yes,” Kath deadpanned, still typing and looking away from him. “Can I see your resume?”

He got something out of his briefcase, and slid it across the glass desk towards her. She took it and glanced at it for a second. High school graduate, Microsoft Office experience, last position held two years ago. Unhireable. No wonder he was trying so hard to fit in.

“I’ll make sure my boss sees it,” she lied, and put it into a drawer without looking. “If you like, you can take a card,” she said, and waved a hand at her business card holder.

He took one, and sat there looking at it for a long moment. Kath’s face started to burn, as she realized that he wasn’t going away that easily.

“Can I ask you a question?” he finally said.

“Make it quick,” she told him.

“How’d you get hired on, here?”

And Kath knew what he meant. He had just Become, after all; he had discovered his powers all on his own, and the world seemed like a new place to him. Kath remembered flying for the first time, and thinking her brothers could never find her up there. She remembered trying on new personas, and grinning at herself in the mirror, and discreetly playing with foxfire, careful not to burn anything important.

But she also remembered the shock of discovering that her brothers were Kitsune too, and that now that she knew they had no end of ways to torment her. She remembered how quickly her elation and self-confidence had worn off, and how the Monday after that weekend had been just another school day, and how her friends hadn’t even been able to tell that there was anything different about her.

She remembered her teenage years, and how irrelevant it had been that she was a mythical creature. Because nobody had liked her, and nothing could make up for that.

Kath remembered all this as she looked over at him, narrowly considering the naive young fox. And she knew that someone would have to burst his bubble, and that it’d be better done sooner than later.

“Fine,” Kath said. “You want to know how I got this job?” She stood up, and indicated herself from the neck down. “This is how I got this job.”

The young fox’s face turned red, and he looked away.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, her own face reddened, and folded her arms as she spoke. “You’re thinking ‘Oh, I’m a Kitsune now, the world is magic! My every dream can be fulfilled! I’m going to go in and get a job at the bank, even though I haven’t held a position in two flipping years.‘” She gave him a scornful look. “You think anything can make up for that? Or for your lack of a degree?”

He had clasped his hands in his lap as she spoke, and was looking down at them now. “But … ” He looked up at her. “Isn’t the world a magical place?”

“Yes.” She sat back down. “And you know what the magical force that drives this world is? Money. That’s why you are applying to work at a bank, and not at a dumb charity.”

“But … ” And now all she could see was his real side, his fox side, sitting in a chair that cost more than his worn-out clothes did. “Today I … I discovered that I can become anyone that I want to. And I flew. I flew under my own power! Does all that count for nothing?” He gave her a pleading look, and his voice cracked as he spoke.

“Have you tried foxfire yet?” she asked, abruptly.

“Fox … fire? No,” he said, twisting his face as he tried to think.

Kath held out her hand, and a flame the size of a cigarette lighter’s appeared in between her fingers. “This is foxfire. See? There it is,” she said, and idly played with the flame for a moment, a bored look on her face.

He held out his hand and concentrated on it, but failed to produce a spark.

“Know what it’s good for?”

He looked up at her, his eyes daring to hope.

“Setting off the sprinkler system, and lighting cigarettes. That’s it.” She snapped her fingers together, and snuffed out the flame. Along with his hopes.

He looked shocked and hurt, and Kath found that she didn’t enjoy that look on his face as much as she’d thought she would. She glanced back over at her display, and hoped that he would leave soon.

The corners of his eyes moistened, and his face twitched as he fought to maintain his composure. “I’ll show you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll show you what Kitsune powers can do. I’ll imagine myself as the brightest, most successful college student ever. I’ll get the financial aid that I need. I’ll ace every test, and I’ll get that stupid degree, and I’ll come right back here and shove it in your face.” He glared at her, his eyes wet. “And then I’ll rise to the top! I’ll-”

“Want to know a secret?” Kath asked, her hands clasped underneath her chin and her elbows leaning on the top of her desk.

He stopped, and gave her a confused look.

She beckoned him closer. As he leaned over the table towards her, she pointed out into the lobby, and he looked where her fingers were pointing. “See that lady right there?”

“The, uh, African-American one? In the red suitcoat?”

“That’s the one.” Kath looked up at him. “She’s a Kitsune.”

He stared at Kath, not sure if she was joking or not. Then he looked back out into the lobby and squinted at the woman she’d indicated, trying to see her fox muzzle and tails.

“She comes in here every week,” Kath went on, “to deposit her paycheck. Every now and then she asks us about a loan.”

“What does she do?” the young fox asked.

“Some high-level position. President, Vice President, VP of Marketing. I dunno. She’s gotten promoted a few times since I first saw her. Works at some Internet company.”

Kath followed his gaze out into the lobby. The woman looked like a lioness … poised, elegant and powerful. She looked like she didn’t have the time to be waiting there. And in fact, as he watched a man came out of a back room and greeted her apologetically. She forgave him and shook his hand, and then they went down the hallway together.

“I couldn’t see her tails,” the young fox said.

“That’s because she’s forgotten she has them.”

He recoiled, and stared at her again.

“That’s what happens, when you take on a persona so intensely. You become it, and it becomes you, and you forget who you actually are.” Kath continued to look out into the lobby, idly kicking her feet. “First you forget how many tails you have … then you forget that you have a fox tail at all … then you forget you can fly.” She looked up at him. “Go ahead. Ask her if she’s a Kitsune. See what kind of response you get.”

He stared into the hallway, visibly shaken, trying to comprehend what he’d just heard. “How … why?” He looked down at her. “Why would anyone let that happen?”

“Didn’t you just tell me, yourself? You don’t really want to be a Kitsune. You want to be another successful human, with money and power and fame. And you don’t mind having Kitsune powers, if they’ll help you accomplish your goal. But if they won’t, you’re willing to set them aside, and do whatever it takes.” She smiled at him, a sly kind of smile that enjoyed the horrified look on his face. “You’re starting to see how the world really works.”

He looked away and just stood there, his hands in his pockets, staring down at the floor. And after a moment, Kath turned back to her PC’s display, and started typing again.

The young fox mumbled something, and Katherine’s ears perked. “Excuse me?”

“You,” he said, and looked up at her. “How come you’re still a Kitsune?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “I beg your pardon?”

“How come you still remember that you’re a Kitsune? I mean, if that’s really what you’re supposed to do. Forget who you are, and forget you can fly, and do whatever it takes to earn money and buy things. Then why do you still have your tails?” His eyes bored into hers. “Did you lie to me, when you said your Kitsune powers don’t help with anything? Or when you told me that’s how the world really works, were you just lying to yourself?”

Kath stood up, kicked her chair back and gripped the edge of her desk. “Listen, you little snot!” He jumped back as her tails went ablaze behind her, the air rippling with heat distortions, and several people in line gasped. “Don’t you ever talk that way to me. Ever!”

She glared up at his shocked face, and her eyes glowed. “Yes, I have my tails. Yes, I have my stupid powers! But I also have a job, and a life, and a place to stay besides my parents’ house. And you’ll never have any of that, because you’re worthless! The corporate world doesn’t want you, and you’ll be lucky if you can find a job scrubbing tables at Arby’s! Do you hear me!? I said-”

A loud, beeping noise cut her off. And for a second she looked around, startled, before the sprinkler came on over her desk.

The people in line cried out in alarm, unable to see why her outburst had made the sprinkler system go off but able to see the results. Her tails went out, and her suit was instantly soaked through. A second later her computer fizzled and gave off a loud spark, then shut down. Steam poured out of the case.

The young fox was nowhere to be seen.

Kath stood her chair back up and slumped into it, soaking wet all the way through, as her mother’s voice chided her. “That was not a wery nice thing you did, Katerina.”

She sighed. It’s not a nice world, mom …

Two weeks later

“ … consumer confidence at an all-time low, as evidenced by this year’s dismal holiday sales. Macy’s and JC Penney’s have revised their fourth quarter earnings projections, and … ”

The TV newscaster went on, unaware that he was sitting inside of a beat-up plastic box on a bare wooden floor. The furniture had already been moved out, and Katherine’s things were piled up in boxes, hastily patched up with boxing tape and with black marker scrawlings across them.

She stood in the kitchen nook, wearing blue jeans and a white sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and mopped at her face with the bandana she’d been using to tie back her hair. Then she looked past the TV set out the window, at the tops of the trees on the street outside, and sighed into the telephone. “Hi, mom … ”

“ … been unable to stem the tide of rampant bankruptcy. Many lending institutions have been forced to close their doors altogether, including the First Federal Bank of … ”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Kath smiled a sad smile, and twisted the telephone cord around her finger. “Listen, can I … ” She coughed. “Can I ask a favor of you and dad? I kinda need a place to stay for a few weeks — maybe months — and I … ” Her voice cracked.

She turned away from the window and hid her face, as she started to cry uncontrollably. “I know, mom,” she said, her voice husky. “I know.”

“ … pleas for a bailout were soundly rejected by both parties. But leading analysts warn that if taxpayer money isn’t pumped into the system, and soon, the entire country could face a financial crisis.”

Kath sniffled, and tore off a wad of paper towels before pressing it to her eyes, and then blowing her nose on it. She kept the phone to her pointed ear, occasionally nodding to it. “Yes,” she said, and sniffled again. “Yes. Yes, I’m looking forward to your cooking, too.” She opened the refrigerator door. There were a pizza delivery box and a half-empty two-liter bottle inside. “Believe me, mom, I’m looking forward to it.”

“ … was brought to you by Consumer Refinancing Center. Got debt? We can help!”

“I love you too, mom.” She nodded, then laughed, then sniffled again and brought another paper towel to her muzzle. “Yes. Okay, I’ll see you there then. Do svidaniya!”

She hung up the phone, turned around and then stopped, taken aback. Floating outside her window was a familiar-looking young fox, leaning one arm on the windowsill and looking up at her blankly.

He didn’t move or say anything. And Kath finally stormed over to the window, unlocked it and pulled it upward, paint flaking off as she did so. Cold air poured inside, and she ignited a foxfire in one hand, to ward off the cold and ward back the intruder. “What do you want?”

“Do you need any help?” he asked, unfazed.

“What makes you think I need your help?” she said, and sniffed.

He said nothing, but looked past her. And she turned and saw the stack of boxes piled up against the wall, haphazardly placed and crushing each other.

Kath took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. She hung her head in defeat, and squeezed her palm shut to extinguish the flames. “Come in,” she said, without looking up.

He went around to the front door. And the TV played a commercial, that ended with scenes of a family playing on swings in a park. “So you can forget about your finances … and spend time on what’s really important.“