rule 6: and we keep moving, because what else could we possibly do in a world like this

I poke the head and it says "you and I have always been sisters" in the kind of soft rasping voice that can only be heard when you put your head very close to the ground and listen with all of your heart. I poke it again with the stick and a fly buzzes out from one of the eye sockets and runs two loops before exiting into the sky. The deer skull grins wickedly and asks "why must you chase away the only one on my mind" as it tilts to the side.

I say "sorry" real quiet but then ask "are you in love" poking the skull again with a stick to see if there are any more flies.

The skull whispers back "yes she took everything from me, slowly, one day at a time, and now we are made of each other" and grins with its few remaining teeth on its three-part broken jaw.

Defiantly I tell it "my love gives and gives" and lift my head.

The deer skull shakes its head as it rattles to a stop on its side and says "it is in the nature of all things to take" and when I roll my eyes at it (which it can't really do back seeing as it's a skull who can't move) it continues raspily "you and I are alike in that we eat but we are different in that I take directly from the earth, and you are most assuredly a predator."

I say "am so not" and then cover my mouth because I'm a little bit alone right now and I don't want anyone coming after me!

"If she had not restrained you you might have eaten all of those men" warns the skull "and that is what she takes away from you."

"good" I say frustrated "I don't even want it so there" and then I put my hands on my hips just so it knows that the conversation is over. It is still looking at me with big big lifeless eyes round like suns taken over by some kind of a blight so at first I poke it again but then I kick it and yell "sorry" as it falls back into the woods.

The birds chirp overhead undeterred and the red leaves quiver on the trees waiting to fall when the moon widens from a nail into a full stomach.

I feel her welling up inside me again and she feels like all the noise in the entire world compounding into a thing with teeth, the thing that knows and feels and wants and wants and wants. Is that the emotion? It's the one you make with your hand when you reach forwards to grab an apple off of a tree or when you hold an animal to your mouth to eat it.

I brush the dirt from my hair as I walk back feeling a little taller than I was and Trace is there looking for me and Angel is definitely there looking for me because of course they both are. I stand against a tree measuring myself up and find that they used to be a little taller. Maybe I am taking monstrous form already just growing very very slowly and in response to the thought I take my fingers and rub my teeth with them. They are sharp but not too sharp and I don't remember if they were always this sharp or not which is unsettling and I want to ask about my teeth but everyone will be super confused if I start freaking out about my teeth right now. Oh adaline baby what's wrong are you doing okay come here we will fix all your problems for you by shoving them in a large hole.

Red is pacing again with Alex who is trying to mimic Red's bird gait but is more just walking in kind of but not really the same direction and lifting his legs a little more. Alex has the guilt face on and we all already know what he's going to say before he says "well I really wish we had the phone because it would be taking us way less time to navigate right now" and his head is hung. We are not getting Alex a new phone because Red doesn't want us to steal a phone and apparently they have ways of finding stolen phones now and it is just a whole big mess.

Red retorts "well it also would have taken us less time if we weren't being pursued all the time and it would have taken us far less time had we not spent most of the summer arguing over if we were going to take the advice on the coordinates" and the whole group groans because someone almost got outvoted again and is sour about it.

"I still think we should have not counted Angel's vote and just gone" Dylan says.

"I think running into the arms of people who have murderous intentions may, and I am just putting this out here, be a terrible idea" Angel pipes up over him.

Mary scoffs real loud "they don't want to murder us, they want to tranquilize us" and as he grin widens she keeps on going "I love that word I so wish one of us had tranquilizing powers (preferrably me)-- oh wait! there are animals who can do that, right" she pauses and turns her head way too far "angel, are there animals"

Angel crosses her arms and tries not to smile and says "there are animals on this planet, yes, but as for ones who can tranquilize anyone of our size I haven't the slightest"

"The slightest what" asks Mary.

"Stop" Trace says from her corner. "both of you stop."

"Angel is my grammar friend!" Mary exclaims, excitedly.

Red holds out grocery bags on his arms which makes him look way less intimidating and way funnier and announces to the whole group "his has been a really lovely morning recap but regardless we should probably continue making haste if all of you want to make it to the Andrews estate by the end of the week" and he looks over at Damien pointedly who is staring up at a tree.

Trace says bitterly "yes a grand two of us are excited for and wanted this" and then she tosses her hair a bit and comes to stand next to me and has me around the waist.

I blush and Mary leers at us with a quick headshake that lets me know whoops this was a terrible idea (what can you do really) and I kind of clutch Trace's wrist to let her know to stop.

"The point is" Red says to the whole group "that we are going" and it's not like anyone is going to say no to him so we start walking.

The forests are all set on unforgiving hills around here that go way up into the sky and we follow them onto the backs of an animal so much older than all of us. The red of fading days is trapped within the leaves, the amber of a tree's freshest years, and the yellow of the sun too, and when I walk with Trace it feels like dancing. I feel something longer than me spreading out behind me like a cape, always a few steps behind, and eventually I let go.

"Addie what's up" asks Trace and I just draw my hand back stitching together skin that is becoming covered by pawpad. When I look at her her face is jagged crystal and I can her the faint song that emanated from the men when I rounded on them conscious and needing and wanting and the way I knocked them over.

I put a hand to my mouth "how many of them stayed down" I ask even though she wouldn't even know the answer.

Trace looks up at the trees and says "you've never done anything bad Addie and it was months ago" and yes that's the worst part it's been there the whole time stitched back and maybe Angel was right to have so many rules if it stopped me before? Sometimes when we are not walking I imagine that I am there and I do not stop at Trace. I feel it wind in my head over and over again the memory with teeth stronger than my heart.

When we stop for the night Mary says something about "marshmallows" and grabs something out of Red's bag and I think I remember marshmallows and liked them but it must have been years ago when we were here for the first time and now we're making all those stories again but I've barely gotten to change at all. I can't even imagine being like this forever with her coming out of my head like a chicken emerging from an egg with big big claws and a long angry face. I sit far away from the campfire and look for something dead to poke.

Angel sits next to me on the leaves and asks "how do you do it" with a big huff.

I look up and ask "her" like please let it be anything else.

She nods.

I close my eyes and say "I don't know why you asked me really I am still afraid of her" I look up at the moon who is out to say hello "but I don't think that bravery is the absence of fear so I guess what I really have to do is accept her and take it on willingly" and at this I thread fingers together and feel the oil in me where the blood should be.

"She is definitively evil I don't know if I should be enabling that" Angel says "you remember" and of course I remember.

I nod.

"You made yours useful even if I wish we could find less violent methods and at least with you the intent is different than Mary's who would probably kill them in and out of Veritas because she truly does not care" Angel explains. "I think I could be a less violent method she's smart enough to know these things even when I don't" and she kicks a stick into the woods.

"I think that's brave of you to say" I tell her. "I just don't know how much I can tell you to do because if it were the same for all of us we all would have figured it out and we just haven't."

Angel nods.

I look up at the moon and say "we're lucky we've got the world looking out for us sheltering us up here in its arms when we probably deserve the exact opposite of it."

"I want someone to watch over us" Angel admits "I think we could use it" and she has the old look in her eyes all calculating controlling and a different kind of need.

"I don't think they all feel that way" I say "Sometimes I'm scared to but I can't really force the way I feel onto Trace or anyone else and I can't leave because I know they want me here so I guess in the end I really don't have much of a choice at all."

"This makes me feel empty" Angel says.

"That's probably just progress"

"Thanks I hate it" she says and kind of laughs, so I kind of laugh.

Trace holds me tighter when I go back to the fire and there are marshmallows... like I was going to slip out of her arms if she let me, as if that were even possible, and we eat the marshmallows off sticks and Mary sets hers on fire. I keep mine drawn away and it roasts so slowly but still burns the inside of my mouth when I eat it. It reminds me of the way I can only use myself to draw stitches across the mouth of the thing I become, like I am riding an animal who I can only restrain and not control, and I chew, imagining them all closed, or all freed.