I see her speaking with Red the next morning from a place in the grooves of a tree. It is inconvenient that she is speaking with him. I take her from him without much complaint on his part, as she grabs my hand and marches off with me. There is nowhere to go. We are just walking. Her dark hair swings around her body, occasionally tickling my arms. We don't have anywhere to stop.

"Should we think of something to do for the group? Any towns nearby we could raid for money? You can just get them to throw money at you if you charmspeak them, right? I'm sorry, I still don't get how that works. Not entirely. Wait. Do you charmspeak the group into forgetting how your charmspeaking works?" A laugh, ugly and nasal, emanates from her throat at this. She often laughs like this when she is rambling, which unfortunately is quite often. She tends to snort a little at the end, or whine as she trails off, indicating she finds her own jokes humorous. "That's so good. Must drive Red crazy. I know Dylan acts like a dog who's just heard a whistle."

"I do not want to use my charmspeak for that right now," I say. "Stop talking."

"Okay," she says.

"I am not used to having a partner accompanying me for more than a few hours of the day."

"Totally understandable." Even her diction is crude and sometimes, as elaborated by her continuous rambling, excessive. It is as if she is trying to impress on me that she is intelligent. I do not understand why everything with her is so excessive. Humans shut up and speak with their bodies.

I tell them to stop speaking if they do not. It is more conducive for conversation. I walk past Kali and continue deep in the woods where we will not be interrupted. My body pulls in odd places, and I can feel the flesh peeling where I have made the lines. I make them after we are done with each other. It is a feeling I want to associate with her. That way we will both receive some degree of sensation from our encounters.

"Kali. What do you feel when we are together?" I ask, stopping. We have exited the thicker area of brush and are surrounded by dust. The sun shines on everything.

"You don't want me to get all mushy," Kali bumps into my side.

"Do not touch me. That is uncomfortable," I say, pushing her off.

"You don't want me to touch you, but would you want me to touch you?" she makes a little gesture with her hands. Those are twin guns she is flashing at me. I've never seen it before. I touch her hands, running my fingers up her own. She shivers. It is cold but it is not that cold. Kali never fears cold. I watch her most of the day and most of the night, when I can not sleep. Humans watch each other with something my face knows how to imitate. It may also be an emotion possessed by the other Amalgams. I do not understand what I am running up against.

"Kali. I need to know what sensual experiences... you have... when we are together," I press.

She looks up at me, biting her lip, and says, "I feel good. Like someone else is in control of the world for a while, which is always the case, but it's a little more intimate when it's the two of us. I guess you are my whole world for a few minutes. What do you feel?"
"Nothing," I say.

Kali's expression falters. "You're not serious, are you?"

"Never," I say. I blink once. Kali laughs again, but it is all whine. I lift a knife towards her, my arm trembling. "You are not going to tell Red that. You are not going to tell Dylan that. Anything we have said together is ours. Is that understood?"

"Of course, of course. You can put that thing down," Kali says. Her face tilts into a half-grin. She's whining again. I can hear the distant thrum of some petty animal in the brush, alongside every hollow noise on the landscape. There is an emptiness in the air. I put the knife down.

"We are going to go back now. You are going to heed my warning," I lay the intent into my voice.

Kali nods again. She does not look dazed or tired as others do when I have spoken to them as I speak best. I do not like the alert fear in her eyes. Above anything else it is a warning to me, and this is my 'relationship'. I return Kali, picking her dark hand up and holding it in my own, and I carry her forwards by it. She keeps my pace, but she kicks rocks the whole time when usually she would be chatting incessantly. I mark every deviant behavior. I sense her fingers on her unheld hand rise to the places on her arm where I have marked her.

"Do you love me?" I ask.

"I think I might not be capable of loving anyone," Kali says.

"Don't be silly. You described your pleasurable experience earlier," I say. I lean into this too. She cowers again, a touch, and I feel something crack along my neck. I am going to need more effective measures of control. I let Kali leave and speak with the others, while we move. We move all day and Kali wanders back and forth from her place with me, looking concerned. I am not there to speak with her, but she rolls her hand towards mine anyways. It is a

It is my job to deal with food. I open the bag. There is nothing in the bag but air and a dead rat. I tie the bag up again and tie it tight. My fingers glint in the light. I have made them red like the knife. I have become reliant on them lately.

I notice Mary out of the corner of my eye. She is similarly reliant on similar implements. She and Gillian have one of Damien's hands apiece. They are watching each other. Adaline and Trace are sitting together on another stump. They are also watching each other. I begin to think about how they might describe each other's presence and stop speculating. It is not something I do often as the things I am speculating about are not real and as such are not important. I am grounded by my discomforts in the present.

I think I would like Kali not to speak about our conversations as she approaches Dylan and Red to sit down next to them in front of the puny fire. She could talk about anything I have said and the others would know that I have said it. This is how I interpret our relationship: it is a mutual risk. It is supposed to be predicated on a pleasure necessary to both of us worth that risk. There is no reason besides that that anyone could do something like that, but many humans are paired off, along with many members of the group, even where such relations are counterintuitive to what they are pursuing.

Why is she so eagerly pursuing me if our relationship is such an incredible risk? It makes very, very little sense, and is dangerous to both parties. If she says anything else to them I can't hear, in that low, whining, rambling voice, I'm going to break her open. I'm going to break her right open in front of everyone.
I do not usually imagine things but the visions dance in front of my eyes. I see whole futures spilled out before us. I blink back and the lights disappear from in front of my eyes. She causes me to become unsettling. I look in her general direction and imagine myself reaching out a hand, but the action of not acting in the present is its own kind of disorienting. It is not that I am not capable of the action. It is a muscle that has, due to its inherent uselessness, never been utilized. At least I imagine it is some kind of muscle, hidden deep in my defective body.

"You cause me to become unsettling," I tell Kali later when she is lying right next to me. We are about to transform back and settle for another night.

She responds, "Is it something I can stop? If it is, trust me, I'd want to... I mean, I will do it. I just don't know what you're referring to sometimes." She stares up at me with those wide, imploring eyes, which are not dissimilar to those of a cat's.

"It has never been a problem with anyone else," I respond. "Turn over."

"The others are here," whispers Kali. "Come on. We don't have to do anything right now, do we?"

I look back at the dimming light of our campground. Red is stamping out the fire. Usually this is Kali's job, but right now she is mine. I grab her hand and take it in my own, then place it across my chest. "They are far enough away."

"I'm tired," protests Kali, in a waker voice. Her hand is shaking slightly. "Elle, please don't touch me."

"What is wrong with you," I whisper. "This never happens either."

Kali's face draws back into the mask of rage that so inspires fear in the others, but this is a weak action, and I can see the way the strings of her being play at her face, trying to jostle backwards with a force her pitiful countenance does not possess the energy for. I grab her more firmly, insisting. I whisper in her ear with all the force my charmspeak can muster, and I sense her go limp under the weight of it.

We dance with each other under the moonlight.