The last few days have been the worst.

They shouldn't even be bad, because Dylan and Kali are tailing us now, and Dylan and Kali are usually cool, but neither of them will spar with me and they don't even talk to us or each other that much. Red is also doing this new thing where he does even more deep breathing before talking and then he stares at Dylan with his head almost tilted and ew, gross, please chew me out quickly so I can get on with my day.

Today I end up swinging my legs in a tree, which can support my weight if I hollow out my bones (why is there so much stuff in bones? What do you need it for?). I let my dark wings hang low over the branches and swing my legs even harder since nobody's watching. Gillian is down somewhere, standing at a distance from Alex, and Damien is over with the younger kids being boring. I hurl myself out of the tree and use my wings to help me down, landing just behind his back. I prod him hard in the back and he screams and almost falls over.

I grin. "Hey. Hey, Damien. Let's go somewhere."
Damien turns around, terrified. Trace and Adaline are holding each other's hands again and I grab for Damien's. He almost struggles out of the hold but eventually eases up. "Sorry, Mary."

"You don't have to be that sorry." I assure him, with another, slighter pat. "You just need to... stop. It's not like I was going to hurt you or anything."

"That looks like it did hurt," Trace peeps.

"If I meant to hurt him, he would be on the ground right now." I laugh, letting go and slinging my arm back over his head, where it belongs. Damien's legs always give a little, which isn't necessary because I'm taller than him anyways, but I like that he's accommodating. This is kind of one of his few redeeming qualities but I've tried to explain this before and there's no use changing him. "Let's go."

Damien follows me into the woods, looking down at the dirt. "Do we have anywhere we actually need to be?" he asks.

"If we needed to be anywhere, you can bet that's the one place I wouldn't want to be."

"Wow, that was... almost introspective." Damien mumbles beneath his breath.

'Introspective' is a dumb word. It sounds like it's on stilts or something. "Did Angel teach you that?"

"I guess I just... picked it up."

"Well, it's dumb," I say, "Also, I do have somewhere to go, and we should go there. I bet you wouldn't believe what I found."
"Is it a waterfall?"

"Maybe." We rise onto a large, jutting rock that hangs out over the land around it. Further down the ridge is a waterfall. "Bet I can fly there faster than you."

"You don't need to bet anything. We both know you're faster than me." Damien says.

This is the other great thing about hanging around Damien. He's very honest. I nod, soaking it up, and spread wings from my back anyways. It's uncomfortable to have them and wings, unless I'm in my Veritas, and new, inhuman muscle sneaks around my chest to hold up the new limbs. I hit Damien with one of them. "You're free to keep up, then!" I hurl myself off the cliff and soar out, falling into falcon form before I hit the treeline. Wild adrenaline sweeps over me, coating my feathered limbs and culminating in my throat. I charge the waterfall. I shift something much larger as the water hits me like a brick, bellowing with rage as I take the form of a much larger beast. All the birds in all the trees fly away, but one dusty-colored finch hops closer. I shift back below the water, pulling myself out, and laugh, lying in the shallows. "Come on. You should try this."

The finch falls out of his perch.

"Come on." I say.

"We shouldn't be out this far."

I rise from the water. "Why do you care what we should or shouldn't do?"

"Why don't you?" asks Damien, stepping in to meet me.

"Because what we should be doing is nothing. I kind of want to blow something up," I say. "Or read something. Or do anything. I thought when we showed them the article again things would be fun and scary and we could be on the run again at all times but we're still... this is so slow."

"You always make my day more interesting, Mary." Damien says.

"Thank you!" I exclaim. "I feel like no one gets that. Do you know what I mean?"

Damien's expression shifts to a smile that looks like it hurts.

"I could kiss you right now." I say.

"Are you going to?" asks Damien.

He leans over. I curl my hands into a knot at his back before pressing him to me, and our lips meet. He tastes like the river, even though he hasn't touched it, and a little bit like sugar--enough to keep you wanting it. He moves back, and his eyes are the rocks exposed by the water. It's a pale color diluted by how watery his eyes are.

"Kind of like kissing a rock." I say, putting my tongue to the roof of my mouth and sneaking it out to my lips.

"Oh. Sorry, Mary. I wish I was better at this, but I'm just, not, I guess."

A weird sensation twists inside me like a snake in the waters, right around my waist where my shirt rises from the air pockets stuck in the damp fabric. "I'm not angry at you. Calm down, Damien."

"There's someone here," he whispers.

"I know," I snap. The water falls from me and the beginnings of my Veritas emerge in the form of stronger wings and armor. My voice hollows in my head, connections firing as the ropes in my mind pull into a stronger mesh, and then all of it recedes. Kali enters the scene, frowning. I pull back, like an eagle stopping mid-dive, into myself. My wings still stay open in challenge.

"I'm supposed to be watching you," Kali says, dryly. "Supposedly."
"Wanna watch us do something interesting?" I ask.

"Mary," sighs Kali.

"I need to... leave." Damien states.

"Oh, you can go." Kali says. "I'm not worried about you."

He dashes out, turning into a deer and leaping off into the woods. My tongue moves across my lips as he goes, running over dry skin. The water falls from around my legs and I shift wings.

The fire flies just over my head, singing feathers, and I dive back towards the water. Kali is on me just as quickly, and then we are two bears writhing and thrashing in the water. I shift something smaller only to kick Kali over moments later with a particularly inventive blow from a small-ish elephant, the only thing I could think of off-hand small enough to off-set a grizzly. Kali snarls, gathering herself as she rises up from the water, and both of us shudder with a single bolt of adrenaline. We both smell it in the air, thick as blood.

"You fight like a girl!" I crow, returning to myself.

"You're a girl, Mary." Kali shifts back, crouching in the water and holding her wound.

"I know, except I'm actually good at fighting." I smirk.

"Every syllable that comes out of your mouth is obnoxious."

"Oh yeah?" I bolt up. "Put your money where your mouth is. Veritas. Right now. Take me on."

"Do you enjoy being beat into a bloody pulp?" Kali asks.

I lower my head and raise it again, my heart still throbbing in my chest.

Kali's lip curls. "You disturb me, Mary."

"You sound like Red," I wheeze.

This stops her. I watch her fists curl and trace up her tensing muscles to her face, where the ridge of her face contorts into something barely holding its resemblance of humanity. "You really should have kept Damien around to hold you down. I don't know how anyone stands you when you're not being restrained."

"Well, I don't control Damien. He's gone," I say. "Probably to go be boring."

"You don't control him," Kali repeats.

"Are you listening?"

Kali turns. "We're going back to the group."

"I don't think he's even actually in love with me. I think he's lying," I muse.

Kali laughs dryly. "Damien. Lying."
"Maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do. Maybe you're just wrong. Maybe everyone's wrong." I say. "You lie all the time. The older kids do. They lie and lie because they're scared of us and what we could do. Damien's afraid of me too, isn't he? He's scared. They're all scared. Well, I'm going to show him all scared they should be, one of these days."

Kali has a finger to my nose just as quickly. She's shorter than me by about a head, maybe even two if you count my hair (hers lies flat, because like everything about Kali, it's... flat), but in the moment her presence is like a long cast shadow. "Never call me one of them again." she says.

I've hit something. You have to jab just below the ribcage, or through it, or in it... no, I forget where you hit. I just know you have to keep talking until you find something you can hurt and I know how to hurt when I want to, really. I imagine a thousand knives through her back. I don't need to imagine anything. I want to go at it now. "Give me one reason why not to."

"Because you're not going to back up a single threat you're making right now with action." Kali says, as if she even knows. "Damien does love you, at the very least, as much as any of us will ever love each other or ourselves. I personally have no idea why he chooses to put up with you."

"Prove it," I insist, with an undignified sniff.

"You've kissed him?" Kali asks.

"We just did."

"Well, that's further than most of us are going to get. Congrats."
"What if I want more?" I ask.

Kali shrugs.

"Come on."

Her eyes sweep the ground. "Be more assertive."

"Is that working out for you?"

Kali does not turn this time, but she stiffens. Her shoulders rise. There we go. Right for the heart--that's where you aim. Tear right through the middle. Don't hold back for a second. That's the only way to accomplish much of anything. "It will."
Elle. Elle, probably. Maybe. Should I care? Do I?

When we get back, I see her and Elle watch each other through the corner of their eyes, mirrors on mirrors. Reflecting. (There was a word for this. Not that I care.)

I hold next to a tree. I'm sick of trees. I crave the open sky, right around every corner. I should go flying later. There he is. "Damien."

"Y-yeah?"

He's holding Gillian's hand. Gillian has the ugliest grimace I've ever seen plastered across her face, and lightning moves through me to punch it off of her. I hold my hand down against my side, then put my elbow on his head. "It's okay if you don't know what you're doing. You can just admit it."

Gillian raises an eyebrow.

"I don't always know either, so... I guess it's unfair to expect anyone to know what they're doing." I continue. "So."

Damien nods. His heart pulses in his throat and his eyes are even bigger than usual, like the eyes of a small owl. "It's okay, Mary."

I take his other hand.

Red and Dylan are talking up ahead with Alex, who is holding out his phone to them.

"We're going to hit a city by nightfall," Gillian tells us. "Be on your best behavior."

"You don't look happy about it," I smirk.

"We were fine until you showed up," Gillian says.

I imagine drawing the thick blade of my Veritas's sword down between her hand and Damien's.