I saw him there.

I pace back and forth in camp between two trees. The others begin to depart on their patrol for the day leaving our four-person party and Mimsy. Mimsy is in the canopy, hung over the scene. She is indifferent. I pace faster, swinging around one tree and moving back to the other. The movement is easy. It burns off the growing tension.

"Are we going to go soon?" asks Mary.

"No," I say. I look to Damien. This is a private matter. I seize him by the shirt, and his breath catches. Damien begins hyperventilating. Mary is still there. I narrow my eyes. "Let's leave."

"Gillian! Did you just... wow! Wow, wow, wow. Damien, you think I'm mean? Did you just see that?" Mary calls. "Gillian, did something get into you last night?"

Yes.

I drop Damien and leave the camp area. The others file in behind me. They are fast but their trails wander all over the fields. I can keep their pace just by staying in a straight line and tuning them out. Mary is still talking. Damien is holding her hand. Alex is on his phone. The mission proceeds as normal.

As we enter the city, I clutch my stomach. It rumbles with dissent. I ate food earlier. Abnormal performance is a poor sign. The others are staring around, disinterested. There are no obvious cues as to where our missing members could be. It does not matter. I am looking for one street.

I taste the air, which is rich with a dark, sinister scent. We are here earlier than expected. I draw Damien aside from the group with a hand and whisper, "I was here last night. Would you know why that is?"

Damien gulps. "No. I'd have no idea."

"Do not," I grit my teeth. "Lie to me, Damien. I trusted you."

"Trusted?" asks Damien, tentatively.

I nod.

Damien lowers his head. Mary is distracted by a store, which Alex has since entered. They have been in there ten times. There are many screens with lights on them. There is no reason to enter the store, seeing as the pictures have no effect on real life. This buys us time.

"Would you please tell me why you did it, Damien?"

Damien sniffs. "You can't tell Red. Please, please, please don't tell Red."

"Why?"

"Same reason as the open mic. I need to do this, Gillian! The same way you need to defend people. It's what I was made to do, and I-- I think I might finally be able to do it! All I need is to sneak away every now and then, and I promise I won't get up to anything bad, and I, and I... um. Sorry. Music is important to me."

I shake my head. "I defend people for the sake of this group. What you do is in direct opposition to that. You are a danger to them every time you sneak away. What if you go Veritas again?"

"It won't happen," Damien promises. "I've been working on controlling it."

Mary exits the store, kicking the door open. The harsh tingling noise of the store door opening is accentuated by another quick kick as she holds it open for Alex, keeping her leg out while she exits. I blink again. I would love to slam her into the pavement just for attracting attention but we have an operative to attend to.

"Please," Damien whispers, gripping my hand. "Gillian, if you're my friend, if I mean anything to you at all, please give me this. I promise I'll do anything else the group needs, but I can't give this up. I can't, I can't, I can't..."

"Can't what? Grow a backbone?" asks Mary, placing her elbow back on Damien's head. Her eyes bore into mine. She is begging to have all of her teeth kicked in.

Damien closes his eyes and smiles, but his voice is a hollow rasp, "Guess we can't find them anywhere!"

We look all day.

We looked all yesterday.

---

I sit under the tree two days later. The air is cold. I can feel the bark against my skin pressing against the flesh, forming indentations. I look up towards the gray-pink sky, then back at my feet. "Should tell him," I say to myself. Damien is sleeping nearby. My stomach twists again, this time, so painfully I almost fall over. I move into the scrublands, away from the group. The brush is hard against my skin. I can feel a dull ache.

"Hey. Gillian! Gill!" Mary says. She bends down to my level. "You know, if you want to be a turtle, just be a turtle!"

I feel my face scrunch up.

"Pretty boring around here, isn't it?" Mary asks. "We can't actually do anything besides these dumb patrols. This has to be the longest winter of my life, and we've spent the last three or something doing nothing but sitting around on the coast. No one's even been chasing us! Now we get on the road and we're back to doing nothing. What's the fun in that?"

"Three members of the group are missing. This has never happened before." I explain. I hoist myself into a sitting position, stomach still burning with pain. I put a hand up to my mouth. My teeth are breaking out, lengthening in some places, while my hair is curling out around my neck.

"First time for everything. Oh! Is that your Veritas? It's been... it's been almost two weeks. I think. A week is seven days, right? So uh... yeah I've lost track of time by now. It's been too long! I miss you. The real you." Mary runs a hand through my hair. "Come on. I'm sure the big, scary dragon wants to come out and play, right? "

"It is not a toy," I growl.

"But you're unsettled. Something's got you... all twisted up, huh? Would you want to talk about it?" Mary asks.

"You? Talk?"

Mary nods. "Do it with Damien all the time."

Mary talks over Damien. "I have operatives," I explain. "One of them is to keep order. The other is to protect the group. Right now, I am protecting an individual. They are going in the face of order. I need to choose one priority and stick with it."
"Well, would you rather have order, or would you rather protect the group?"
"I keep order to protect the group," I say. "But when there is disorder, I feel..."

Mary leans back onto her shoulders. "This is a lot more fun with Damien. He's honest with himself, at least. Plus, he cries, so I know he actually has feelings."
"You make him cry," I say.

"You're going to make him cry, too, when you tell Red that he's been sneaking out to go play uku-- yuke-- whatever. Playing with the humans! For some reason he thinks they're real interesting, and I'm like, nuh-uh, but whatever you say, I guess, I'm definitely not going to stop you." Mary has bright, angry eyes. She is the dawn pink, the sewage color of all the light-strewn clouds, and then she is a dark speck in my vision. My fingernails extend, covering my whole finger, and my skin grows harder. My hair becomes a mane around my neck, and huge spines pierce my flesh, growing outwards as I become the big, scary dragon. I lower my claws to the ground, viewing the landscape, which is white as snow. The sky is white. The trees are black. Mary is dark hair and a face like the sun.

Everything makes sense.

I move to strike her down, but I can not move.

Mary rushes forwards and changes form at high velocity, striking me in the stomach. I feel pain, numbly, but she can not knock me over. My skin is harder than stone. Mary strikes again, yelling as she drives a sword across one of my arms, and my skin heals the cut. The strike of pain whips operatives into focus.

I can see the black cut in the flesh of the group.

I raise a hand, all my energy converted into a blow, and slam Mary against the ground. She holds my paw up long enough to roll out from under it. She then drives her sword between my claws, knocking one off. It begins to grow back from the stump.

"This helping?" asks Mary. "You're not putting up much of a fight."

I shift back, finger still bleeding. It grows from the stump upwards. I flex the new finger as the nail grows back in. The pain is minimal. The scar on my leg is gone, but I wanted that.

"What was that about?" asks Mary.

"I think you helped." I tell her.

"Uh, yeah, duh! I'm super helpful!" Mary says. "Told you a good fight was all you needed."

"You did not put up a good fight," I say, walking back towards the group.

"Okay, that's just mean. I go out of my way to give you a good time and you--"

I hold Mary back. Red is standing in the brush, next to Dylan, who is tensed and ready in his beast form. I look them both in the eyes and bring my hand up to my face, clearing my throat.

"Is everything okay?" asks Red. "We saw your Veritas and thought Mary might have provoked you."

"Everything's my fault," Mary sneers. "Go ahead, Gillian. You're the one who had an apothecy."

"What the... what are you even trying to say?" asks Dylan.

"A revelation. An apothecy," Mary says.

"Epiphany?" asks Red.

"Damien snuck out to go give a concert at one of the stores in town," I tell them both.

Red kneads his forehead with his fingers. "You're kidding me. It's been how long?"

"Three days."

He sucks in a deep breath. Dylan puts his hand on his shoulder and rubs it back and forth. "Remember how I told you that you have to tell me within the day?"

I nod. "It will not happen again."

"Do I know that?" asks Red.

"Yes."

"I'm glad you told me," Red says. "Sooner would have been better than later, but I can deal with this now."

I nod again.

"I don't understand what took you so long, though."

The bad feeling has subsided. I do not know, either, why I hesitated.

"Because they're friends," says Mary. "I know, pretty shocking. I didn't think Gillian was capable about caring about anyone either."

'Friendship' may be beyond me. Hatred is apparently not.

(We're officially halfway through amalgranola and officially there is no one here.

god bless)