The flavor of our food is unfavorable at best. The raw red sloshes in my stomach, as if the animal that once ran around these parts is now trying to escape my belly, clawing at the walls of my stomach. There are pictures, in books I've read, of human females with other animals living inside them. They have huge heads and are curled up, unblinking, unspeaking. To this day, I have no idea how you would get something of that size in there, and why you would keep it where it can not speak or breathe or run or do much of anything.

Maybe that is how you keep someone from leaving you.

Dylan sits across the log from me. His arm is a snake. Its eyes are duller than those of a real snake, and you can see the bumpy scales where he metamorphosed his fingers. Uncommonly poor. Dylan leans into his unchanged arm, looking out at Red, who is striding across camp, pacing as he speaks to an unmoving Elle.

This is ridiculous.

Dylan says, "Up," and I stand up, out of courtesy to the man who has taken it upon himself to ruin my life. I know humans put each other in cages when they have performed poorly, seeing as the word 'jail' has been tossed around a time or two too many for me not to take notice, especially because I, a deviant, have been threatened in both circles of my human experience with 'jail'. There are no snakes in jail, best as I can tell. This already makes a hell away from people better than my experience at present.

"How long until the end of this?" I ask him.

"You're lucky. It'll have to be today," he says. We stand together. I feel scales curl around my waist, which is far likely twice as big around as his. How he manages to create such a massive projection, from his arm no less, is beyond me. Yet he stands askew, as if he were only giving me his hand, and I look into the dead eyes of the snake, conveniently set in its coiling position so that I have a good view of them. If there were pupils there to fix me, they might.

Disgusting.

"Is that truly so?" I ask. "I expect there has to be some ulterior motive besides forgiveness behind that. I don't believe you've changed your mind and decided to open me back with your remaining open arm, have you?"

"Have I? No. We're getting on a... I think it's known as a train? The point is that we'll have you out in public and it's bad for publicity to have a woman wrapped by a snake in broad daylight. We're all civilized, here. Moderately."

"Let alone that the snake comes from your arm," I add. This is the part where I attempt to strain, slightly, and find myself overwhelmed by the beast. It is not painful, but the compression of my waistline is uncomfortable, to say the least. "Drat."

Dylan scoffs at this, which is quite rude, and then he tilts his head towards the others. We begin walking, side by side, and he extends that brilliant, singular attempt to pretend everything is normal, unchanged, into the next day. I walk beside him, a solemn yet defiant reminder that there is no normal, and skulk beneath my chains. I recognize that it is unbecoming of someone of my position to do so, but when you are bound, there is little else to do. If I keep my eyes low enough, my heart dark, it keeps me from glancing over towards Trace and Adaline.

They're talking amiably, hand in hand, an absence where I used to be, visible as the teeth small humans are often missing. I think of collecting their teeth, as human parents, for some reason or another, are apt to do. I think of reading them stories, which humans and myself are apt to do. I think of things I wanted, even though I have to squint to do it, because Dylan tracks my every moment and I'd prefer, generally, if he didn't see me cry.

There are rivers to cross, but to our surprise, the next one offers a bridge. "Coming up on a big one," offers Dylan.

I do not answer him.

The guard around my stomach slowly releases as Red lifts his hand. The others creep forwards, obediently terrified, and we stare at the road ahead. The bridge is long and distinctly not pedestrian, covered by cars which scream as they grind the road beneath their wheels. "Are we ready?" asks Red.

"You're not," Dylan says, looking up. "Who's going to ferry you? I'm sure not letting you get in a car by yourself."

Red smiles. "Of course you're not," he says. "Hey. Dylan. You think I could ride across?"

Dylan transforms into a beaver, save for that it is four times the size of a normal beaver. I swear the beaver is smiling too as Red swings up and over, clumsily but surely, and grips the hair about its neck. It is a superior union than the mutually damaging coexistence (there was a word for that... Kali would know, but of course she would know) that Dylan and I have been sharing. The others transform one by one, into swans, fish, whatever they choose... Kali becomes a crocodile and sinks into the water, and I take the form of a duck.

I imagine her, beneath the water. I can not stop thinking about her teeth. The duck knows something is in the water, something it does not much like.

Moreover, I am missing my ducklings. When they are not raising young, animals are thinking about eating or not being eaten. It is a bad time to eat anything, as half the contents of the river are our group.

The trucks whistle on above us. It is a short passage, and the other side is heavily forested. We land in relative obscurity. Alex is the first to transform back, and he is on his phone at once, clicking, tapping, and grinning all the while. "Okay, nothing here, but we're in luck. There's a passage, uh, not too far away from here! We could probably walk there before night. Do we have money? Did anyone transform with the money on them?"
Elle, amongst the others, wrings out her hair, which is hardly affected by water. "No one has money."

"So you'll be charmspeaking us in," Red says, dismounting Dylan.

Elle grabs a newly-transformed Kali's hand, not in the way that Adaline and Trace hold each other, but as if she is inspecting her hand for some peculiar ailment. "I guess I will be, then."

"Settled," Red says. "Let's make good time, then. Everyone feeling well? Do we want to grab something in the woods before we head out?"
I feel my stomach turn over itself at the mention of food, and twice back the other way at the thought of eating some half-living fish from the river. The group is deathly silent, but the manner in which it happens lifts the hair from my skin. Suddenly, I do not know if we are stopping to ask about food at all, or if some more sinister presence is stalking among us, between us, licking its chops.

"I know it's..." Red begins. "I know we're jumping ahead here. I know there will be whitejackets. I know that the whole thing smacks of lunacy, which is why I'm going to reiterate, again, that you all wanted this."

"Thanks for the inspirational talk, Red," Mary yells.

"I'm not trying to be inspirational right now. I'm attempting to be serious, because I can seriously say we've never attempted... we never had to go home. We don't have a home to go back to. People like us? We don't get that kind of luxury. I know we're looking for answers, but we don't have a plan following that, and we could be in grave danger. I want you all to know that, going in, so when we suddenly have to evacuate, you're prepared, not disappointed. I am trying so hard to protect you--"
"We know there's only so much you can do without powers," Kali reassures Red, although it doesn't sound in the slightest reassuring. Perhaps more like a particularly calm threat.

"Nothing bad has ever happened," says Adaline, in our ancient chorus.

Red blood stains a barn somewhere. I can almost smell the smoke of a building set on fire.

"I think that man's death counts as 'something bad'," I say. "Even if he wasn't one of us. He was scared and didn't know what he was doing."

"Is that why you left?" asks Dylan.

"No," Trace says, "she just wanted to leave."

"We should go." Red says. "We have to make time if we're going to hit... when does that last train leave, Alex?"

"All I'm good for," Alex says, "Looking it up right now."

"That was... are you okay?" asks Damien.

"He's fine. On a more important topic, yeah, we don't even have anywhere to go after this, but that doesn't matter. We don't have anywhere to go, ever. We just meander around, trying to live. That's how animals do it. Keep living until you die," Mary says. "Completely pointless, right?"

"We have purpose. We are each other's purpose," Gillian objects.

"I think we can find another purpose. Music is important to me, but I don't need to..." Damien hesitates, "I don't need to leave to do that, do I?"

Mary gives him an incredible look.

"You don't," say Red and Dylan at once.

"Pretty sure my purpose is just charging the phone and navigating with it," Alex says.

"Seriously, Alex, that's depressing," Damien says, still concerned.

"This is futile," Elle says. "Are we going to get on that train?"

"I hope so," I say.

"We have everyone?" asks Red.

"Yes," Mimsy says.

"There we go," Red says. He attempts a smile. "It's going to be okay, isn't it? On the other side. When we get there. We'll find wherever they made us, and maybe we'll just... keep going up the coast. Or we could head back home. Maybe out into the other... not a state, whatever's past a state, but we could do that. We have all the time in the world to do whatever we want, don't we? And we'll do it together."

We're arranged in a circle, the likes of which has scarcely happened since the night we decided on this. Somehow, looking at the subtle change in realignments, like the shifting of leaves in a pile, we are at once the same and yet so subtly changed that it seems impossible that we were once the same... people... we were at all. Trace grabs Adaline, who keeps her pace as they go forwards, Red and Dylan keep distance, and there's Kali at Elle's side, head bowed, looking hollowed out inside of her own body. The middle kids are scattered across, barely even looking at each other, and there's Mimsy, close to me, her eyes intent on mine.

"Hello, darling," I say, walking alongside her.

Mimsy's green eyes flash with a light reflected only in cat pupils as she fixes me in her gaze, her nose wrinkling up. "Hello," she says, hesitantly.

"Been a while," I say, wishing for that snake.

"Yes," Mimsy says. "Long time."

"Are you still angry at me?"

"No," Mimsy says. "Broke your stick. That was mean enough. Then when you didn't come back I took your rocks and cast them into the woods. I went into the den of a squirrel and took the mother but not the babies. Left them to the world. Pushed all the eggs out of the nests of ten birds. Never came back to see them grieve."

I don't know why I'm holding a conversation with her. One only needs look her up and down to see that she is a revolting creature, all spit and snaggle-tooth and predator, cat, wild thing, and then they'd know to keep their distance. I didn't, until she bit me, and here I am again, because no one else finds it fit to deal with her.

I think I loved her because she was small, and she cried.

"Don't hurt anyone because you're angry at me," I tell her.

"Cats hunt whatever they want. I didn't do anything wrong," she responds, transfixed on something on the horizon that both of us are pretending to see, just around the other's heads and out towards the city at large. "Why do you do it?"

No one has asked. "Love is the most important thing to humans. I needed to find some way to love something, anyone. To propagate. I am only anything when I am part of someone else. Do you understand?" Of course she doesn't.

"You were doing it wrong," she tells me. "They are not your children. They are your age. We are all the same age. I am older than any of you."

"Of course," I say, sadly, "But I needed to. This isn't a real body. You know that, right? These aren't real bodies, and we are not real people right now. Pretending I was is the only thing that kept up an illusion that let me be anything. If I could just be..." I don't know where I'm going, and heavens (whatever skies may be) help me, I'm crying again, softly.

"Oh," says Mimsy, numb. "It's okay. We don't know how to love, anyways."

"Dylan, Red, Adaline, Trace..." I say, "Kali, Elle..."

My eyes linger on Kali and Elle, the way Kali is being dragged, not enthusiastically, but by the slightest pinch of her wrist by Elle's long-taloned hand. My face twitches. Mimsy is right, no matter how much I strain against the inevitability of her statements, and worse, no one can stop Elle.

We plunge deep into the heart of the city, walking far apart enough that we are several separate groups, though not our usual ones. My girls-- the girls-- are up near the front, happily navigating with Alex and the elder kids, while Gillian is astride from Mary and Damien. I could pick apart the minutiae of our constellation, as Mimsy would call them, but when you're this far distant from yourself, sometimes the best thing to do is just let time pass. I let my eyes roam over the jagged architecture of human buildings, noting how it differs from trees, so that all the buildings seem to look truncated-- never given branches.

Mimsy watches, too.

"I forgive you for biting me," I tell her.

Mimsy looks up. "I didn't need you to say anything," she warns me.

"I know," I respond.

"I have a game, too," she says. "I am going home to see my mother. My real mother."

"She'll be there?" I ask. "We could use an adult."

"We could, but she won't be it, and I don't know if she'll be there," Mimsy says. "Don't tell me that."

She moves like she's about to become a cat, the kind of awkward slip out of conversation that severs her from me, but instead she winds through the group, situating herself near the front. Elle takes the lead as we're swallowed by a cave, a building, a cave, and then she moves out of the group like some kind of dark, sleek mirage to speak with some manager. Her fingers drum the marble before her, and her words are poison in the air. When she is done speaking, we are handed tickets, and she rolls her head slightly towards us: come.

She grabs Kali. No one will stop her.

"Where are we going?" asks Trace, when we're out of earshot.

"I can not read," says Elle. "But it is on the coast. Alex will navigate from there."

The man at the counter, behind her, looks dazed, his hand reaching for his neck as if he is trying to feel his own pulse. He is dreaming, now. No one will stop her. We get free tickets. We are cheating, pretending to be human. We are cheating their games, their laws, their lifestyles, their families, their faces, we are just cheating. We are a force, like a heavy rain or the onslaught of summer, that can not be resisted by mortal means.

The patter of our feet deafens the hallway. There are small, dusty areas near the trains themselves, affixed with seats, and we settle there, staring at things that are not there, trying to entertain ourselves. The train comes in a clatter of feet and breath, a vast noise, and it settles next to us. We are not the first passengers, not the last, and we are not invisible. It's too late to shift out of ourselves in such a way that we are not ourselves. Instead, we get on the train and sit in assigned seats, which place me next to Dylan. Red is across the table, next to Mimsy, who leans into him, half asleep.

Dylan watches the window. "You're free to switch now, if you want," he tells me.

"Dylan," I say. "I've always respected you."

"No, you don't," he says. "Don't worry about it. Totally forgiven."

"Even..."

"Especially that," he looks at Red, who is bursting with the effort of not interjecting. "Right, buddy?"

"Completely forgiven. Everyone makes some bad decisions. Dylan and I managed fine, didn't we?"

"Oh yeah," Dylan says, his eyes practically falling out of his head as he rolls them.

The train picks up again, following a blur of noise through the speakers. The words would mean something if we were someone. How I'd love to be the woman with the carriage filled with screaming children, or the smiling family with their three plucky kids... I am the mass of clay in the aisle seat, heavy around the middle, watching the universe roll by.

"Where are we going?" I ask Dylan.

"Into the darkness," Dylan says. He looks up at the tunnel overhead, and the sound of the screaming train intensifies, cast off the walls, as we barrel into nothingness.