"Where are we going?" Trace asks, holding Addie's hand. They form a row behind me, Trace lagging enough to pull the whole group back, but I am ready and willing to drag them through the streets to get to the library. "Angel, what are we doing?"

"Take a guess," Addie says, her voice a hoarse, almost whistle-like sound. She stares at me with pouty eyes.

"You don't have to be so resentful. This is a privilege," I explain. "All of humanity's knowledge at our fingertips... doesn't that excite you? You can't tell me that doesn't excite you."

"If we can't, we won't, but if we could, we would." Trace says, her sneakers scuffing against the ground. "You said we could go to the pointed building this time. The big white one? The loud one?"

"Trace." I say. "They stopped us at the door last time. There are a lot of people at the door, there's an unspeakable amount of noise emanating from it at all times... I really can't think of a logistical issue we wouldn't face getting into one, hon."

"We could walk into the building." Trace says, mimicking the motion of walking with her free hand.

"Or we could go through the windows." adds Addie, looking at Trace with those pale eyes narrowed into a dangerous expression.

I sigh, jerking her hand down the road in the gentlest, most maternal manner I can manage with my patience this taxed. "Addie. We are not going to break through those colorful windows."

Her eyes widen. "People will fix them if you give them paper. They can get more."

I rack my mind for the words to explain. "You can't--Addie, it's money. You can't just get more money."

Trace peeps, "Then why do people throw money at Damien?"

I smile, remembering Damien's feeble attempts to help me with singing from earlier. I couldn't carry a note to save my life, but no one ever got better at anything without practice. At least... I believe so. Blinking, I offer,"He's singing, honey."

"And Dylan?"

"Begging." Dylan has a hobbit of shifting into rags and asking strangers for money. It doesn't work, and I'm certainly not getting onto my hands and knees on the street when I have things to do.

"Begging? Isn't that a dog thing?" Trace is thinking of a book we read back in the spring, when I was first teaching them how to read. It was a picture book, so full of color and light that it looked as if you could bite into the saccharine illustrations. The prose was simple, but concise, great for beginners, and the story followed a few animals' escapades around the house. Trace and Addie always respond well to books with animals in it, but I had to stop them from shapeshifting in the library a few times. See, even if it's not quite as skillful with the word choice as traditional fiction, I maintain there is the same ability to inform and captivate within children's novels, which is frankly commendable. (Look at how lost I'm getting in all this. I want to sink my teeth into a real book so badly I'm fondly reminiscing on children's literature.)

"Angel?" asks Addie.

I stop myself just before the curb. Cars rush by, growling at us mere pedestrians. "Whoops! You know me, just stuck up in the old brain cabin again. In this situation, begging is just asking nicely. Words have different meanings, generally from context, but meanings also change over time, so..."

"We know." Trace says.

Adaline smiles. "If it's that easy for Dylan to do it, and there's that many people in the white pointy building, they can ask nicely to get money for their windows."

"I--" My mind is spinning with every reason that wouldn't work. The light turns, which, as established through trial and error, means we can cross. We approach the library, which is bounded on several sides by greenery. The building is cozy despite its bulk, and when we walk into the center, where various replicas of real life at various levels of abstraction (art) are posted. The labels tell of youth programs (given the word's resemblance to the word 'young', it probably has to do with younger members of the community), various photographers (see, now that's a mouthful), and-

Trace has Addie's hand and they're both in the kid's section. I roll my eyes, following behind, and begin searching the shelves. I knock my glasses up as I do so, squinting through their twin curved mirrors. I can adjust my vision such that the glasses are an asset instead of a distraction, but I have never needed glasses and never will. I only know that humans need glasses because someone took Red's for days and he stumbled about blindly the whole time. It was almost humorous, but like the rest of Red's behavior, I found it somewhat concerning. I draw a few friendly looking stories from the shelves and load my hands with them.

A woman taps me on the back, glowering as she points to Trace and Addie. "Are you their caretaker?"

"I'm..." I pause. I knew better than to say 'their mom', the looks I once received from other suburban residents were sharp enough to inform me I'd said something erroneous. "... their babysitter?"

They aren't babies and I'm not sitting on them--and human culture only gets more complicated from there. I try to repress a smile, warmth rising to my face just from the sheer joy of being immersed in it.

The woman frowns. "You might want to get them... and may I suggest bringing them to the YA section of the library? They're a little too old for picture books, don't you think?"

"Oh." I say. Age is one of the most complicated human aspects. Supposedly it's linked to size, but then adults are all different sizes, including adults who possess signs of greater age such as graying hair and excess skin folding. I've tried to parse this out but most of my former reading has been unhelpful and I can't operate the white boxes correctly yet, so I can't ask assistance from the 'Google', which is problematic. The others get it to some extent, but a lot of what we know is fairly intuitive. After a certain point beyond 'getting larger', our knowledge drops out. The woman has walked to another isle, standing off to the side with her face curved into a scowl as she puts away books. I realize I'm doing the thing again and meekly ask, "Trace? Addie? Dears? I've got books."
Trace groans. Addie sits down in the isle. I join them and nudge Addie with my foot. "Not there. We read in the corner. Wouldn't want people to see us, would we?"

"O-of course." Addie says, standing.

The three of us cluster in the furthest corner of the library, away from the cozy chairs and rugs, and I begin pouring over stories. "This one's about a new student to a local school district." I push one up.

Addie leans forwards. Trace lowers her head slightly, glancing at me askew. "I didn't understand one word of that."

"A school is a child containment pen. It's where people go to learn things."

"How?"

"Books. Teachers. What we're doing." I explain, opening the first page. "George Dane of Hickory Lane woke up that morning in a mood. His alarm--"

"What's an alarm?" Adaline says.

Trace taps the metal box in the center of the page. "That."

Adaline nods. "Is it... like a car?"

"No." I sigh. "No, it is not like a car. Cars don't tell time, and they move."

"But it's jumping." Adaline says.

"It's..." I flounder for words. "I don't know why it's jumping."

"Look at the guy. He kind of looks like Alex." Trace laughs.

Addie's mouth hangs open in a wide 'o', already diverted. "No he doesn't!"

I clear my throat and continue, "His alarm rang for the third time, red numbers bright. He only had five minutes left before his first day of school began!" The two of them both quiet down, but they're barely paying attention. Trace is clutching Addie's hand and mumbling things I can't hear beneath her breath.

I continue, "George ran down the steps..." and fall into an easy rhythm. The story is not terribly engaging, which might be the issue, but I'm going to lose them with anything more complicated. Addie nods along with each page, while Trace is slumped atop her. They are attentive as I can get them. Admittedly this is not very, but I'll take what I can get.

"Is that Mary?" asks Trace, pointing at one of the pages.

I take a long breath inwards. "Hon, that's Sandra, the new girl in school. They explicitly state this five pages ago."

"She looks too nice to be Mary." Addie argues.

"What is a girl, even?" Trace asks.

I really don't have a definition for that. "All three of us are girls."

Trace squints, steepling her hands. I have no idea where she picked up the gesture. "I know... but why?"

"Hair length." I reply, smartly. This is incredibly off-topic but I know I've already lost them.

"But we could be not girls if we wanted to." Trace offers. "I could shapeshift into a guy."

"If I wanted to be a boy, would I have to fight someone?" Addie asks.

The book sits lopsided on my lap, mind reeling. "What?"

Addie is curling her fingers through her hair, curling up a little. Her pale eyes are wide as she mutters, "In all the videos Trace and I watched, all the people doing the fighting are guys."

The book almost jolts off my lap. "What videos were you two watching? Who let you watch them?"

"Dylan let us watch a movie." Trace says.

"H-he wasn't trying to be bad! It's not a big deal! We didn't even like it."

"What movie?"

"Something about guns," reflects Trace, leaning forwards as if the answer will become clear to her if she stares into it.

"Those are for older kids."

"You're not answering our question," Trace says,

"I... don't know." I say, thirsty to research this. Keep it together, Angel. Know everything later. Children now.

"If we did have to fight, Addie would kill them. She'd take on her Veritas and everyone would be dead for miles. Like that. Bam."

They always get into trivial concerns like this. I lower my head as the conversation devolves into frankly graphic descriptions of Addie's Veritas. Adaline has her head lowered, hands pressed through and around her pale skin.

Once this has gone on far enough, I snap, "Addie can't take on her Veritas. It's dangerous to her and everyone around her!"

Adaline nods. Her hair is shaking again. This is one of the more physical symptoms of stress, exhaustion, or generally negative emotion. I have been researching this as well, even though it's never been difficult for me to detect how others are feeling. The intricacies of the mind and how it interacts with the world around it are fascinating, definitely something I'd review further given infinite time, I only which they weren't such a present manner...

"Do we have to go?" calls a small voice from another corner of the room. Two wide-eyed children watch their mother, or at least what I must assume is their mother. They are so attentive that I can almost sense the heat of the bond between them and their parent. The younger child, a girl, has her hands on her mother's leg, staring up into her face, begging with round eyes...

Trace and Addie are looking over.

I close the book hard enough to whip their attention back to me.

"I'm trying really hard and I'm getting the impression you're not appreciating me in the slightest."

"We appreciate you," Addie wails. "We do!"

"Yeah, but... can we go do something fun now?"

I lower the book to the rest of the pile, then, twitching, pick them back up to place at the front desk. I've seen other people leave them around but the mess it makes is deplorable. The simplistic drawings stare back at me, their smiles glittering with white teeth.

You're doing it all wrong.

I hope they can't hear me exhale, sense that my mind is hardly on our surroundings while Trace drags Addie, and me by extension, out into the streets. The book smell lingers in my nostrils, promising answers to everything. There has to be a way to learn how to make them pay attention, how to win the respect of the capricious younger kids and the stoic older members, and it's always just out of reach.

I need to know everything. 

(A/N: I know this is a day late--Wattpad utterly refused to publish it. Yikes! Fortunately, it's here now.)