It's not my place to say anything.

Not that I have much of a choice.

We are like the earth, the moon, the sun--set to a path, moving forwards indefinitely. The world shifts below us and we move in its direction, shedding seconds from our days as we travel eastwards, back towards the end of times.

In the short-term, I traverse the path above the maple trunks, their wide branches battering my sides. Down below, I can hear them chatter like larks. They're old stories. We are all old stories, at least three years, now, but this is a new way of telling them: through dissonant pieces, coated with the sweetest morsel of sentimentality. It is almost too sugary-sweet, but I am not telling them, and I have nothing against the taste of honey.

We could use something sweet at a time like this.

My chest is still cold from where Angel's words breached my skin. With every rise and fall of my breath, the pain settles a little, but the energy is still there, teeming beneath my skin. "Don't let her hurt you," says a voice behind me, but she should not be in the trees, nor should she be talking to squirrels. She usually finds me when I am in a shape she can admonish, and there is nothing of me right now to get a hand around. I am a wisp of smoke in the canopy, or more gently, fog on a soft morning such as this one. We are experiencing an unusual streak of sunlight, but the clouds are creeping back across the sky, playing with the sun, practicing holding it in their hands for when they will take it away for days and fill the air with their sadness.

Angel is a sadness like this, of the smothering variety.

Old memories emerge, cloud in the mouth, in the stomach, and the storm fills my body. She threw one of those books at me, once, when I wouldn't come practice with her. Her erratic anger, the words ringing in my ears, that desperate demand I couldn't comply to, all of it makes my fur prickle upwards, even now. I am not sure what I didn't know, not for lack of trying, but I couldn't understand anything.

I remember flesh in my mouth, too, and how much, and when, and who. I remember everything that has ever happened, a thousand bells tolling in my head and throughout my body. They are a series of shards meant to be arranged, but I can't do it without hands, and I am already remembering red rivers down my own hand from the last time I picked up glass. I thought my body might continue until I emptied out, but there was nothing past that but to be hollow.

The sun is setting and the middle children are quieting down. The trees shake around us and a storm echoes, the door of the sky slamming against its hinges. I still myself, creeping down the tree. There is a fire tonight, the thirteenth member of our group, roaring and flickering against the first drops of water. I know which trees they are burning from a whiff, and pity, for spare seconds, the insects that fly into it, attracted to the light. I can see their bodies burn.

Red's fingers are so close to the fire. The others are close and leaning forwards. Their eyes dart through me when they turn. I step back, scuttle back up the tree, and transform on the other side, sliding down into human flesh. She's back again. There are no sticks on the ground, so I have nothing to draw the lines out with and can't continue the game and ignore her. I squint. The fire is warm. The rain is intensifying, and it will be out soon. Its dying breaths gurgle in the air.

"Don't go to them." Ms. Grace holds her hands around my mouth. "You're the wild type."

I'm the wild type.

I look back behind me, to the tree, to where Ms. Grace is standing. Tonight she is an absence, an area I can not see past. Sometimes she has a face, but not often. I can catch one strand of blonde hair, looped around the shoulder, and if I am very still, the tautest of frowns and unnatural red lip.

"I'm not supposed to talk to them," I whisper.

"You're not supposed to talk to them," she confirms. The glass is under my feet. It's everywhere. I want to draw myself up against myself and away from the tree.

Something is moving in the forest. I listen in horror to the shhhh shhh of woods moving, prey instinct thumping in my chest, and the branches move to quiet me, stuck at my mouth, Ms. Grace's hands made physical--

--I jump backwards and Red catches me by the hand. "It's okay, Mimsy! It's okay!"

Ms. Grace is still again. My incompetence has managed to disturb her past the point for which she has words. I lower myself, holding my arms about my sides. I look up into his eyes, steadying myself with the warm, coppery gaze (real) and my breath shakes my throat, leaving it raw. The glass is gone from beneath my feet, leaving only the shine of moonlight on leaves, the threatening edges only the corroded, bitten parts of the plant.

"Please don't transform. I just wanted to speak with you." Red says, again. "The others are going to sleep." The rain is picking up. The fire is out behind us. Red holds close to the trunk, sheltering himself from the rain. "It's going to be a lonely night. Brr."

His physical form is so rigid. Any of us could snap him like a stick, or worse, he'll break himself open trying to bend. I want to assure him it's okay, so I walk up and put my head to his side. I can't purr, but I think he almost gets it.

"Do you... know anything about all this?" he asks. "They don't know what they're going back to."

What is there to go back to? "You don't know what you're going back to." I tell him. "You're talking about the earliest part of after there is. The sunrise before the longest day of our lives."

"Where's the sun?" he asks. His voice is barely audible above the rain.

"You're guiding them back to the sea where it sets." I tell him.

"I don't have the compass, nor am I the legs of the group. There are ants in my staff, and I can not guide." he responds. I do not understand compass but the device Alex possesses comes to mind. I can work with this.

"You hold a lot more sway than you realize, still. They were happy today." I say. It's not a metaphor, but I'm so tired, and speaking to him plainly is close as I ever get to just speaking. There are shadows around my whole body, now, and the fire is going out. The heat emanating from him, a living thing, is going to choke me. The dead and the living were never supposed to mix, and here I am, an old, sad story, trying to interfere. I am the worst decision ever made, being dragged along by the neck, and eventually my skin will fall off and there will be nothing left to hold.

Red nods. "I want you to be happy, too."

I'm reaching for my stick but there is no stick. I will pick up the game in the morning. We were at a good part--the group had converged on a mountain that went up forever, and we were climbing it. There were strange trees everywhere, and a house up past the clouds. I was very invested but I can't play the game without a stick to mark things off. "They make me happy," I say.

Red half-smiles. He thinks I mean the group. "No one's going to kill you for talking," he says. "It's okay if you don't understand some of what they're saying, or if what we're actually doing doesn't interest you. You should just know that you're part of our family, too, no matter what happened, and you don't need to belong to a clique to be involved in that."

"Oh," I say.

"Dylan says 'hi'." Red adds.

My mouth curls into an 'o'. "Tell him I say 'hi'." I say. "I should see Dylan."

"You sure should." Red offers. "He would be so happy to speak with you again."

The 'o' grows a little bigger.

"Can you do me a big favor?" he asks. "It's wet and the others are in a den that's way too small for me. Can you help me find somewhere to stay the night?"

We passed a suitable location not long ago. I can pry backwards in my mind all the way until the second, settling on the canopies, the dead plant matter, and every scent in the air. I wouldn't lead Red into a badger den but there is a tilted tree next to a thick bush. I guide him there by the hand. There is still a little water, so I shift into my Veritas, my mind clearing of the past and the future into the eternal, perfect present. I am riding the currents of time forwards, deterred by nothing, and the beast purrs, keeping present purpose secured like a stick beneath our teeth.

Red asks something, his voice dulled, and we dip our head, settle in a wide circle, and he edges himself under a bush. He is talking all the while, but words are past us, and I understand sentiment. It is obvious as the air we are breathing in.

Yes, we are family, and I would be happy to help you-- yes, we are entirely alone in this, the two extremes of the spectrum, too beast or too human to be anything of use.

We don't care right now--I am speaking of myself and I, because Red is shivering. He hates bushes. We, though, could not be happier than to be ourselves out in the open overnight. When we stick to our Veritas, the night passes over us, undisturbed, and we do not awake to fragmentary memory.

(A/N: Sorry I'm late but so happy to be back. :))