The 'school' is a building with no parallels. I have seen many, many buildings as I've walked across the continent and back again, but I must admit they've provoked my fancy many a time. Were I less suited for a maternal role, perhaps I'd have enjoyed going to one myself... oh, that's a lie, I'd still be delighted to go to one now if Trace and Adaline didn't require my protection (as they so obviously do, as judging by my current predicament). I have seen people around my age inside still larger buildings, exiting them laughing... I can only imagine the scholarly depth of their minds or the intricacy and subtlety of their experience. Think of the worlds they must have rubbed up against, the histories and calculations and stories all held in their heads! It's too much to even imagine without a thrill of wild excitement. This is only paralleled, at the moment, by a thrill of fear, which graces the side of my face like the cold winds that hold around the town.

I tie my ponytail a little tighter, adjust my glasses, and try to puff my whole body out, like a small animal puffing out its fur to appear twice its actual size. It is only through such an illusion that I can even attempt to meet the standards that they no doubt expect of the mother of Trace and Adaline, the mother, the mother-- I enter the school. The 'office' is lit. The other lights flip on as I pass. It's only a human way of keeping people afraid, isn't it? This paranoia is unbecoming of me.

There are three people in the office when I enter. One woman waves me down the hall, and there, in a sparsely furnished room with walls decorated with an assembly of papers whose meanings I couldn't hope to decipher, are two more people, both of whom are several inches of mine and both of whom have glasses.

"You're Ms...." begins the man on the right. His hair is balding, and there are bags beneath his eyes, kindly though they may be. His hands are clasped before him.

"Angel," I say.

"Angel..." he asks. "Surname, if you please."

Yes. Humans have two. I believe Trace's credentials were filed under... "Ursa." It was the first thing that came to mind, and it fit well enough into how I believed surnames are constructed. The man and the woman both frown, simultaneously, and I feel my confidence waiver.

"Sit down," he says, gesturing to a seat. "Your files are... very sparing. Would you mind helping us fill in more information?"

"So this isn't about the behavior of my daughters?" I ask. (This could be good and it could be bad. I haven't the slightest idea how to react.)

"It's partially about your daughter's behavior. We're concerned about the environment they're being raised in," the woman on the left says. She is dressed in a nice dress and has her own hair back in a bun. I would feel at ease with her were here expression not so... stiff.

"I am similarly concerned, and I'm glad to know we share similar priorities," I tell them both, situating myself. "Do I need more information?"

"We're actually not sure how their papers got through. There are no signatures anywhere, the information is sparing at best... what are their blood types? Why are no emergency contacts designated here?"

"How did the papers go through?" I ask, my heart beating desperately with every successive blow. (What are any of these things? I haven't the slightest clue.) "Isn't it your responsibility to monitor all the applications for this school? If my information was unsatisfactory, how did it arrive in your office?" e

Both of them look at each other, again. They seem to have a habit of acting near simultaneously, although they aren't in the position of Dylan and Red, from home, or perhaps they could be, seeing as I wouldn't know. Are all the teachers with the man on the right? Is he the head of the school? Human relationships continue to be baffling, but what a thing to figure out. I'd ask if I weren't in terrible trouble as it is.

"Ma'am, we have no idea how all of this arrived in our office. Listen, are you the only legal guardian of these children?" The man sits at his desk, folding his hands, but I can see his knuckles twitching.

"I'm the only guardian," I say.

"And you don't live with anyone else?" asks the man.

"Not at the moment," I say, grimly thinking of the others. No doubt they'll be hot on our tails. Oh, how would Red answer this? Would Kali, with her large words and smart mouth, have something to say? No doubt Elle's charmspeak would be of incredible use. Had we all devoted ourselves to such a cause, we could, as a unit, have formed one family, but instead we had to be this tangled mess. I can think of near nothing so terrible.

"What is your address?"

"Our what?"

"Where do you live?"

"In a house." Obviously. I have no clue why they'd ask me this.

"We are going to be forced to call child protection services. We have no idea how you came to be in charge of these children, let alone what your children are--"

This gives me pause. "What they are?"

"We have footage of them disappearing down a hallway and disappearing-- disappearing--" he falters, "--out of existence."

I freeze up and step back, rising from my chair. "Red will have my head for this."

"W-well, don't just..." the man falters. He grabs the phone, begins dialing, and says, "Remember what we discussed earlier? We have it in our office right now. You're outside the building? Good. Good." The man puts his hands up. "Don't kill us."

"I've no such intention, and frankly, honey, I'm offended," I say. "What do you think I am?"

A figure busts down the door, gun extending from their hand and gleaming in the indifferent light of the school room. I shift into a bear and bust the window down before taking off as a bird, switching twice mid-flight. I'm bleeding, fathers trailing off behind me and disrupting my flight, but I barely manage to make it into a tree. My heart beats fast. Trace and Adaline must be back home. They're safer where they are than anywhere else. It's me who needs to lie low.

I close my eyes and transform again into another bird I'd seen in the area (a barred owl, as they've always been one of my favorites from the magnificent owl family) on the rare occasion. I flit downtown, still searching the area, but nothing seems out of order in the slightest. Not a soul in the world knows that the world is ending save for me, peculiar as it is.

Oh dear.

The world slows to a stop around me as I pull myself out of my small bird form into something more suitable, with fewer feathers. I'm dressed as darkly as possible, an unprofessional hood draped around my head, and I look like little more than a teen, with a small crack around the stomach where the hooded jacket doesn't come down far enough. I pull it down, shifting as I do, and pull up my jeans. The bright neons of the city and the hum of cars make me feel tired, deep in my bones, and they almost assuage the fear.

Should I go back to them now?

I can't. What if someone is still on me?

(Oh, but to be taken without them would be so much worse.)

I'm selfish. I've always been selfish. I find myself entering a small, well-lit building that smells almost like a hospital, for the one time I entered such a building, although there's something more inviting in the air, something distinctly of humankind. Nothing natural smells like it, but then again, nature doesn't make cars. It's somewhere to hide. They wouldn't look for me in here. Half of a justification settling in my mind, I settle down at the exterior of one, asking one of the attendees, "Can I please look inside?"

"Your first car?" she asks.

I nod. "Just looking. I'll purchase tomorrow, with my guardians."

Two, right? She doesn't question, she just opens the door. I hop in, savoring the power and ferocity of the beast I've found myself in the stomach of. There's a fake little tree over the glass window that spans the front, like a small sky, and there's a black wheel and dozens of little buttons. Everything gleams with a false light, refracting off everything until it is one thing, and that thing is a work of art. I clasp the wheel, massaging the floor with my foot.

So this is what humans do.

It must be so simple to them to enter one. I've seen hundreds if not thousands of humans pass by in these, looking ahead at the road, at the destination they already know exists. Everything is so well defined that it makes me sob in the front of the car, hot tears rolling down my cheeks in the silence.

Is this how easy it is for humans to love? Is it just like driving, a pedal you push down? Am I missing something obvious? When I began reading, when I found myself outside, needing to know everything, that was what came up again and again. What humans will do for love. Families made of love. Relationships. I was looking for an answer, a reason to exist, and that reason is love. I gave as much love as I could. I am taking care of two small humans, aren't I? I could drive this car. I could raise a family. I could go to little games in the suburbs, where small humans dance around the fields in intricate, ridiculous patterns, and I could buy groceries instead of Elle. I could hold down a job, and I could drive this car.

The person on the outside is watching me. I feel myself cringe, sensing she might already know that I'm a monster. Should I be thinking about Trace and Adaline right now? Why is there no definite answer? Who am I asking these questions to? Shouldn't there be someone to answer? Shouldn't someone have taught me these things?

I want a family. I want a people. I want to love and be loved, I wish someone would reciprocate half the effort I put into them, I want to be real but here I am, situated in a car that isn't mine, in an existence that isn't mine, and I'm on the run right now, stuck between one end of the world and the other. I could get sent back to the laboratory and live the rest of my life as something less than an animal or I could run forever as everyone who I want to tell myself cares about me progressively gets more sick of me before they do away with me altogether.

I want to drive this car back to a warm house and sit down on a couch with a family.

"I have a house," I tell the air. I exit the car. "Thank you, ma'am."

I don't know if she answers, because I run, which is horribly rude and I apologize. I dash back to the house in human form, chest heaving. The city is so vast and I can barely feel Trace and Adaline there, my girls, my beautiful girls, and all the animals might be the others of the group, gaining on us. Everyone is everywhere. Where was I supposed to go? Where could I possibly have taken them where they would have been safe from themselves?

I enter the house. Trace and Adaline are holding hands in the dining room, up at the front of our little four-room cottage. I've already grown to love it, even though the books are not where I left them and the kitchen wavers in the places where the food should be. "We need to leave," I say.

"Yeah. We do," Trace says. "I'm not going back to school."

"We're going to school somewhere else now," I correct them. "That's different from not going. Come on, girls."

"We're not going at all," Adaline says.

I place my hands on my hips. "This isn't up for debate."

"But it-- but it is! Trace and I talked, and-- and--" Adaline starts. "We might not always be able to stick up for ourselves, but we can stick up for each other, and you've been awful to Trace. She's sick. This place makes her sick."

"We'll find some other place and you won't have to make the house again," I say. "It's okay. Whatever the matter is, we'll fix it."

Adaline, sweet Adaline, shakes her head. "No, it's people that are the problem. They don't understand what we are, and we don't want to pretend to be people so we don't make them uncomfortable. We want to be ourselves."

"Your real self? Adaline, your 'real self' is being sick and dangerous to everyone around you," I tell her, pressing a finger to her chest. I grab her hand, and she yanks it back, fury in her rasping, shallow breath. She looks up at me with narrowed eyes, still as a crab when the seagulls circle overhead. I feel the darkness pulling out of me, begging to be released from that small, dormant bay in my mind. It manifests in a crooked smile. "They'll never find us. Give up on the rest of the group, now, won't you?"

"They'll know," Trace says. "We signalled them."

"You shouldn't have done that." I say, running my hands through my hair. "You couldn't have done that. Do you know what you just did?"

"Got us a ticket back home?" boasts Trace.

"Trace... they're back on us. The white-coated people are back, and you just lead them right to us."