I plunge for the goose's head in the form of a large dog. It cries out as soon as my teeth are around its neck, wings waving, and goes slack. Beneath the water, a fish watches me with dead eyes and relief. It becomes Damien. He shivers.

"You thought you didn't have to deal with animals anymore," I tell him. "You were wrong. You will always have to deal with animals. Anything with teeth will always want to eat us."

Damien's eyes are full of fear. "Do geese have teeth?"

We are both soaked. "Yes," I say.

"That's horrifying," he responds.

"Take a larger form next time. I can't save you every time."

Damien looks down at the shallow water. He is sitting in it up to his chest. "You don't have to," he tells me.

"This is a different relationship from the one we have as two humans," I say. "I am not going to compromise your personal freedom."
"Oh," Damien says, "You know, I've been thinking... and I think that friendship is inherently freedom-compromising. You can't really take anything from other people if you're not willing to give anything up."

"Huh," I say.

"But that doesn't mean you have to give everything, or even too much! There have to be boundaries, and maybe I wasn't assertive enough to enforce mine, but I am now, and I can, and I uh-- this is a bad time to be rambling, isn't it? I think I just got overexcited when I realized I wasn't dead, and now I'm blabbering. Sorry, Gillian."

"Damien. You are the least troubling one here. There is no reason for you to be sorry," I place a hand on his shoulder, then draw it back. "Is this okay?"

"Yes. Is it okay if I talk?" he says.

"I can tune you out," I assure him.

"Thanks, Gillian," Damien says.

Wrong response. Disappointing.

Red and some of the older kids are on the other side of a tree bridge. I hold them in my gaze. Alex is navigating. This spares me from having to deal with Alex. Angel is also free. This is concerning. She has not moved. I will not touch her yet, but if she makes one step out of line, she will remember that geese are not the only thing with teeth.

Mary is by the waters, dipping her feet in the river. Her limbs are slender in comparison to mine. I could break her legs, then her arms, than wring her neck, all without transforming. It would be like breaking open an egg. Sipping the innards. Discarding the shell.

I blink.

There are not usually so many thoughts, but Mary is a whirlpool of feeling.

I blink again.

"I think I know where to go," Alex says, behind us.

I feel an absence.

Damien picks the goose up out of the water. The crooked neck hangs slack. The water around us is red, dying the fabrics we have chosen to wear red. As I wade towards Mary, I say to Damien, "You'll want to keep that goose."

Damien nods. "Dinner?"

"It's already dead. We do not waste here," I respond.

The land slopes back up around us. The trees bristle up and relax in a sudden gust of wind. Alex babbles excitedly about navigation. Mary trails behind. When she looks up her eyes are narrowed. Her dark hair swings around her face in a manner that is somewhat intimidating. I bite my tongue. I will not ask her to fight.

We are not prepared for fighting anymore. This is the one thing Mary offered to the group. She has not made a challenge since we left. It is not like we are going to fall out of practice so it was silly to even ask her at all.

Alex slides back.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"We are going to the nearest city. Past there, wherever we want. There are more cities on the east coast, and they're closer together. Oh, and there are so many trees..."

"There are trees everywhere!" jeers Mary. "Did you seriously come here to look at trees?"

"We came here to find the other Damien, I... I think," Damien says, softly. Mary puts a hand on his head and he brushes her off. "I mean, Alex, have you uh... heard about the other Damien lately?"

"No, not really?" Alex says.

We are walking in square formation.

"Well, there can only be one, so when we get there, you'll probably have to strangle him or something," says Mary. "It's just the way it is."

Alex laughs. Damien stares. Mary's laughing at her own joke. My fist twitches to dispense justice. We walk for miles in an old formation, coming out over the edge of a city. We walk through the heart of a park and into the dimming light of an old day. The houses are dark and squat. The hill we are on gives us vantage over the city. It looks, in some ways, like the inland off the other coast, but the hills are shearer here. They drop down onto gold-lit villages and extend out to rivers far larger than the one we crossed. Their purple waters reflect the sky. The sun is a ball of blood setting behind the horizon.

Mary stands in front of it. Her hands are on her hips and when she turns I can see all of her teeth, bared in aggression. Her eyes squint.

As the sun departs into the trees, I say to the open air, "I was going to kill her."

Alex puts a hand on my shoulder. I turn, leering at him, but he is still as death. "You didn't," he says. "And you probably weren't in the wrong, either? If that makes you feel better? I mean, if she was going to leave, that's... we would all be in danger."

I nod. He is wrong, but I nod.

"You're good at what you do. Sometimes the world just doesn't want you to do it, and that's not really fair. You didn't decide to change which direction you were going in, they just kinda... changed it without telling you. Ya dig?"

Alex looks my way. He reaches out for my hand. I allow him it. "Gillian, you're doing a great job... guarding us. Look, we're all alive, and somehow we haven't done anything stupid since we got here."

We are filing down the side of the hill, winding our way to the next city. From there, we will walk to the next city. From there, we will walk to the next city. There are an eternity of large hills and small valleys. One of them hides the gray building that birthed us. Our egg.

"I do not know how to tell you that this doesn't mean anything," I say to him as he walks down beside me. He is savoring my hand with his fingers. It is not unpleasant but he is deluded.

He nods. "You don't really have to tell me. I know."

"No?" I ask.

"Are you into Damien?" he asks, tilting his head in Damien's direction.

"Damien needs protecting," I respond.

"Do you ever have romantic thoughts? At all?" he asks.

"Should I?" I ask. "It is not part of any assignment I've been given or determined that it was worth taking."

"Okay, we might need to take this from another angle."

"Yes?"

"Gillian, what makes you happy?" he asks.

I look down at our linked hands. "I want to be important."

"We could be important to each other?" he says. I shake my head. He offers, "They might need you soon."

They will. "It's been too quiet here," I say.

Alex nods again. His shoulders crease into a shrug. "Maybe."

"It will not be quiet for long," I say.

"Oh, definitely not. I have no idea what things will be like when they get less quiet, though." Alex says. He wants to smile. It plays at his face. I pretend that I am ignoring this as I usually do. "Gillian?"

"Stop trying to help," I say. "You know it is futile."

He steps back, unclenches my fingers from my own. "I don't have many friends, you know that, right? You're like the one person who isn't... using me."

"That's what love is," I tell him. White flakes begin falling from the sky. "You're deluding yourself."

He doesn't respond. I can accept that.

The city is silent in the depths of our descent. There is nothing to herd. The groups are fractured in a way that makes it difficult to gauge intent. This is unsettling but inevitable. Regardless, when the dust settles, we all hear the gun click.