I was concerned when the vote happened. I am not shocked at the outcome, given that current administration is unpopular if not unsustainable and that Mary is belligerent. These are constants, two things solved by a thin layer of mutual respect that has been corroding since we hit the river at the other side of the world. I am merely disappointed, or so I tell myself. I should at least be able to muster up something besides a low, dull rage.

I am away from these things right now. Instead, I lean against the wood of an oak, fingers covered in blood sticky as the damp, humid air, and shear rabbit flesh with my teeth. It has long since stopped resembling a rabbit, although it is hard to determine a point at which it is no longer a dead living thing and instead a mere source of sustenance. Perhaps it has only been this meal, walking, seeking an end.

Alex slumps down besides me. I take a sinew of the rabbit's leg and tear it off. Ending is part of the natural progression of things. He is in opposition of this. "So, you're... still not talking to me." He laughs.

The meat grinds under my molars.

"Gillian," Alex begins.

"You were just doing the first thing anyone told you to do." I finish, getting to my feet. The rabbit's corpse is red in my hands, spilling across my shirt.

"I can't believe you're getting on me about this." he laughs. "You--you're--"

My eyes roll over his blocky, electric body. He is crackling, fists clenched, half in control and halfway back to what we really are. I look straight into his mouth, but his teeth are still human. "We're fine." I say, pressing down resentment. "Stop, now."

"What?" he asks. His pupils are abnormal.

"I said we're fine." I repeat. I drop the rabbit's body to the ground, where it lies with its eyes blankly watching him. The smell is still that of a living thing. I am not attempting to save it, nor personify it, nor pity it. I am merely trying to avoid provoking a situation. The blood in my throat makes my whole body feel sickening, but I can not take a knee to vomit. Choking back the sensation, I turn.

"It's... fine if we're not fine. It's more fine than if you say we're fine, but we aren't."

I turn again. His arms are crossed. His voice chokes in his throat a bit. Slowly, I ask, "What do you derive from my companionship?"

He twitches. I see something dark slithering his way up his arm. This was an unwise question, primarily because it was in my interest and not that of the group. "I only came over here to say that you shouldn't be eating that as a person. No one can eat raw meat." he spits, "Just looking out for the group." With this, he walks away, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched.

There is nothing left to say here. I collapse into the form of a larger predator, specifically a lynx, and wander back into the woods. The slopes are steeper here, the foliage tinged with rain, and it is hard to slink through the overgrown foliage. I can catch the cuts where we've wandered through the thick of it, but the ivy is resilient. It will die a million deaths before anyone hacks it down for the last time.

The forest screeches with life at this time of year, chaotic, cluttered noise, and I can scent every plant and animal, each of them demanding attention. Above the din, my heightened hearing alerts me to the presence of song in the forest. It is less interesting to a lynx than a human, but nonetheless, I can tell it is of something that doesn't belong in the woods.

I creep towards the clearing, where Damien sits on a log, hands folded, practicing. I hide in the undergrowth, watching other animals cluster, curious, heads tilted. He is speaking all of their languages at once, voice layered atop voice, sound atop sound, and he gestures with his hands as he does so, turning the air.

His voice cuts off halfway through an upwards arc, eyes moving to the brush, and he pulls away the thickets I'm under, wincing as a thorn embeds itself in his hand. "I didn't know lynxes had an ear for song." he says.

I step back.

"I know it's you, Gillian. It's the shoulders." He laughs, and several of the birds chirp back. He looks back to them, and a few flutter off, while the others hop closer on the branches, waiting for his next action. Other creatures, hidden in the brush, keep their ears angled forwards. Damien, face red with blush, continues, "You're not here for lessons, are you?"

I shift back, feeling thorns dig their way into my back. My body burns, but it is a dull ache, as if far away from me. I step out, arms folded. "No."

"Thank goodness," he says, shoulders slumping. "Angel wants some, but I don't know how to teach her. It's... almost something that works through me, if that makes any sense. It's instinct." His eyes are watery and full of light. "I feel like I'm cheating her by pretending to know what to tell her."

I nod for his sake.

Damien adjusts his hands.

"You shouldn't be out here alone."

"All roads lead to home, huh?'

I blink. "We don't have a permanent place of residence."

Damien laughs under his breath, again, this time so quietly that not even the birds hear him. "Never mind. I was just trying to get away from the group. I know, I know, strength in numbers, general safety, but I just... can't deal with them right now."

"Is it the paper?" I ask.

"It's the paper," he confirms. "I feel like all of this is my fault, and I'm hardly even involved in it! It's surreal. I had to get out of it somehow."

"So it would be."

"To which part of that?" Damien asks.

I shrug. "All."

"Well, makes sense." he says, then offers up another wordless melody to the tepid air, this time without ever opening his mouth. He's looking at me all the while, but his eyes are half closed, imploringly narrowed, and his gaze escorts me back into the woods and out of his line of view. I stand in spite of the invitation, folding my own hands, feeling the knuckles crack, imagining them pushing together something instead of breaking it apart.

"You haven't unlocked your Veritas, have you?" I ask. The air buzzes with an entirely different kind of energy from before, one separate from the animals, trees, flora, the humidity, any of it.

"I feel like I'm probably on the right t-track, but that's as much as I can say." he says.

The buzzing intensifies. I swing around, looking for a fly close to my ears, and my blood goes cold.

Damien is humming again, idly, watching the trees.

"Quiet." I say, holding him back with a hand.

"Sorry," he mutters.

I shift quickly into a dog, confirming the presence of a smell I'd missed earlier. It is familiar, like a knife to the roof of my mouth, and I growl as I turn back, "She's here."

"Oh." Damien says, leaning back on the log. "Can you..."

"She responds better when you're involved." I say.

"Really? Do you think so?" he asks, and the uptilt of his voice fills me with dread. I brush aside some branches, walking clear through the foliage, and I hear him calling behind me, "Wait! I'm coming!"

I look back. A finch darts after me, wings flailing as it hops from branch to branch, and eventually it settles on my shoulder. I press aside the woods and carry on, the forest shaking, and Mary walks right into my line of view, holding up something brown. Her slit smile evidences that she's admiring her own handiwork. Our hearts catch on the same beat as it drops from her hand and we both shift into birds of prey, meeting in the center of the clearing in a furious clash of talons and feathers. She's faster and me, but with the first impact, I have her halfway into the ground. I shift back to human and she struggles under my grip, but I have both her wings. She bites my finger, falcon eyes angry, and I snarl. "I know you're there, Alex."

Alex emerges from the woods. "It's just some paper. We didn't take their phone, or their backpack, or anything." Electricity clicks between his fingers. "You don't have to be angry all of the time, Gill."

I glare. "You two know how significant that is to people."

"You've stolen before." he spits back. Mary's eyes glint. My grip tightens around hollow bone.

"Money is different than plastic with grapes in it. The owners were gone." I draw myself up, letting the rat go, and she swoops back to Alex's side. Damien emerges at mine.

"We don't exist within their rules." Mary says.

"We do whenever it's convenient for you." I say. "You're being antagonistic. We don't even need the money. We can eat raw meat and drink water from streams."

"What, are you going to punch the bad out of me, Gillian?" asks Mary. "Do you want to fix me or do you want to kill me? I'll go with either, I will, but I think that deep down in you, you know you don't even have the guts to do it. Otherwise one of us wouldn't be here."

I look to Alex. "You shouldn't have sided with her."

"Someone's going to pull you two apart," Damien says. "Please don't fight. I don't want to fight. The last few days have been awful."

There's a distant click in the bushes as sticks are ground underfoot.

I turn back, relieved, but it's Kali who enters.

"How do you always manage to sniff us out before we do anything fun, Kali?" Mary asks, madness still glistening in her eyes.

"I'm incredibly unlucky." Kali says. "I'm not here to get into a fight between you. I was just here to ask Mary and Damien about information regarding yesterday."

Damien removes himself from my side, and I feel the hair on my arms raise as it is exposed to the open air. "You might know more than we do."

"I know more than either of them." confirms Alex, stepping forwards. My hair raises further due to matters that have nothing to do with the temperature.

"Good, because I have several questions." Kali says.

"What's so important that you can't ask it in front of the whole group?" I ask.

Kali's eyes dart my way. "You can leave."

"I'd prefer not to." I say.

Kali's face twists. "I'd prefer not to speak to Red's watchdog, if it's all the same to you."

I narrow my eyes. "If you were hoping to ensure me that there would be no issue leaving you alone, you're doing so poorly."

Kali bends down to the ground and plucks the wallet up. She extends it to me, held just at the end, so that the rectangle bends. "Do you want to be the good girl? Those tourists are going to leave and their trail will go stale. You can bring them their money back, or you can sleep knowing that somewhere out there, humans have been wronged and we're a few heartbeats closer to discovery."

I can feel a convulsion inside of my body, dissonant priorities threatening to rip me apart. I look up for orders, but no one is there. Finally, my hand swings out and I grab the wallet. I can feel every textured bump under my fingers compressing beneath them. "You're making poor choices."

"I'm not making any," Kali says, "and I've done nothing wrong. You're about to make a choice, so I thought I'd put it in simpler terms so you can process it."

My mouth twitches. The rest of the group clusters closer to Kali, and I remember who voted for what. I walk past them out of the clearing and travel through already trampled growths. I can smell something lingering on the wallet, and with occasional assistance from better forms for tracking, I find a woman on the trail. Her hair is ginger, like mine, but her form is slender. There is a slight curve to her body, and her hands are positioned on her hips. It is a favorite position of Mary, but the connotation is different.

"Ma'am," I step up to her, speaking in a voice that is hardly mine. "You left something on the trail."

She touches my hand to retrieve the wallet, and I feel the fire course up my veins. I resist the urge to throw myself into the river, and all the while, I can see my face in her eyes, how the eyes are a little closer together than I had imagined, and how my white teeth are less blunt than those of my Veritas. I hadn't even remembered that I had freckles.

All the color pulls away, the world returning to a natural state, and she says, "Thank you for returning this. I'm so sorry for the hassle."

"No problem." I say. This is the correct response, but she does not respond correctly to it.

"Where's... your group?"

My fist clenches. Something is giving. "In the woods," I say.

"Do you need me to walk you back to them?" she asks.

"No, it will be fine. Have a nice day." I walk up the trail, feeling the forest cover me like a blanket. There is no sensation I can point to. The sunlight is unchanged. The winds have not stilled nor picked up.

My skin and my mind aren't fitting correctly. There is no one to tell me what to do next.

(A/N: I apologize for the sudden break. I do have a lot of chapters queued but the last week has been... trying, for various reasons.)