Our embers rise to scatter themselves across the starscape above, and I listen to the people I once considered like children to me sleep in the form of beasts. They've grown, though they don't seem to have noticed every inch they've crept up on me--they're free to keep failing to notice, because I don't think I could stretch myself up another inch-- and even now, they don't curl as tight, although Trace and Adaline are practically impossible to make out from each other in the dark, even though as squirrels, Trace's fur is darker than Adaline's uncharacteristically pale fur. Mimsy, who is a stark white cat, is up on a tree by herself, the shiny parts of her eyes occasionally flashing out through the gloom.

Not sleeping, I suppose. Well, some things can't be helped. As for myself, assuredly I'm not all that tired, but it's more that Gillian looks like she might be asleep, and despite some earlier muffled chatter in the woods, we haven't returned to our usual numbers. Barring awkward conversations with Elle, earlier, I am effectively the only older kid in vigilance of the group. 'Older kid' is a disastrous oxymoron anyways, one we should likely be refraining from...

... what's after that, anyways? I guarantee that humans have some incredibly convoluted form of segmentation for ages. By convoluted, I mean brilliant, nuanced, and divine in a way our crude approximations could never handle. Elder, middle, younger, oh, we can pretend we tried, but I've been stuck in liminality for such a period of time that I must confess that my knuckles are white from trying to hold onto my own preconceived notions of temporal progression.

Why must all my hypotheses turn out to be so wrong?

I watch Red and Dylan sleep skew from each other, as do Kali and Elle. That's another hypothesis down, so to speak. I lean forwards. Sometimes, if I listen very closely to the beating of my heart, I can still pretend that it beats for a stranger, who hears and listens, cherishing the sound. There will be no such future. There are no new stars on the horizon: get back into whatever formation you've been made into. In such a way, I have become bound to my own set of stars, and as the stars inch across the sky, we are thrown across the horizon, moving too slow in the human sense, too fast in the cosmic one. Oh, catastrophe of catastrophes, if only you could give us some better reason to be or some better means of being.

Red's jacket is ruffled, and a darkness peeks out through it. It does not take superior intellect, as I have been given, to figure out that things have gone very much awry.

The night is soft and quiet, more tender but more insistent than the sharp, jagged edges of thought, and I drink in it as the deer sip the quiet waters of the rivers.

***

We are walking between trees who've lost their leaves.

"Remember the first time the trees lost their leaves?" offers Mary, "And Red said--"

The group falls ominously still, like the trees themselves. The barrenness is not a physical one, but nonetheless... I would say interesting, were I not involved. How unfortunate. Red looks back over his shoulder, and his copper eyes are the dull color of the trunks left behind to fend without the leaves.

"That was a long time ago," Dylan says. "We don't really need to... dwell on the past, or things Red may or may not have done in aforementioned past."

"We don't? I thought that was like, all we did," Mary argues. "Where are we going today?"

"Same place we were going yesterday, Mary," Gillian says. "Head up, eyes forward, walk until the end of the world."

"We should leave the country," Mary says. "I'm tired of being here in particular. Don't you guys think so? Wherever else we could go, it would be better than this a thousand thousand times over, because, you know, we wouldn't have been there before."

"Most of the other countries are somewhere across the ocean," I say, "Would you like to get on a boat or a plane, Mary? Do you know what those are? They're the large mechanical things you see overhead sometime. Planes, I mean. Boats are different. For your information, we would need false identification cards and then we'd need to be in an enclosed space for longer than the bus, with more risk than the bus, to a place we would never be able to come home from again."

"We don't have a home," Mary mutters.
"And still I have no personal desire to hop on a plane ride to the middle of nowhere, which we might never return from," Red says.

"No one asked you," Mary says.

Red stops. The trees rustle with the ghosts of their leaves making a husky, dead rumble. He tilts his glasses down as he turns to face her, so that the crosshairs (see, I guarantee Kali doesn't know crosshairs... take that, Kali, you unbearable snob) of their respective lines of view cross neatly.

"Do you wanna go?" asks Mary.

Red breathes in deeply. "No."

Mary's eyes fall. "I kinda wanna go."

"Then leave," Red offers, gesturing towards the woods. "Go beat up on something that can't fight back, Mary, you've always been good at that."

The discomfort in the group has grown from a nervous energy into an itch at the back of all of our necks so thick as to be fully tangible. We stand in that same obtrusive semicircle, all of us behind Mary, who falls back in line. "Whatever, let's just walk. It's all we do, anyways."

The walking resumes.

"Would be nice if anyone here knew where we were going!" calls out Mary.

Red and Alex both flinch. Now that is unfortunate. I am really leaning hard on 'unfortunate' today, aren't I? I haven't seen a dictionary in so long that I've forgotten how many synonyms there are for a single term. I've almost forgotten what a book smells like. We really should have purchased them, although I doubt it would have lasted long... Alex being able to incorporate the phone while he shapeshifted was unfortunately a special quirk of his transformation, as if the device were part of him. It practically was.

I step back. Alex is ghosting at the edge of the group we will have to call the middle children, because no better vocabulary has been provided. "Salutations, honey," I say, and he looks up at me with his teeth half-bared, his eyes full of what is either fear or immense disappointment.

"What do you want, Angel?" he asks.

"Do you have any natural intuition for locations outside of what you had with the phone?" I ask him.

"Are you just trying to mess with me today? Is that it? I can assure you that it's working," Alex says. He tries to lean further towards Gillian, whose eyes flick in my direction, but at the very least it doesn't seem like she's going to eat me, so I don't know what protection he thinks he's going to be offered.

"Mess with you! No, I just agree that we're bordering on being driftwood in the tides right now, and I haven't seen a lick of civilization since we left the beaches, which was who knows how long ago," I say. "I can trust you'd be the person most worth askin', can't I?"

Alex shakes his head. "I'm not in charge."

"Honey," I say, "Nobody's in charge right now."

"Please stop calling me 'honey'. I like the word but you're rea-a-a-ally ruining it for me right now," Alex kicks Gillian's leg.

Gillian leers up in my general direction. "You are an impediment to order. Cease bothering him."

"I really wish you hadn't gotten rid of that phone," I tell him, truthfully.

Alex leers back up at me. "I wish I had it back, sometimes... and then, on top of that, I wish I had earbuds," he says, "It'd make it real easy to tune you out, Angel, and that would make things better for all of us."

"Was that a joke?" asks Gillian.

"Oh yeah, sorry," Alex says.

Of course Gillian would have no capacity for humor. She has the temperament of a very lovely brick. I end up wandering towards Dylan, who is up near the front, just by virtue of walking a little fast. By the time I've strode up there properly, Dylan looks back and tilts his head forwards a little, as if to say, yeah, get it over with.

I clasp my hands. "Hey, darlin, should I request some sort of audience to talk to..."

"Whatever it is, he probably doesn't want to hear it," Dylan says.
"Course. So sorry to bother you, I'll go fall back in line," I say. "Right? That's what I'm supposed to say? How I'm supposed to behave, now, in whatever tipsy-turvy regime is going on right now?"

"You're assuming that there's a level of competence here that doesn't actually exist," Dylan keeps his eyes fixed ahead. He's not even looking at me... now that is astoundingly rude... when I follow his gaze upwards, into the empty woods, I catch his focal point, and things make a little more sense.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Oh, you worked that out. Of course you did. Smart cookie and all. Well, Angel, I'm sorry too, but that doesn't really fix anything."

"It doesn't have to," I say. I can feel the words deflect off him, and I add, "I'll... go."

Ah, see, there's no location proper for me in this world. I navigate somewhere in the middling category again, watching Mimsy stride the trees. Kali? Terrifying. Elle? Has no desire to talk to me. Trace and Adaline?
I watch them from a distance. I want to believe I'm proud of them for telling me off, all that time ago, but really, the more distance intercedes, the more that I feel like I will never be a part of their lives again. This is the kind of thing I hand over to the mob. Sentimentality. You useless idol.

As the stars come out, there is light low upon the land. Water reflects the stars, but humans mimic them, and the city proper glows with a warm heat. We stand on a hill overlooking the lower edge of the city, whose red clay fingers burst from the ground and writhe like worms after the rain. A few sparkling blue herons of towers rest among the lot, but for the most part... well, they can't be too many stories high, but even their promise of a downtown area is a thrilling contrast to weeks of woods.

"Are we stopping here?" I ask.

"I guess," Red says, with a shrug that makes it look more like he's stretching. "Probably fairly dangerous. More dangerous tomorrow, when we go into the city. Dylan, you think you can rack up some food?"

"I could sing," Damien offers.

"No you can't," Red says. "Not while I can't... not when everyone knows you. You made your bed. Lie in it."

"I made us a bed! Let's go lie down in it!" Mary calls, kicking some leaves around.

"That was fast. Did you like, put one leaf down and decide that was good enough for Damien?" Alex asks.

"I'll have you know it's a nice pile," Mary says.

"I'll have you know mine will be bigger," Alex says.

"Nuh-uh, because we're going to make a better one than either of you," calls Trace. "Let's go, Addie!"

My hair spikes like Mimsy's. I stay standing, watching the action unfold, but as the grabbing of leaves (and even the stealing of leaves, because Mary is a weasel) grows more frantic, I edge myself away from the rabble. The woods open up to meet me, though they are but trees, and I fold to meet them, wandering back towards the city. Not far from here is a better view, where the mountainside parts to reveal road, and at the edge of the road I can see everything glitter in the darkness.

Admittedly I am alarmed when someone moves through. Red pauses upon seeing me, his eyes wide, and I pat the earth besides me. "Come on, now. It's not as if I'm going to try to kiss you or something. Sit."

"Figured we needed to go to a city eventually," Red leers into the darkness as he settles himself down beside me, hunched over.

"That's very brave of you to admit," I tell him, giving him a soft pat on the back. "Assuredly this was the right call."

Red shrugs. "I'm kind of growing to hate the woods."

I pause. The night air carries a hint of smoke, and where there's smoke, there is a problem. "You alright, hun?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm used to dealing with insolent children, so I can tell."

Red's face cracks open, white teeth gleaming in alignment. He brings a hand close to his collar, and his voice trembles as he says, "Go to sleep, Angel."
I have him. Oh, where do I reel this in? Has it been so long since my affections were in his direction? "I'll have you know that my concern for your welfare is quite real and quite serious. The least you could afford me is a real answer."

Red takes off his glasses, and we must both feel the weight of the moment beneath us, like the shudderings of the unstable earth. In the dying light of the city, reflected back through him, I meet fear. It can't have been terribly long since we were last formally acquainted, but when he meets me through Red's eyes, there is something quite new to him, like a cold blade about the neck. I wish I was so often privy to the feelings of others. No one has a word for this, or at least, I'm not well-versed enough to have words for it. Some things require strings of thought, lines of prose, or even presence...

I'm out of it again, just by overanalyzing it. Red gets up, and I think I am wishing for him to cry, just a little, but he is strong, disappointingly so, as he hobbles away. "I'll be here," I tell him.

I am, for a while, so I don't have to turn around and see the giggling children in their forts. There's something that comes after, not quite adult, not quite child, and whatever it is, it is incredibly lonely.

***

The next morning, I find the library. Look, as long as we are in a center of civilization, there will be respect for stories, and as long as there is that well-cultured connection between the living and everything other than that, there will be temples to it. In such a way, I am not good at finding libraries: I am good at finding the white buildings Trace was so bemused by, but I offer myself to knowledge.

The one I speak to listens. The words are the same, no matter who you are. They open a door: would you like to come in? Talk about yourself? We are always here, always ready to share our insights, and I say, yes, a little taller and braver than in life. I adjust my form as I always did to enter these rooms, and watch the children cluster around parents with picture books.

I take the stairs up to the second floor and take out the dictionary, looking for synonyms for 'unfortunate'. When I've found them, I peek down the stairs again. The people are still there, moving slowly between crypts of knowledge, skimming worlds, placing them back on the shelves. My heart thrums with the knowing.

I thought I was over myself, but all the bad habits, call them compulsions, are here under the surface, trying to make their voices known. They come back to me like chicks in the spring, peeping, insisting for their mother, and I am a nurturer as much as an intellectual, so I hold them to my chest.