So my page may or may not have been blowing up. I write Anna a song at one point, even though I don't tell my audience who its for. I think part of the magic in music might be forming your own conclusions. What I feel is so real to me, and yet everyone else hears something completely dissimilar.

This is even more thrilling. I ask people to tell me what they think of the work and I get compliments, but more than that, I get stories. Alex reads them out loud, but I'm teaching myself some of the words. Right now, I can only read a few, so most of my sessions consist of reading 'and and and' (which is a word I do know) until I'm desperate for the meat of the sentiment. Alex laughs at this before holding his hand out and making the gesture that indicates he'd rather have his phone back, now.

I hand it over to him today. "Should I do a special for the big number with four digits?"

"You mean a thousand," Alex says.

"That one!" I say. "It sounds even fancier when you put it that way. Hey, uh, do you think they've noticed that I can't put my instruments down? That I'm playing in the wild? Can they track us? This isn't dangerous, is it?"

"One question at a time, hermanito," Alex pats me on the back.

"What's a hermanito?"

"I don't know, but I think it means someone who's... related to you," Alex explains. "Like what Angel does, but, hey, you know humans reproduce too? If a human has two children, then one of them is the hermanito. The tiny one. I found it on the internet. The other word is 'brothers', but I don't like that one as much, honestly?"

I nod, but I don't understand most of it, and I wish I could care, but I really have nothing to say to him. "Can I have the phone again tomorrow?"

"No. It's a Thursday," Alex says, "You know what I said about Thursdays."

"I don't remember anything about what you said on Thursdays," I lie, half-forgetting what Thursdays are, anyways, "Please give me the phone. I want to check my comments! I have a whole conversation going with this girl, whose name is rosedancer222."
"Internet people have weird names. Are you even sure that that's a human?"

"What else would it be?" I ask Alex. "It's not like anyone else knows how to use computers."

"We wouldn't know," Alex shrugs.

"I want to know," I say.

"What?" Alex asks.

I rise to my feet. "I want to know. I want to go out there, and, and I want to perform! I want to go travel across the world, meet all kinds of people, tell stories, give stories, I want to be a story. I want to know what everyone thinks the birds in the morning remind them of, how they feel when they watch the sun set, I want to put music in on the rooms where they make their beds and wake up and I want them to tell me everything that the notes make them feel. That's why people are congregating near my music, finally. It makes them feel alive. I want to be alive, too, and I want to create life." I've already grabbed him by both shoulders with uncharacteristic force and am now shaking him back and forth. He's so much taller than me that I have to jump to get up at his level. I can't help it. I'm smiling through and through.

"You want to create what, exactly?" Gillian enters alongside Mary, the former's arms folded neatly. Mary limpsalong, looking more proud than guilty despite numerous bruising wounds, and Gillian pushes past her to hold Alex at the collar. "Are you taking him out? I will know if you do so."

Alex gags. "I didn't do anything! Gillian, Gillian, please drop me, I didn't do a-ny-thing, I swear--"

"Then what were you doing out here?" Between the low growl in her throat and the draconic flair of her nose, Gillian looks half-human.

"We-- were-- hunting!" Alex improvises. He laughs like a goose. "We can't find a thing out here! Everything is dead or not alive."

"Wow! Redundant and convincing!" calls Mary from the corner.

Gillian brings him to her face, her glower only intensifying. "I was made a fool of once. It won't happen again." She lets Alex slump to the floor, turning with a crack of her thick neck. Her full attention turns on me. "Damien?"

Mary rushes in my way and extends her arms to protect me. It's the first time in a long time I've felt safer in her presence, and I back up from behind her skinny frame.

"I'm not going to hurt him," Gillian says.

"Sure, sure, like you weren't going to hurt me," Mary laughs.

"You were going to free Angel."

"I was gonna see what's up with Angel. It's not my fault she went out and got herself in trouble. I consider it my personal duty to ensure nothing that stupid ever happens again, so, might as well mess with her a little," Mary shrugs. "If you wanted a fight, you should've just said so. I'm always--"

"We know," says Alex from the floor. He hasn't moved. Despite Mary's bravado, the air is tense and smells like blood.

Mary lowers her head. "I don't have to protect you, coward."

"You never have to protect me," Alex says. "G-Gillian, we're not your enemies. Damien and I aren't going anywhere."

"Is that true?" Gillian turns, her ginger hair forming a dangerously thick mane around her back. Is she going to shift into Veritas now? Oh, please no. She can't. She'll know I'm lying if she decides to interrogate me.

I give her the smallest, stiffest nod, all the song knocked out of me. She turns. "I can't afford to trust the likes of you again. I need to go back to guarding the prisoner. If any of you attempt anything, I will crush you beneath my fingers."

"No wonder!" Mary calls as Gillian stalks back into the brush. "Tell Dylan that he can eat my-- uh. Forget how that one goes. He can suck my elbow!"

That leaves the three of us in the clearing. Mary sways back and forth on her feet. Alex is wiping dirt off, wincing. I'm standing still in the same position where Gillian left me. I don't think I could move if I wanted to. Do I want to? I think my free will has been co-opted by my crippling inability to speak for myself.

"That was," I begin.

"I'll say," Mary grabs me around the neck with the inside of her arm. "Hey, Damien, if you do anything fun, invite me along, won't you? I promise I won't tattle on you like Pissy Mc Ginger Hissing Fit over there."

I reach for my neck and brush her off, trying to lift her fingers from my neck. "You're the reason she's like that," I whisper.

"She thinks you're a threat to the group. You can't blame me for that. I might make her worse, sometimes, but she's always been bad, she's always going to be bad, and that's not my fault, isn't it? Anyone who gets in your way is a bitch. That's just how it is," Mary promises me. "I'm going to free us both one of these days, and when I do, she'll be the first person to step aside or go down."

"I don't want to 'go down'. I don't want her to 'go down', either," I keep trying to free myself from her grip, but she holds on tighter in all the places I try to get her off of me. She squeezes insistently at my ribcage, my neck, and my sides, and I feel the air choke in my throat. I don't know if I'm angrier at her or Gillian.

"Sure, sure. Things can stay like this forever if you really want them to, Damien, but if things don't change, then things don't change." Mary shrugs nonchalantly, rolling her eyes so hard that I think they're about to exit her face and burst through her skull. "Angel had the right idea by shaking the status quo down. We should have done that too. Busted for it. Made a run."

"I don't want--"

"Yes you do," Mary says. "But it's okay. We'll get to the end of the world, and they'll figure out what we are anyways. Maybe you'll meet the other Damien who looks like you, and you two can go be-- Damien friends or whatever."

I look back at Alex, who is sitting, legs crossed, on his phone.

My face twitches.