"That was moderately anticlimactic," Dylan boasts, later, with Damien watching over his back the whole way. "We have answers now or what?"

It's raining and we're all stuck out in the woods because the stupid city is probably filled with people who want to kill us, like every other city on the face of the planet. In fact we should probably have just turned ourselves in at some point, or split up to duck the attention, or done literally anything besides depending on our all tricks and waiting it out.

"We could always have interrogated Mimsy if looking for answers had really been a prerogative," Angel explains, from her position on a not-very-comfy but appropriately lonely log. Yeah. That's right. You stay there.

"Angel, we've gone over how inappropriate it would be to attempt to force information out of Mimsy," Red says.

"I thought Mimsy already made the point that she'd rather be left alone," Dylan says, "With her teeth." He's met by silence. "With her teeth."

Angel sighs.

"You know, you're awfully wordy tonight, Angel," Kali says.

"You're awfully alone. Shouldn't you be putting your tongue all over Elle's body or something?" asks Angel, rising to her feet.

"Thank you for your input. Consider it noted and dully ignored," Kali retorts.

"Ladies, ladies. How about we don't?" Dylan chips in.

Angel gets to her feet. "I have nothing but the utmost respect for Mimsy. I'm merely stating that we're all deluding ourselves here if we think there's some kind of 'game' that we're playing, especially one that we're playing well, by coming back here. What we've really done is allowed deviant elements of the group to jerk us around in hopes of forcing a conclusion that will, in all likelihood, never come to pass."

"What kind of a conclusion are you looking for? Even if we get answers, it's just like, whoops! There the answers are. We're still going to have to keep walking around in the cold forever. There are no happy endings for us. We are the ending," Mary says. She stands up too, mimicking Angel, and then stretches. "Well. At least we made Damien happy. That's good, right?"

"We made Damien happy, but we've also almost died," Red says. "And now, we're..."

"Not far off the locations we got from the man behind the blackbox," Mimsy says, suddenly incarnate from the darkness. Her eyes are empty as she watches the fire. She pokes it with a long stick, causing a stream of embers to fly upwards, crackling. "The obelisk man. He'll want to see us, but if we want to see him... do we want to see him? The past is full of little holes for a reason. It has been eaten up."

"Do we all want to know where we come from?" Red asks the group. "We should vo--"

Dylan shakes his head. "We're not even going there."

"Sounds like a trap," admits Damien. "They weren't expecting us at the house, but now, they'll be around. I feel like the mom will be upset now that she knows her son might be in danger. Do you think she's still in contact with the whitejackets? She has to be, right?"

Everyone is quiet. Mimsy continues to prod the fire with increasing vigor, her eyebrows furrowed, and I smell smoke in the air, filling everything.

"We're all just looking for somewhere to go," says Mimsy. "That's all. Water runs to the lowest point, and we are hoping, incorrectly, that there is a place at the bottom of the universe where we are allowed to exist."

"Well, I'm going to bed," Kali says. She looks over her shoulder, to where Elle is, and then meekly adds, "Angel, would you mind... scouting out the area with me?"

Angel leans forwards. "Do you want me to scout out the area or 'scout out the area'?"

"What's the difference?" I ask.

The older kids stare at me, incredulous, and I fold my arms over each other, kinda wishing that I hadn't opened my mouth at all.

Kali shakes her head. "Nothing shifty. C'mon, Angel, you've gotta help me. Or Dylan. Red. Don't care who, just someone please... stay with me."
Dylan eventually gets up, his arm around her shoulder, and they set off into the darkness. I stare after them, because there's no way that was Kali, because that was super weird and out of character, but also, I'm exhausted too. Adaline grabs my hand instead of the other way around, and we follow Damien out of the group and through some trees. He looks over his shoulder a few times, as if he's trying to catch us, but his eyes are so nice.

He looks like the deer. Sad.

"I know you two are out there," Damien says, at last. "It's nice to practice with an audience, and it's nice to practice without an audience, but when you have people there who are kind of but not really in your peripherals, that's when it starts to get scary."

Adaline steps out into the haze of the clearing. I follow her, frowning. Is she going to jerk me around? Adaline.

"What was she like?" asks Adaline. "The mother."

"Oh," Damien says, "Well, she was... I mean, I got one head pat, it wasn't exactly like I was there for an extensive enough time to know what a full human experience was like, but she cared about me for no discernible reason, she was warm, and even though her voice sounded really upset, I could feel deep inside her that there was all of this love."

Adaline looks to me. "Doesn't really help, does it?"

"Why are we out here?" I ask her.

Damien nods. "I mean, I guess it wasn't terribly complicated? We probably could have... replicated... it..." Damien pauses when he looks in my direction and sees me leaned up against the tree, head tilted up, eyes narrowed at him. "Sorry."

"We can't replicate anything if we don't actually have any real mothers, which we don't, so," I explain. "All of us should be on equal footing. Everything else we just made up, which was a bad idea."

"There are things that I just want to know," Adaline says. She clutches my hand and squeezes it, but her grip is softer now, and kind of sad. "Thank you, Damien."

I squeeze her hand hard as I can right back, making sure to give her an intense glare, and the two of us walk back into the woods.

"It's not all made up," Adaline protests as we come back to camp. She stalls between trees, looking up at the moon and pausing for long enough to let the night air slow to a stop around us. "It isn't."

"I don't know why you're so addicted to the idea of-- to her-- to any of it," I snap. "We're all just pretending, and maybe we shouldn't even be. Have you thought of that? Do you remember how confining the school was? Do you want to be like the school?"

"You're wrong. We need the big kids to take care of us. I wouldn't be able to do any of this on my own," Adaline insists. "Neither would you."

"Do what? Find berries and fruit? Steal food from people? Find places to sleep? Red is the only one of us who needs special accommodations. We would do better on our own than with anyone else, but we keep binding ourselves to each other, because we're convinced that we only exist as a big unit."
Adaline begins threading her hair with her fingers, looking away from me.

I grab one hand, causing her to release the hair. Her eyes are watery as she looks up at me. "Haven't you noticed how tired everyone is, all the time?" I ask her. "Mary was right. We're the ending. One way or another, someone gives out, and when they do, when it can't get fixed, then the whole game is over."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Let's stop playing," I suggest.

Adaline clutches her head. I can see claws growing out of her fingers, like plants shooting out of the earth in a thousand times the speed, and her face twitches, angrily, as her eyes fill with darkness. I hold her to the ground, which is the only plan we have for when she gets like this, and she thrashes for a few moments, a low gurgling rumble at the back of her throat, and the moonlight above us is eclipsed by shadow.

"Angel?" I ask the darkness.

Mimsy stands overhead. Her white hair glitters with moonlight when I turn around to get the side of her face in my field of vision, and she bends down to my side and stares at the thrashing Adaline on the ground. She puts a hand to Adaline's face and Adaline grows suddenly still, a pearl forming in Mimsy's hand that she then smashes between her fingers.

Adaline looks up. "Are we fighting?"

Mimsy shakes her head.

"Oh... I had a bad dream," Adaline says, "Now it keeps going, but I can't remember what it was to begin with. Trace, what were we arguing about?"

"You were talking about leaving, and then you got sick," I say.
Mimsy keeps walking.

"Where are you going?" we ask, in unison, and then kind of giggle at each other.

Mimsy turns back, eyes narrowing to slits. The dark sky above contrasts her hair, so that she is the only bright thing in the world save for Adaline and the stars. "We're close to home. Don't tell the others that I'm going."
"Will you be back soon?" Adaline asks.

"Hopefully. I am going to have to wait for a few suns, but that shouldn't be a problem. I need you to tell the group not to worry. Or you can not tell them, but..." Mimsy mutters, "I don't have much of a plan."

"Angel didn't, either," I suggest. Okay so maybe that's not the most helpful thing to tell Mimsy, because her hair spikes up. "Sorry. We'll help you wherever we can. They don't really even listen to us, but we'll at least try."

Mimsy's eyes soften. "I missed being around you two." She slams a stick on the floor of the forest, which swings up into her hand. Grabbing it, she begins walking into the darkness, the moonlight falling from her as the trees swallow her up.

"Did you really?" I yell after.

Mimsy calls back, "A little." She puts a finger to her lips, and then she's gone.

Adaline looks to me, uneasy, and asks, "That's our small act of rebellion?"
I nod. "We'll just tell them that she was with us, and that we saw her last, so no one will suspect a thing. They don't even care enough to really go after her."

"They cared about us," Adaline says, "What if she gets hurt?"
"She won't," I say. The moon falls prey to heavy clouds, draping the land in a fog of darkness. It's like walking through a crowd of smoke, and though I'm uneasy, I hold Adaline's hand in my own as we walk home together. "She's Mimsy. She's probably immortal. Bet that's her power."

"Oh," Adaline says. "Aren't we all?"
"No idea," I say.

The leaves crunch beneath us.

"I want to be able to do something," I admit. "Anything, even if it's really small."

"Me too," Adaline offers.

"But they think I'm the group baby, and that's not fair. No one thinks of you that way. I bet it's because you're taller."

"You used to be way shorter than me," Adaline says, "You're growing."

It begins to rain. We feel it first in our hair, then across our faces, and then it's claimed our shoulders and arms, pattering across our legs and feet and everywhere in between.

"What do I do when I'm an adult, then?" I ask her, swinging the hand of hers I'm holding back and forth in a slow, steady motion.

Adaline shrugs, looking over to the side with a small smile.

"Will you come with me?"

The rain picks up into a cascade, and I can't hear the beating of her heart, but when I'm close to her I can feel the thrum fill her body, definite, sure, and proceeding.