"Well, are you?"

He says this aloud, seemingly having regained his ability to talk, and I answer by staring at his mouth. His voice is like a rich honey, it makes me want sit and listen.

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I close it abruptly.

His face melts into a half smile, one which I then dumbly stare at. That was the same smile that had gotten me in heaps of trouble over the years. My throat makes a gasping sound, and I find myself slowly sinking to the ground. The boy stops for a second before also sinking into a cross legged position on the grass.

He asks me something, but I'm not listening. I'm staring instead at the crow that just landed about 50 feet away from us. I watch in horror as it morphs, not like the boy, not like ink. More like sand. A black sand that heaves onto the ground in piles, slowly building up and up, before crashing down and leaving a man in its wake.

A man clad in black with bruises lining his arms, wearing a new pair of leather boots, and a huge scar from his left eyebrow to his right cheekbone. I watch closely as he shakes out his ligaments and joints, and brandishes a large hunting knife that has a leather bound handle.

I scramble to my feet and stammer words like,

"Who? What? Why? How?"

The boy glances at the man before wrapping his arms around my shoulders. At first I'm a tad alarmed at the sudden contact, but his hold almost feels safe, and comforting. He leans into my side and whispers,

"We're going to change. It won't hurt. Trust me."

I nod, slightly petrified, but determined to trust the boy I just met, but feel like I have known forever.

Then my fingers start to tingle, and it feels like they're being dragged slowly through water. The feeling spreads to my entire body, and I close my eyes, scared for what will happen next. I feel a whoosh of air, and when I open my eyes I realize that I am flying.

I look down and see the strange man following us with his eyes. I can feel his stare on me even after we reach the edge of his range of sight.

I don't look up, but somehow I know that I'm a cardinal being carried by another cardinal. Flying makes me feel good. It brings in the happy memories. I don't know why, but I feel almost connected to the wind, as if I could one day turn to dust and travel freely through the sky.

We start to descend slowly, and my heart gets heavy at the thought of once again being grounded. But that doesn't stop us, and as we get close to the ground the feeling of water comes back rushing through my veins. It only takes a second though, and we roll to the ground in human form.

I look at the boy and smirk.

"Well that was fun," comes out of my mouth before I can stop it.

He laughs my laugh, and grins my grin. I arch my eyebrows up and--

"I'm your brother. Twin brother to be exact."

I smile after a minute of silence. I can't say I'm surprised. I was expecting something along those lines to come out of his mouth. We look and act so similar, I couldn't help but wonder. My mother would always get upset on the day after my birthday. It was almost like she mourned his loss, but I don't think even she knew exactly what happened.

I try to break the tension by asking what had just occurred, but he just shrugs and taps his temple.

"I don't exactly know. I normally just think, and something happens. At first it was hard, but I was trapped in that hell hole for 13 years, so I had time to practice."

I shudder at this information. 'Trapped', 'hell hole'. He obviously didn't like it in there, even though he had mind powers. I wonder if he's angry, at me or our mother. I don't know if I want to find out.

"How, how did you get out?" I stammer, still winded from having to morph twice in the past twenty minutes.

"You dropped this."

He digs around in the pocket of his trousers for a second before finding what he was looking for. He pulls out a brown wood carved button, and I gasp. The tenth button from my satchel. I reach down to grab it, but I find that it's not there. My heart races. I can't lose that satchel.

My brother seems to sense my stress and tries to console me. He explains about needing an anchor from the real world to escape the imaginative one.

And that's when old scarface made of sand shows up smiling.