I was having a morally grey kind of morning. I mean, I really appreciated all the love and support I received from Jamal and Bee, and felt kind of bad leaving them with not much more than a sorry note, but the drive to get back to my family kind of overpowered that. I would also like to mention it was way to easy to slip away, everyone slept in all the time. Neve used to say if it was light out at all, you had slept in. I frowned as I remembered her, and the clammy betrayed feeling kinda came back, that ultimately made me feel better about leaving.

"Have you got everything?" Peri asked quietly, from my shoulder.

"Yeah."

"Have you got food?" He questioned, with a little more force.

"That was Ryan's job, besides, she like knows how to get food from like anywhere."

Peri made the bird equivalent of a shrug. "I mean, I do too, if you would ask. I'm just worried."

"About what?"

He frowned. "For Kosmos' sake Craig, you don't the first thing about hiking in the jungle, you don't even have a bug expelling charm. Spirits don't need to eat, but you do. I'm supposed to look after you, it's my job."

I nodded. "We'll be careful. I have you after all, and Ryan."

He rolled his eyes. "And Ryan of course you find out you have a twin sister and all of a sudden it's like I'm not even here."

    I patted his head gently. "There's no one that could replace you, don't you worry about that."

    His bitterness seemed to soften a bit at my promise. I hefted my small bag of belongings and meager food rations over my shoulder and started for the door, throwing a rude hand gesture at Pedro's sleeping form as I left.

    Ryan was already waiting for me, looking slightly tired as I'm sure she was not used to waking up this early. Lucy was presumedly buried somewhere in Ryan's hair, as always.

    "Which way are we going?" I asked.

    Ryan started walking. "This way, we won't walk the whole trip because that's like, half the continent. There's a bus stop a few miles up though we can take advantage of."

    The scenery changed from slightly surrounded on all sides by trees to very surrounded on all sides by trees. The rainforest in the morning was not ant quieter either. There was still the ever present slightly unnerving humming of bugs that uncomfortably reminded you how close you were to them. There was occasional shreek of these things Ryan had showed me called monkeys, even a few bird calls. That was also something different about the rainforest compared to the woods, the woods was always deathly silent.

    "Do you think Jamal and Bee will miss us to much?" I asked, slightly abruptly.

    Ryan was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, they'll be pretty sad."

    I glanced her way to see if the notion upset her that much. I know the two of them meant a lot to her.

    "Are you okay with that?" I inquired. "You don't have to come with me-"

    "No no no." She cut me off. "I'm fifteen now, and as far as I can remember I've always lived with those two. I know you probably think Agrios is super exciting and different, and from your perspective, it probably is. In reality nothing ever happens. We can learn to fight if we want, but if you don't grow up to be farmer there's not many other options. I've wanted to leave this town for years." She explained.

    "Oh." I realized. "Well, what do you want to do? Like as your job?"

    She grinned. "I want to do what your adopted mom does, I wanna do magic."

    Peri snorted slightly from my shoulder. I bonked him respectively.

    She reached for her waist and suddenly pulled out a dagger I had never seen before. "Even better, I want to do magic while stabbing things."

    I blinked rapidly. "Where did that come from?"

    Her giggly aura eroded down a bit and Ryan instead became more serious. "I've always had it, it's uh, supposedly our parents gave it to me."

    Our parents. That was still a weird sentence and I'm sure both of us felt the same. I felt a shiver run down my spine as it sunk in exactly what she was saying.

    "Wait what?" I screeched gently, seeing as it was still six in the morning. "They gave you a cool knife? I didn't get anything!"

    Stupid. I thought. Ryan shrugged nervously and let me see it. "I don't know if it's from them, Jamal and Bee found me in the middle of the forest, and it was just next to me."

    I held it gently in my hands, examining the substances. The blade was about seven inches long, and seemingly made out of iron, and melted and folded into the thing blade shape. The hilt and guard was black and was made out a mixture of metal and dark wood for the grip. There were a few small runes running up the flat of the blade, but it wasn't in a language I recognized, which was weird because, everyone pretty much spoke the same thing in Zoo.

    "This...this is a really nice dagger." I praised, handing it back. "I would say I'm jealous but I really don't know how to use one."

    She shrugged. "I kinda know, I took a few free lessons back at Agrios, but I mean like, how hard can stabbing things be?"

    "Wait a sec." Peri hopped up suddenly, jumping forward to land on the not-sharp part of the dagger. "You can't read this."

    "Yeah." No duh.

    He frowned and looked up a me. "But I can."

    I was about to seriously interrogate him on the message engraved on the dagger, but I was momentarily interrupted and Peri's eyes widened and he leapt as my face, flapping wildly. I stumbled backwards only to discover it wasn't my face he was after, but the giant green snake that had just been about to sink in teeth into my neck.

    Peri had his talons wrapped around it's head as the thing twisted and convulsed on the jungle. Lucy suddenly appeared screeching wildly, claws brandished, aiming for it's head like Peri had done. The snake snapped at the air and managed to wriggle free of both birds grasp. Ryan pulled out the dagger and was just about to sink it into some gnarly green flesh when both our familiars screamed at her.

    "No!" Peri gasped, as it slithered into the undergrowth. "Don't hurt her!"

    "Her?" I questioned.

    "Why not?" Demanded Ryan, staring at Lucy.

    "Not time for questions, you two need to run, now." Peri commanded, tugging on my ear.

    I got the sense this was a little more serious than me accidentally getting in a snake's way. I grabbed Ryan's hand and the two of took off as fast as we could run in the uneven jungle terrain. I was slowing down, as I was used to running through forest, there's a little more space for your feet in the forest, until the snake appeared again and nearly got one of my toes. That was pretty convincing. Eventually adrenaline made stubbing my toes every few feet less painful.

The ground suddenly disappeared beneath me and I was thigh deep in freezing water. I yelped and stopped, even though Ryan and kept going, our birds screeching frantically on the other side, giving in the air. Then that snake appeared again and started gliding across the surface of the water.

"You've got to be kidding me!" I squeaked angrily, snakes were awesome, but not when you were being chased by a seemingly very bloodthirsty one.

"Craig!" Ryan snapped at me, dragging me a long.

It's (her?) tongue flicked out at me playfully as I was yanked up onto the opposing river bank. Then my feet were tripping over branches and vines again. I honestly wasn't sure how long I could keep this up. Any minute I might-

I tripped and fell flat on my face into a mud puddle and probably like five gross bugs. Peri let out a strangled gasp as the large green snake reared up into the air and opened it's jaw and clamped it down on my ankle. Pain flared up my leg and I screeched and probably kicked the snake face, my only thought being incredibly stupid as I wondered how bad my leg tasted. 

A flash of bright orange jumped in from of me as the snake was torn painfully off my foot. I did a double take as I'm pretty what I seeing in front of me was...a fox? Maybe the snake was venomous and I was hallucinating because I'm pretty sure they didn't have jungle foxes.

The fox took the snake in it's jaws and promptly flung it across the jungle, where it hit a tree and fell to the ground. It didn't move for a second and I thought maybe it was dead, but the snake lifted it's head slowly and stared at us for a long time, before finally slithering off in a different direction.

The fox was breathing heavily as it stood over me. Peri, obviously panicked and squawking wildly, landed on my leg and started mother henning me furiously.

"Are you hurt? You're hurt! She bit you oh my gosh. Was she venomous? I hope she wasn't venomous..."

I drowned out his voice as I locked eyes with the fox. It's deep amber eyes stared into me and I got the feeling this wasn't a regular fox. This was a familiar.

"Where's your human?" I asked it hoping Peri would translate for me.

"Right here." A new voice, as a girl stepped out from behind one of the trees.

I blinked as I examined the stranger. She had long gold-orange hair, and was wearing a mix of dark greens and browns, but in a different style than tan and I were wearing. Mammal style. I couldn't see her face because she was wearing a dark white-patterned mask that was very scary and intimidating until she took it off.

Turns out, she was still very scary and intimidating, and admittedly very cute. As soon as that thought surfaced I pushed in out immediately, there was no way I was getting myself into another crush mess.

"I'm Eryan." She introduced, pronouncing her name like airy-yen. "This is my familiar Oratio."

    "We didn't need any help." Ryan spat somewhat bitterly, as she swung one of my arms over her shoulder to help me stand.

    "I kinda think we did." Peri argued, even though Ryan couldn't understand him.

    "The snake wasn't venomous." Eryan ignored Ryan's obvious disagreement and she pulled out some gauze. "But you'll want to-"

    Ryan snatched it from her. "I know."

    Eryan watched in observation as my ankle was bandaged. I stood up and wiped the mud of of me uncertainly. I was gross and limping but I guess I was still alive.

    "Do you two...know each other?" I asked, picking up on the tension.

    "No...?" Eryan started.

    "Yes." Ryan replied curtly.

    I frowned. Ryan breathed out angrily. "She used to live with us, then disappeared a few years back. We were worried but I guess you're doing just fine aren't you. Fine enough to never contact us and tell us you were doing okay, not even once."

    "Oh! Ryan!" Eryan gasped. "I remember you, but not you."

    She pointed at me. "Is he your..."

    "Brother." Ryan cut her off. "This is Craig, my twin brother."

    "Hi." I waved, leaning against a tree as Peri inspected my foot dubiously, probably still very worried.

    "You got adopted!" Eryan replied happily.

    "No, it's a long story. We're running away." Ryan explained, kind of arrogantly.

    Since I had no part in this chick-tension I just kinda kept leaning against my tree and looking off at the horizon like the disruption wasn't extremely uncomfortable.

    "Where are you going?"

    "The North, we were heading for the Scobi bus until the snake attacked us."

    Eryan nodded. "Yeah that was weird, familiars usually don't attack humans."

    If I ad been sipping water I would have done a spit-take. "Wait what?"

    Peri nodded gravely. "She was a familiar, that's why I told you not to hurt her. Someone's hunting you."

    "Someone's doing what?"

"You guys are pretty lucky I was around, I usually don't come this far sound but food's been scarce this year." Eryan explained. "Glad I did though."

"Why didn't you ever come back to tell us you weren't dead?" Ryan demanded.

Eryan pursed her lips. "Reasons. Do you guys need directions to the Scobi bus? I'd be willing to take you."

Ryan's eye twitched. "No we don't-" then she looked around. "Okay yes, we could use some direction, but this does not make us even, and stop acting like you're older than me. We're the same age."

"Are we gonna talk about the snake at all?" I waved my hands around. "Guys, someone's hunting us and we've only been gone for a few hours."

"If the snake comes back I'm stabbing her, nobody bites my brother and gets away with it." Ryan snorted, I should probably wait for her to cool off before addressing the situation.

"Let's focus on getting to the bus first, then we'll break it down." Eryan offered to help me walk but Ryan brushed her off and held me up instead.

Two birds and a fox trailed behind us.

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I just realized Craig is like the equivalent to the guy from the magic school bus who's like "why can't his be a normal field trip?" Do with that information what you will.