The shifting wind hit me in the face, and I squinted, pulling the blanket up around my shoulders. It wasn't cold outside, maybe a little cool in the shade with the constant breeze of unseen wind devvis on patrol, but I kept the fabric close anyway, more so out of obligation than anything else. Its slippery, smoke-colored threads were an experimental blend that Alex had been working on: silk with a trace amount of baryonic dark matter bonded to its atoms.

Yes, it was the same one he gave me the night at the movie theater. It was dark matter cloth. Fancy that. Apparently, it could cloak a devvi's aura. A wind devvi, sent from Alex, had showed up to present it to me. He might have been the one called Ai, it was hard to tell.

Taking a careful bite of peach, I was conscious not to drip juice on the cloth as I rocked my sitting weight from one hip to the other. The root of the great oak Micah had moved us under while we took a break from my sight lesson was hard. Above us, autumn- yellowing leaves swayed in the breeze and sunshine to make shadows dance across the thick trunk where he was slumped in a comfortable lean, arms folded, closed eyelids soft. His ash mane shifted about his relaxed face. His jaw line was stubbled with a couple of days of personal neglect. He was trying so hard for me.

It made him look even more handsome. Rugged, I decided with a solemn gaze shifting to where he parked his motorcycle close to a logging trail.

I had to admit: the ride here had been an exhilarating one, with the wind in my hair as I squeezed his waist tight from behind. The dusty backroad had given way to raw earth and the musty smell of sun-warmed ferns when we turned into the woods and rose out of the valley. Our valley's grouping of factory smokestacks was two hills away, the golden-brick twins towering over all the others in their grandeur. The horizon was hazy from the constant steam and accented in late day golds and reds, the color blending to make pink lemonade.

The downward-sloping field we were in was thick with grass and hidden thorns. Pleasant to the eye, but not overly safe without jeans and shoes. Mine were off right now—the shoes, that is. Perched a few feet away, lined up in a neatly fashion on the same tree root I sat. My new footwear. Indy had gotten them for me during her trip to New York. They were a brand I was unfamiliar with, dark grey in color with silver pinstriping, the tread aggressive enough for rugged terrain. Perfect for a mad dash through the woods.

I rolled my eyes. As if. No more blind marathon sprints through the underbrush, thank you. The socks I had on were the thickest I owned, knee high. No chance of showing the underfoot scarring.

Having finished my dinner, I dropped the peach pit into the grass for any squirrel or chipmunk that might happen upon it and wiped my sticky hands in the grass. A wind—a natural one—crossed the land from the west to sway treetops on the opposing hill before reaching us. With a fitful rustle, the autumn-hued trees encircling the field rose and fell together as one. A cold front was coming in fast and would be here sometime after dark. Just peachy.

I set my gaze on the restless landscape before closing my eyes, and with a slow exhale, I counted backward from four, as Micah instructed, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth to carefully tense a spot behind my eyes. The pressure induced a faint pop. With a slow inhale taken through the nose, I counted back up to four, tensing fingers but not facial muscles when I could feel my pupils recede. The odd sensation consisted of a haunting, inward-sinking. It also burned like the itch of a healing wound, but at least I now had better control over what mode of sight I saw with.

Wishing I had a mirror on me for the hundredth time, I slowly open my eyes to gaze at the shifting trees. Micah told me I had a quite different appearance to his or any other devvi. My pupils receded, but instead of having an iris with blue, fluid movement, the surface of the blue crystallized. The outer edge of my iris was rimmed with a thin line of liquid gold. He warned me not to show my eyes in their spectral version to just any devvi. For in his world, just as it was for the humans, greed coveted what was rare. Someone might hunt me down just for my eyes, poach me like the rare animal I was.

With my spectral sight in place, the physical plane was tinted blue the farther I peered toward the horizon. Every form of energy— kinetic or otherwise—no matter how minute, showed up as light to my spectral sight. The brighter it appeared, the more potent the energy. On the astral plane side, Micah described the color of the horizons as a golden yellow. And whenever one would push their spectral sight beyond the plane they were currently on...

I clenched my jaw and tried to adjust what I was viewing, pushing myself to see deeper, beyond all I had known as reality. I wasn't very good yet at finding where blue came together with yellow, but I finally caught sight of the border between the two: physical plane blue meeting with astral plane yellow to cause green. As I focused fully into the next plane, all there was left to see was—trees. Trees and grass and earth, all under a jade sky: Nature. Not "nature" in its solid form, but "Nature" as Form, the definition and idea thereof. The "reality" on the devvi's side of things was a metaphysical mirror of solid nature that existed on our side, with humans and animals being elusive to devvis. You see, the creatures of the physical plane lacked spirits that gave off auras, and thus had no Form to project an image of themselves onto the other side. Physical plane nature itself was its own Form, and thus projected an image. An opaque, touchable image to those who populated the astral, both devvi and umbra alike. Opaque images they could cultivate or do harm to, and in turn, their interaction with these images affected the real object back on the humans' side.

What humans observed of the ebb and flow of nature was typically due to the relationship of umbrae on the other plane acting upon Nature's Form. Erosion, oxidation, deterioration, growth, these were umbrae, bodiless forces in concentrated, living form.

My transformed sight touched upon the trunk of the great oak before me, taking in the soft, white glow of Micah's outline. Since devvis possessed auras, if they were on the physical plane, they cast a lighted image of themselves onto the astral. An image that could be manipulated the same as any tree or rock. I cast a projected image too, and therein was my greatest downfall as a being with two souls.

Blinking until my pupils resurfaced and my eyesight returned to normal, I huddled deeper into my dark matter-laced blanket. The fabric was clammy and cold, like a dead fish slippery against my skin as I pulled it over my head so only my chin and nose projected out. Micah explained that because of my two souls, the aura that was produced was so intense I was often the brightest beacon on the landscape of the astral plane. I unknowingly drew umbrae to myself, like moths to flame. So if an umbra became aggressive and, let's say, decided to bite my projection in the shoulder, it resulted in injury to my physical self. I shivered again and tugged at the blanket.

This was why I had been moved around my entire life. A safe existence for me meant I needed to live in an area where the economic activity produced a background ambience brighter than my projected image, a proverbial "hot spot" on the astral plane. They hid me in such an area. Micah, as my guardian, figured into the safety equation as back up for whenever this system failed. He fought them and killed them if he had to, whatever it took to keep their lame duck of a half- breed alive. A safe existence, ha! I frowned, looking down at myself, huddled in my aura cloak, vulnerable and exposed because I knew now how not good it was to be outside of my "hot spot" despite the wind devvis' orders to make the hillside safe. From what everyone was telling me, I was a danger magnet. Alex was working his resources overtime to keep the valley safe with me in it. Micah devoted himself to protecting me—and I'm not even strong enough to give him anything good in return.

And what about Reese? God, she was helpless.

A callous breeze rubbed my face, and I closed my eyes against it, their corners moist. My mother is dead because of me.

A twig snapped, and the cloak and tree were suddenly gone. "What are you doing?" My eyes snapped open, then squeezed shut again as the forest blurred. I was up in Micah's arms with him running at full tilt.

I locked arms around his neck when he called out "Saving you" before leaping without slowing.

"Saving me from what?" I was in danger? My fingers gripped his hair. I hadn't even noticed he was awake. Though perhaps he never really fell asleep.

Breathing hard, his desperate gait went still with one final leap. "I'm saving you," he shouted, "from your solemn mood."

Eyes still shut, I frowned, finally understanding. I tucked my chin over his shoulder so I could talk beside his ear while air rushed around us.

"You can't save me from my own thoughts."

The air around us became moist, almost damp, but it couldn't cover for the one tear that slipped to trace where my cheek was pressed against his neck.

"I can make you forget. I can steal you from the earth and derail your train of thought."

Steal me. I opened my eyes. From the earth?

"Oh my god, Micah!" I croaked, seeing mist and nothing else. I jerked up higher in his arms in a frightful cling. His feet were no longer on the ground. Where was the ground? "What did you do with the earth?" I demanded. "And the forest. Bring them back! Oh, oh cheese, don't let go of me."

"Relax, little one," his honey-smooth tone hummed deep inside of me. "I'm not going to drop you. Look down there. See? Between the clouds? Everything is still where we left it."

"Clouds?" I gasped. My nails were probably leaving semi- circles in his back when a break in the dull white below gave a glimpse of treetops. "But we just left my shoes and your motorcycle back on the hillside!" I arbitrarily burst out, and then added, "and you can fly?"

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VOTE if you were waiting for the moment Micah finally revealed he can fly!