Aunna Engreaves is not of this world. She holds the dusky colors of a Moonwalker, those dark silvers and browns contrasting a brighter stomach, and one of light-irised eyes with the deep blue rims that set them apart from the other canine races, but she has the poise of a dragon (always looking down), a certain intelligence in her good eye that makes everyone around her look dull, magnified by the way the Dog Days tints its iris. The other eye is blackened from an incident she's never cared to extrapolate on, and her fur glitters with crystallized blood, remnants from her hundreds of off-world battles and her lack of hygiene. Her wounds are many, but most distinctive is a long gash across the face where crystal has grown in, her blood formed into wavy sheets of valuable, lightly glowing ore that match her eyes. On her left shoulder, on a leather pad, perches the most clear indication that she has left Omnia-- a rusty hawk, my ugly, angry, mouse-eating, pup-harassing, beady-eyed, screeching namesake. In retrospect, perhaps appropriate, but also appropriately mean. It watches me with the same intensity its tamer does, considering another round of traumatic nips to the ear for old time's sake, and I become very, very afraid.

My aunt looks me up and down, then, at last, decrees, "I can't help you."

I balk. "Hold on. Say that again?"

She casts me a sad, knowing stare. "Well, you've told me you've been hearing a voice, had a suspicious dream... and all this during the Dog Days. That sounds like a heartline issue to me, and I can't remove your heartline."
I bite my tongue. "Can you shut him up?"

Honestly, Hawk. I'm not a disease, and furthermore, I'm right here.

"Why don't you tell him to shut up?" Aunt Engreaves suggests.

I look upwards, towards the unadorned wood ceiling, and imagine a vague Canis with an ugly, trim muzzle and a pretentious expression looking back at me. I've never had a great imagination, but somehow this image is so clear and oh so punchable. "Whoever you are," I say, with a great deal of dignity, "Shut your yap."

"Attaboy," Engreaves grunts, and my tail waves. I stare at the ceiling as the image of the aforementioned Canis leaves me like dew on a hot, sunny morning (alas how sad I am to see it go).

Turning to Aunt Engreaves, I say, "Can't be that easy."

Altair, who has been standing in the corner like some exotic wall ornament, suggests, "Maaaaybe it could be."

"No, this is the wrong kind of situation for him. He's very vocal when I'm in mortal peril," I pause. "Maybe I should go stand in a room with Adiza again."

"Ma." insists Aunt Engreaves.

"She's not your mother." I murmur.
"She's yours, and you will treat Adiza with respect. Verhamera knows that's more than you've ever given her."

My mind already reeling with counterpoints and my tail bristling, I mutter, "I'm not dealing with this right now. Al. Want to get breakfast?"

"Do I ever want to stand in a corner while the rest of you eat?" I shoot him a really not the time look and he follows this up with, "Yes, and apparently now. Have a nice day, Aunna."

Aunna lets out a 'ha' worthy of the feathered monster on her shoulder, and I flinch. The weight of her gaze boring into my chest, "Don't be so curt. You'll be back in here later to pilfer my poor bird for its feathers so you can sell them on the black market."

I feel something burning in my chest. "Altair. Now."

My companion mutters "Sorry," under his breath before following me out, casting glances at Aunt Engreaves over his back. He has to lower his head to leave, his good antler scratching the frames, which are scuffed by previous 'incidents'. Aunt Engeaves's room is bordered by forest and her precious hawk hutch, with a wide radius of woods around it. She moved here with my mother and father, the founders, but even then she was more of a neighbor than part of the family: a singular, menacing presence.

Altair lopes alongside me, taking in the early morning. Dew is evaporating off the foliage, beasts in the trees communicate in chirrups, and sun, omnipresent as ever, filters through the branches overhead. Even these are laden with something, as if the blistering sunlight tires them, but this is just imperceptible enough that it is easily ignored. His voice slight as the ambience, he asks, "Hey. Can you try to be a little more... delicate at breakfast?"

I nod gruffly. The silence between us returns like a soft wave on the river, then begins to rise further, until it is uncomfortable about us, an almost tangible dampness tickling at my belly. With an abrupt twist, I turn around the corner of the best-fortified house of the lot. The boards are retrofitted with other boards, atop each other and the holes caused by previous 'replacements' both. There are even a few windows, a luxury hard to come by for a 'family' pack in the middle of the woods, one created with the sole intent of hiding far from society as possible, but Mahigan's fire magics make for valuable haemo. He'd donated his blood time and time again when I was young, to supplement our crops (which are near the outskirts of the village), but now that costs have risen, the old windows are cracked and uncertain of their future repair.

I push aside the door, which has a selection of sideways-slanted handles high and low for the adults and tiny mouths both. The room has several tables, although the smaller one in the back has grown a thin coat of dust, and it is decorated by berries and sand, which spiral into a mural Aunt Engreaves spent years on. I remember the way she used to stand on the table and squint at the existing pigments, dabbing on bits and scraping sand flecks off with a blunt claw until it fit her vision.

My gaze swinging down to the ambush party from last night (who were kind enough to let us lie in a visitor's room attached to the dining hall upon our arrival), my mind clicks at once with the strange but familiar assembly of Canira and Moonwalker, companions of the first twelve years of my life. My father's white fur is evident in patches or undercoats in most of my siblings, bizarre and distinct against the dusky Moonwalker coats, like a thin coat of snow on the bark of growing season wood. They bare it well. Intermingled with the family are two Felis, one coppery dragon with a blind eye, one Canis, and a pawful of Canira. It is typical for non-blood relatives to merge into towns, but seeing more of us there, including a few pups with perky ears and Canis horns, reminds me of how much the place has changed. Bile rises in my throat, but I don't know to whom I owe the anger. Myself? The inevitable march of time?

The Canis greets us to the table, her speckled coloration almost noble. It resembles that of Suvi, whose tapestry lies askew in the back of the room. Suvi looks almost frumpy, with the folds of the fabric obscuring parts of her angular, almost fire-like form, and her coal-lined eyes speak of an infinite displeasure. She is hung up only as a formality. My family has little to think Suvi for.

We are passed a loaf of bread, coated in syrup from the nearby trees (and a fair deal of amber, which I detest), and I bite whatever I can get at that's not cruelly sweet, thinking of my jerky stock back in the bags. The group watches us from a distance. Altair bends down to taste his own bread, eyes closed with gratitude, and he tries to hold his legs together like a canine even though it screws his balance. Anything but grazing.

The energy of the Dog Days hums through the assembled Sentients, manifesting in different ways across the board. Most have an aura so slight that it is near imperceptible, but the Canira at the head of the table, my father Mahigan, bursts with power. Light flickers across his fur, sparks of red energy glancing off him and hitting the table, burning the wood. He looks enormously uncomfortable and is made moreso by everyone else watching him and Adiza for orders. Adiza, her eyes nearly vibrant as her sister's, glares pointedly at Harrier, my sister. Harrier is all Moonwalker in appearance, crystals jutting out of her coarse fur, and two hawk feathers lay limply at her side. She wears them better than I swear the name.

With a snort, Harrier asks, "Where have you been?"

"Around," I remark, chewing my bread.

"Legal cities," Altair agrees. "The north."
"Bad place for Moonwalkers, the North is." Mahigan says.

"Thank goodness I don't look or act like one, then, because I was fine." I say, taking the ensuing silence to flick sugar crystals off the bread.

"What other 'legal cities' have you been to?" Adiza snaps. "Legal cities like Yaan?"
"Gig's up," I tell Altair. Proudly, I announce, "Legal cities like Weltva."

All the flames lighting up the room fizzle out at once, courtesy of my father's shock, but Adiza's outrage is far more vocal. Throwing her paws atop the table, she cries, "Weltva! You've been in Weltva? Hawk, that's a death sentence. No son of mine..."

"Forget all that. We're not dead, are we?" Everyone not born into the family is trying to sink under the table, dragon included. I count them up, looking for the singular face I can usually count on for a reaction besides disgust, and I don't find it. Even though the population has grown and there have never been seat assignments, I notice an absence like a gap in the teeth of a bar Canis who's been in one in too many fights they couldn't win. "Where's Okari?"

The table falls silent. Mahigan looks to Adiza, who is close to shaking or perhaps snapping. "We were... hoping you might know."

"Why would we--" Altair starts, indignance rising in his voice, but it subsides to fear. "He didn't come after us, did he?"

"I don't know why he'd feel the need to do that," Harrier says. "Were you by chance gone to two years so you could go off to Weltva?"

Mahigan shoots to his paws. "Why don't I show Hawk and Altair to their room?" Before anyone explodes, Mahigan walks briskly from his side of the table to ours, hitting us both with his tail, and we follow like scorned pups. I avert my gaze from his back, his fallen ears, the way his fur looks exactly like mine save for the two sharp, red streaks across my face.

Instead, I search the day around us for something to seize upon and find it in the worst place possible. Something white glints under the short rafters, just hidden from view. I can almost mistake it for mold, or something else less unsavory, but I can sense about me the whisper of a current spirit, only audible in the quietness of the morning. My whole body floods with dread.

My family... no.

Mahigan moves from the main compound to the backway that leads to what was once the home of the pups. Entering through Harrier's room, he cuts into the wood corridor we call the 'hallway', and when we hit my room (scent stale), he turns back to me. "Why did you come back?"

I look to Altair, who lowers his head. I admit, "I needed to ask Aunt Engreaves for help."

Mahigan sighs. "Hawk, is this about your magic?"

"In a sense." He is brilliant. He burns so bright that the halls around him seem to glow. The wood is reaching out for him. The flames in his fur nestle into it. I can feel myself tense up with want. If Aunt Engreaves could have fixed that, she would have a long time ago. "It's not important. You're... glad to have me here, right?."

"Yes, whether you realize it or not. Things have been... tense. You have to understand that your mother has been concerned about you for a while. We all were."

I bristle. "You're wasting your breath."

"It's not fair to us for you to shut us out of your life like this," Mahigan says.

"Clearly I didn't. I'm home, aren't I? I've just received the warmest reception, too..."

Mahigan's eyes fall. "I'm sorry you feel that way. If you need us, we'll be working most of the day, and if you want to talk, we will always be here. You may stay long as you need." He steps past me back down the corridor, his luminous fur brushing mine. "Or you can just stay."

White bone whispers in my mind. "Mahigan," I ask.

He turns, green eyes flaring in the murk. "Yes?"

"Thanks," I say. "For your hospitality."

An old, curt saying. Mahigan nods stiffly, tail low and struggling not to wave or quiver, and with all the heat bounding off of him in torrents, he departs.

Altair enters our room in silence. He takes in the scent before I do, then, as his head falls, he sweeps the area, locating both a new scorch mark and a shelf knocked over, spilling all sorts of minor trinkets against the ground. Many are close to the wall or tilted over, and quite a few are broken. Crystal residue litters the floor.

"Adiza or Harrier?" I ask.

"Both," Altair says. "At least you can't deny it now."

"What?"

"That they missed you."

I skulk over to one of the damaged goods, a small tube instrument I couldn't play that I filched from a merchant and told my family I paid for with haemo. They were so excited that I had magic in my blood that we held a whole ceremony only for them to find I bled a dark, unrefractive red. It was when, at last, they gave up.

I place the item on my bed with my teeth, moving to deal with a few other trinkets, including some beads that once contained minor magical energy and the shell of an egg of a basilisk Altair and I raised together. I'm still missing a petrified toe on my back leg to show for that adventure. The anger in Mahigan's eyes all those years ago rips through my mind, his jowls peeled back to reveal massive teeth and his whole snout bristling with fire so bright it was near blue. This was when I was old enough to screw around with things like basilisks, but not so much that I knew I'd never be magical, so I spent the afternoon imitating my father's fire. Fwah. Fwah! I make the movement with my mouth, lazily. Fwah.

"This is where it all started." Altair says, dislodging me from memory with a click of a hoof. He nudges the one item that has left untouched since we left, a small, tightly bound volume whose pages are all wrinkled and often torn. He nudges it open, revealing pages of scribble so thick the ink has bled through in places. The script is almost arranged into lines, which in turn reveal a number of 'rules', as you will. Back in the day, as now, my fine motor skills are atrocious. Half of our rules are likely just whatever wording managed to be passed down between us. "Here's the Quickstep Code."

"We should take it with us," I insist, and Altair looks at me as if I've gone mad.

With great difficulty, he places a hoof on the book, and the table almost comes down with him, and the ceiling up. "No, it belongs here. Anyhow, we're staying, Hawk. Get used to it."

I leer. "They're my family, and I can't tolerate them. I say we go."

"They're my family too, Hawk." Altair says, solemnly gazing out the window.

"Then stay."

"Rule three. Never leave a brother behind." Altair is a better con than his fearful act lets on. At the very least, he's a great apostle of the Quickstep Code. "You're my family, Hawk. You were my world when they took us in, and when you learned, and when you left, I knew my entire world would fall apart if I didn't come, too. Eventually, I realized that I was enjoying it too, and I don't know if I like what that says about me."

I hold his eyes, seeing in their verdant greens a trace of the pallor once held by a knobbly-kneed yearling who stumbled into our camp with an antler sparking off in all directions. I fall back to the bed, paw tensed about the edge. "You saved me too, you know. If we hadn't pooled our luck, I'm fair certain my resistance to death wouldn't have held out this long."

"You're staying?"

"I never said that. For now, I'm resting. We've almost died several times in the last few days. My head needs recharge time so I can keep generating brilliant escape plans."

Altair rolls his eyes, certain that he's won, and kneads his old pillow a few times before collapsing into it. We lie like that until the sun from the outside falls from our bodies, the light changing shades as it ebbs out, drifting in and out of brief, half-remembered dreams. Altair's chest rises and falls, the rest of his body still as death.

End the hart.

"What are you thinking about?" Altair asks, hoofing through an old book of myths. I hadn't noticed how sharply I was drawing breath.

"The voice in my head."

"No, you're not."

I turn, paw hanging over the edge of my bed and resting against inhospitable, dusty floor. "Fine. The open road."

Altair pauses. "Did you think about them?"

I shake my head, disturbing the down feathers of my pillow. "We barely mentioned them, and between the winter trip and the southern run of the mountains, it's been well over a year, near two. Let's chalk that up to a 'no'."

"I thought about them all the time." Altair says fiercely, dividing us in two yet again. With the same hesitance, he mutters, "Okari could die out there."

Just another reason to go. I'm certain, now, that this voice is me, but somehow that makes the whole situation worse instead of better. I get my mind back and remember that I hate myself. Wonderful.

I turn my head towards the window, where the sun is growing red in the sky. Outside, in the dusk, I see the pups and my remaining younger sibling clustering further back in the woods, where Aunt Engreaves's cabin lies, almost hidden around the bend. The door opens and she steps out, her silhouette almost indistinct from that of her bird. When it arches its massive wings, it looks as if she, too, could soar away.

I slide off my pillow, straggling up to my paws, and stretch out, feeling every bone in my back crack. Besides holding up my muscle, they are doing little. My lack of soul, the absence of anything in my veins, stunts the other two parts of the spirit. It was in this room that my dreams were borne skywards, and here they died. I should have known from the first Dog Days, when no one told me... but hope is an irrational, feathered thing, and it would not die without first piercing me with its beak. I trail down the other side of the hall alone, fur brushing the pathway, and, head heavy, pass Okari's untouched room. It is half-painted blue, up to the ceilings, where the wood lies untouched, and the entire thing is overwhelming with scent that is not his. He's well missed, that's for sure. The passage heads back out into the forest, where I travel over stone and cleared passage between trees to where the pups are watching Aunna Engreaves.

I pluck a few feathers from the cage with my mouth, their putrid scent filling my nose, and catch Aunt Engreaves with her fur billowing, the dusk's last rays shedding all the fury from her fur. Her good eye does not acknowledge me, instead, she is fixed on the clouds above.

"Hawk," she says, "Back!"

The great thing about owning the only hawk in your whole dimension is that when you call it by the name of its species, it turns about on the currents and dives back your way. However, the hawk's wings catch the wind and it takes another uptilt, not defying but rather purposefully stalling on Aunt Engreaves's command, and its wings spread to their fullest extent. It travels at incredible speed through the night air, letting out a shrill cry, and something deep within my stomach aches.