"His full name, or, I suppose, what the community has him listed as, is Ezekiel Mutt."

"Hello," the boy with the mop of brown hair and muddy brown eyes announced, staring at nothing but beaming from ear to ear. "I'm Mutt!"

The smile was right, but it was unnerving to me how absolutely still he was as he remained sitting in the chair. Even after the incident with Mallard, I had never seen him sit in one place for longer than a minute, unless he was eating. "I have to be better" was his only response whenever Stallion or I tried to get him to do other things besides familiar training.

"Where is he now?" Ash asked. I tried, and more than likely failed, to keep my interest in this answer from showing.

"He's the familiar to a very powerful and well-known witch, Madame Terrebonne," Mary said, shooting me a disapproving glare. "As far as I know, he is locked up tight within her mansion, never far from her side."

"She never leaves her own place?" I ask, forgoing the subtly. "There has to be a time when she goes out with him, right?"

Mary shook her head. "Even if there was, my Master and I don't know about it. Believe it or not, we don't keep close tabs on every free witch. Many of them, including your Lady Louise, only support Wildwood so they can maintain their privacy from us."

"But—"

"I'm going to make my stance clear on this, alright, Alex?" Mary interrupted, her glare turning cold as ice. "I am not okay with any of this. Nothing you can say will make me okay with it. But I can look past it, maybe even be talked into helping you bring in the familiars of a witch who owns a city and a mentally unstable child who can control fire, but only if you give up on Mutt."

Before I could speak, Mary took a step closer, telling me clearly with her locked arms and clenched fists not to say a word. "I can only look past it, and I can only help you, if you tell me, right here and now, that you will not try to see Mutt again. That you will say far away from him and his Master. Son might hurt you, Maple might kill you, but Terrebonne would do far, far worse things."

The harsh certainty of her words made me pause. It wasn't a threat, but a promise.

Still, I tried to hold firm. This was Mutt we were talking about. He probably had it worse of all, if what Mary was saying about Madame was true. Whatever the risk, I had to take it.

Maybe what Ash said about my 'childish behavior' was true. Maybe I was too stubborn to see things practically. I just knew that if our roles were reversed, if I was the one locked away in a mansion in the clutches of a psycho witch, Mutt would come after me. He wouldn't think twice about it.

I'm sorry, Mary.

"I can't..."

I couldn't look at her anymore. The words became hard to say, staying choked up in my throat, but I had to say them. Even if it meant not having her there to help me. Even if it meant risking everything she worked so hard to keep hidden.

"I have to try."

"Alex..."

Mary walked up beside me and unexpectedly pulled one of my hands out of my pocket to grasp it. For being a dream, it was surprisingly warm. "They're going to be alright, you know? Mutt, Stallion, Kat...they're tough. They'll find a way to make this work."

I could feel Mary looking at me, but I could still not bring myself to face her. My eyes kept going between the blank, lifeless faces of my friends. Sitting motionless in their chairs. Waiting for their next orders.

Familiars, not humans. Things, not people.

But Mary didn't care. No, this was her dream. This was how she saw them. I had never really known her true feelings in regards to the others. Besides the infrequent arguments with Stallion, she didn't really talk to anyone but me. Mostly she was off working with Mr. Copper while the rest of us stayed behind and did our familiar training.

She didn't think the risk was worth it. Didn't think they were worth it. If I couldn't convince her otherwise, I would have to try another tactic.

"I'm not as strong as you think I am," I answered, pulling my hand away to gesture to the other three. "Not as strong as you think they are. I met with Stallion a few months ago. And you know something? He did seem fine. He was even convinced that his Master was 'not so bad'. Can you believe it?"

I tried a smile when I turned to face Mary, but lost it when I saw no humor in her eyes. She was watching me closely, knowing something was going on, but unsure what it was, exactly.

"It's not that hard to believe," she said, her brown eyes flashing to Stallion's unmoving figure for the briefest of moments before honing back on me. "He's always been the best at finding the bright side of things. Probably because he no longer remembers our darkest moment."

And, all at once, the scene changed again. The tiny, enclosed space of the ticket booth expanded. The walls, ceilings, and roof stretched far and wide—changing from dirty carpet and wood to polished marble. In a matter of seconds, the tiny room we all shared transformed into a grand ballroom complete with awe inspiring pillars of stone and a huge, circular, window that looked out to an expansive mountainside.

We had changed as well. Mary in her track pants and shirt, and me in my tattered running shorts and black shirt with a blue rat on it. The only ones who had not changed were Kat, Stallion, and Mutt who remained sitting motionless in their chairs, and Ash who stood off to one side still wearing her elaborate blue gown.

In here, it fit her well.

"Why did you bring us here?" I asked, feeling a growl already starting to rise in my throat.

Before I could get any further, Mary closed the distance and grabbed my arm with both of her hands. "Don't be mad," she said, her grip tightening. "I didn't do this to upset you. We can't control where our subconscious takes us, remember?"

Even as she said those words, I could see our world changing again. But not to somewhere else. Cracks were forming on the massive window. The pillars were crumbling. The shiny floor at our feet was swirling with a blackness just beneath its glossy surface.

Dr. Quincy. Meadow. Leaf. Lilly. Trout. Gust. Maple. Everything went wrong here. In the end, I had failed to do anything. I didn't save anyone.

"You know better than the rest of us how dangerous a witch can be," someone far away was saying. Someone whose voice echoed and bounced around the ruined ballroom. "And now you want to try to go against three of them at—"

"I don't care," I hissed, closing my eyes so I wouldn't see anymore.

This was her dream. She was making me see this. Forcing me to relive it just to prove a point. "Just make it stop. Make it go away."

"I can't—"

I tried to pull my arm free, but she wouldn't let go. I gripped her small shoulder and was prepared to shove her off when a small sob reached my ears.

Opening my eyes showed me we had changed locations again. We were in a classroom. It took me only a second to recall the exact memory.

I had stayed behind to talk to Mary only hours after learning I was meant to 'woe' her. We were even in the same positions when she had said her first words to me. Me standing by the door, and her sitting in her desk with a book in her hand.

"Why..." I fell back a few steps, momentarily stunned by the sudden wave of old memories and feelings.

Mary had no such pause. She took a second to survey the room before leaping up from her chair. I watched the book she had been holding in her hands crumple to the floor moments before I was wrapped in a hug fiercer than someone would think a girl her size could muster.

I could only stand in stunned silence as this girl almost half my size kept my arms pinned to my sides with a strength I knew I couldn't hope to break. Even if I wanted to.

"I'm sorry," Mary said into my chest. Her grip around me showed no signs of loosening.

Being unable to move my arms, all I could do was rest the side of my face on top of her head. Almost immediately, I felt her arms slacken.

"Why did you bring us here?" I asked.

Mary took in a deep breath and let it out again. Without moving or letting go of me, she stared to answer. "I'm not su—"

"Seeing you so mad at her scared her," came Ash's deadpan voice from a corner of the classroom. "Her subconscious brought us here because—"

"Enough!" Mary shouted, releasing me and spinning around to face the pale woman all in the span of the second. "I know what you're doing and I'm sorry things...derailed like they did, but if you say one more word about me I swear I will do everything in my power to keep Alex from tracking down the others."

Ash was sitting off in one corner of the room, idly staring out the window. She was still dressed in the sparkly and flowing gown which fell all around the chair and floor.

After Mary had finished yelling, Ash shifted her pale orbs to her. "Is this where you went to school? Where they went? What was it like?"

"Terrible."

I shifted my attention back to Mary as well at her deadpan answer. She wasn't looking at anyone.

With her eyes closed, the small girl took in a deep breath and let it back out slowly. "It wasn't really a school. Not for us, anyways. It was just a place that turned kids into monsters right under people's noses. A school just happened to be the best cover for our generation since we all happened to be teenagers."

"I suppose I could have just assumed that," Ash said, shaking her head slowly before noting the new cracks that were forming on the windows. "I am sorry."

That was the first time I had ever heard Ash apologize for something. I didn't think she was aware enough to realize when she was being insensitive—which was a lot of the time. Apparently, it was Mary's first time hearing it too because it caused her eyes to open and look for all the world like she'd just remembered where she was. "I...Well, it wasn't all bad." Her eyes then flashed to me and I stiffened reflexively.

Did she mean me? I mean, sure we had our moments, but it was all a sham in the end. It only happened because Mallard and the others told me to do it. Even if I ended up liking hanging out with her, it didn't change any of the bad stuff that lead up to it. Didn't change the worse stuff it led to.

Mary sort of forgave me for what I did, but did she really look back to those times fondly?

"There was, like, a handful of good books..." Our eyes met and Mary gave me a sudden wink coupled with a sly smile, "...and one or two cute boys."

Our scene had to have changed. There was no visual altering—nothing different about the classroom itself— but Mary had to have subconsciously made it several degrees warmer after those words. It felt like my skin had become as red as my hair.

"Oh," Ash said, her tone clearly indicating she was starting to lose interest again as she looked between Mary and I. "Were you two romantically involved? Does that other girl know?"

To my surprise, Mary laughed quietly behind one of her hands while the other waved side to side in a dismissive sort of way. "Romantically involved? You're starting to sound older than you look, Ashling."

"I'm starting to put together that you intentionally use my full first name when you are annoyed by me," Ash muttered.

"I'd just call it more like, 'friendly flirting'," Mary went on, clearly ignoring Ash's comment. She threw me another wicked smile. "Alex is just so fun to tease, and he liked that 'other girl' long before we ever met. I was just—We were just..."

Mary couldn't finish what she was saying. Her eyes left mine, her arms fell to her sides, and, just like that, the mood in the room shifted.

Not just the mood, though. I felt the temperature drop more than a few degrees and reflexively wrapped my arms around my body. Mary did not move an inch.

"M-Mary?" I said through chattering teeth. It was only getting colder, and I watched in stunned silence as frost started to build up on the desks and walls of the classroom.

"Oh..." I heard Ash muse to herself. She was back to looking out the windows. Though there was not much to see beyond the ice that had formed on the glass and the impenetrable fog that covered the land beyond it.

I turned back to Mary and saw that she had moved. She had wrapped her arms around her body and was hunched over. She was trembling, and I knew it wasn't because she was cold. The way she gripped her shoulders, the way she was biting her lips. They spoke of a pain worse than ice.

"W-We're friends, M-Mary," I said, though I could barely get my voice out. I had never felt a chill worse than what I was feeling in that classroom. It was like the entire room had been dropped through a frozen lake. "Y-You've a-always been my f-friend. F-From the f-first..."

I was suddenly on the ground. My lower body went numb without me realizing and, when I hit the floor, I barely felt it. I somehow managed keep on my knees when I felt two hands press against the side of my face and lift it up into the air.

My eyes once again met with Mary's, but they were much different now. The once light brown was riddled with lines of red, her pale skin almost as chalk white as Ash's.

But, it was worse than that. As I looked closer, I could see the new, sunken in cheeks, the dark shadows under the bloodshot eyes. Even the fingers that held my head aloft felt like more bone than muscle.

It all brought me back to a dark splotch in the past. It made me remember when I had first seen a mirror after being in a coma for three months. Mary looked close to death. A step away from it.

"I'm sorry, Alex," she said, her strong voice a strange counter to her appearance. "It's time for you to wake up."

Her hands left me for a split second and then came crashing back against my cheeks. I felt a familar pain cut through the once numbing cold. 

...

*Author's Note*

A bit of an abrupt ending, but that's usually what happens when you wake up. But what will our young Foxy be waking up to? A peaceful scene of Lady Louise fast asleep on the kitchen floor, or the destroyed ruins of a place he once called home? Maybe if he's lucky it'll at least be somewhere in between.

What do you all think is up with Mary and the cold? Is it something from her past, or her subconscious? Whatever your thoughts on this, or anything else that leaves you numb and confused, I'd love to hear it!