Damien's asphyxiated body lies on the dry ground. Mary steps away, her face twitching with half the knowledge of what she's done, failing to attach the lack with the fullness that came before it.

---

The next body has knife wounds and signs of a struggle. I thought encouraging Damien to be more assertive might skew him in the direction of making peace with her, but the issue was that he somehow managed to trigger enough emotion in Mary to activate her 'kill mode'.

Mary has no fear.

This is why she will not let go of a victim nor will her brain leap ahead to the conclusion of what she is doing, even to a loved one, until they are dead. She can not be afraid of the outcome.

---

I find Damien bleeding out amongst the cold yellow grass. Mary has fled the scene this time. I am still analyzing the emotion that causes it. I have narrowed it down to guilt or regrets, but it's probably the former seeing as regret implies that Mary feels bad because of the threat of potential negative external stimuli, such as punishment or social decline. This would fall under fear, so therefore, it must be a sudden moral epiphany that causes her to realize that her destructive unchecked impulses don't align with her morals.

I've been running over this loop too many times. Could have fixed it at least seven ago.

When I get tired, I get sloppy. When I get sloppy, I take longer. When I take longer, I get tired.

Damien cries out from the grass and I walk over, kneeling down in the frigid dirt. A bird calls overhead in unison with his pleas, which grow more frantic as he bleeds out of a side wound, burbling incoherently. I hoist him into my arms, letting his blood fall over my tan coat, and he places his head against my chest. "I don't know what I did wrong," he says. "I don't know what I did wrong." His voice is fading out.

"It's okay," I whisper to him. "Go to sleep. I'll be there when you wake up."

I watch him die on my lap. There's almost nothing left in him to bleed, and his body is fragile, like the grass around him. He looks plucked from the earth. A thin trickle of blood runs to the ground, kissing the dirt, and I force myself to watch the stars come into his glossy, unseeing eyes. I try to let the pain wreath around me, forcing my head underwater.

You deserve this for not fixing the loop earlier. You deserve this for not saving him. You deserve this for every time you've desensitized yourself to their bodies. Does it hurt now, Red? Does it hurt? Can you hear all the terrible things you've been considering over

I carry him back. I don't think I'm well enough to try for another loop, since I'm running a fever from the last dozen after all the vent loops I ran when Dylan and I had a fight. I still remember how the fire felt on my hand. I watched everyone in the group stare as half of my left arm burned in front of them. Dylan always panics the hardest.

Clouds snake over the pristine sky, promising snow. We'll need to find a more substantive hiding place. Thinking about the loop. I am. I'm thinking about all the loops we've ever been on and trying to love Mary in the same moment I try to mourn Damien.

I take the body out of my trembling arms and vomit, the contents of my stomach blossoming out of me and staining the grass.

I'll solve it next time.

I will.

---

"Someone's grumpy this morning," sneers Kali. Her face is a flickering mask of barely contained contempt, smouldering behind the facade of calm, and while I'm usually at least prepared for the smug satisfaction she takes in my suffering, today I want to go over there and strangle her.

I untangle my fingers from their web of tension. Fortunately, Angel intercedes even before I can: "You're not pleasant yourself, Kali."

Kali's eyes flash with ice-blue anger. "Day isn't all that nice. I don't see any reason to sugarcoat it, that's all."

She's not wrong. The sky is a morose gray, with clouds flashing like fish swimming downstream as frigid wind and dust raze the surface. I get to my feet as if I'd barely registered the comment. "We'll make what progress we can. Civilization is miles away and we're too far to go back to the last city. If anyone feels ill, tell me. Kali will be in charge of fires, but the rest of you should be able to shift into something... warmer." The chill gnaws at my bones, so I shuffle up my coat. The folds of it brush my neck, but I can still feel the air probing everything I haven't covered.

The group watches me like vultures watch road carrion, waiting for the cars to clear so they can swoop in for their kill. The dry, desolate ground around us, only occasionally broken by dead grass or scrub, goes on for miles. The road, our sole lifeline, is tinged with ice. There's no way we don't look suspicious, and no cover with which to shield ourselves. I tell the group the forms to take, whispering, "Coyotes. Small pack," since anything smaller will be in danger of being picked off and we won't make progress. That leaves me, suspicious as I am, but I can't do anything about that. Better my position revealed than that of the group.

I'm a moron.

Mary and Damien huddle on the back, amongst the last to shift. Mary has her hands clasped to Damien's, in a position that puts her in control of his entire body, and his big, sad eyes watch hers with a romantic intensity.

You love Mary. Mary is great. Mary is part of your family and you love and appreciate her.

"Is there a problem here?" I say it sweetly, hands clasped in front.

"Not after last night," Mary's eyes are two embers.

Damien clutches Mary's hands, close as they are to his own shoulder. Their flesh is red, the beginnings of frostbite paling against the blue that has stained the last few weeks. He says kindly, "Red was just trying to make sure we didn't wander off from the group."

"Nothing was going to happen," Mary's voice teems with hurt and hatred. "We had to talk about something important."

"You can tell me now," Damien offers.

"Not with him there," Mary snarls. "But we'll talk in our own way."

"Animals don't speak," I say. My voice is the chill that kills the small rodents in their holes and freezes the lakes over.

Mary's fire winds into a blazing streak across her perfect teeth. "How would you know?" As she says it, her face turns to that of the coyote, thin and pale as the barren scrub. Damien is already down at her side, tail waving amicably, and they trot on after the group. I keep my distance from the pack, not quite letting them out of eyesight, and a lone coyote trots back my way.

I kick Dylan with my leg. "Out of here, varmint."

The coyote whines imploringly, then shifts into a man in a coat twice as heavy as he is. He takes one off and places it around my shoulders. He keeps contact with me the whole time, aware that the coat will disappear the second we no longer make contact, but he has extended the meaning of 'contact' into a heavy lean. We hold each other up, watching the group ahead and the sky past that, its silver an endless reality in which we are little more than a smattering of hot coals, waiting to be snuffed out.

"Hey," Dylan's voice is hoarse.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," I admit. I wish I could travel back and say something more impressive, but I don't want to do another minute out here again, not when every moment is bitter as the plants I've eaten to avoid raw meat. (Not that I'm pure about it in any sense, but I can feel it in me, making me sick.) On top of it all, there's nothing I can say that would fix things. I know this. He knows this.

"Someone lives out here. Found it earlier. Basically visible from up ahead. You want to do some breaking and entering?" asks Dylan, putting one of his warm hands against my face.

He's knocked my glasses askew, leaving me half-blind, so I tilt them back and reply, "House is risky, but if we can get into the shed to spend the night, then it might be worth it. Today's the coldest day we've weathered yet. We've been in the cities or in better sheltered areas..."

"Okay, okay, no need to give me your whole thought process. Yeesh," Dylan laughs, and I can feel it invigorating me. The coat tingles with a warmth greater than any fabric. I can feel him pressed against me, Dylan everywhere, and when I push it off of my shoulders, I see it retract back into skin and I want him still draped around me, although perhaps in a more... human manner... I shouldn't be thinking about him like this right now, but I have a hard time thinking about anything besides Dylan. He is the sun. "What do I tell the others?"

"Shift back for a rendezvous," Dylan says. He smiles, already becoming canine. "I'll go grab the wild ones."

By the time I reach the group, all of whom are so far ahead that I'd been following tracks, they're all human, save for Mimsy, who is around Dylan's shoulders. She stares up at me, bug-eyed, and I'm conscious for the thousandth time of every set of eyes fixated on my own. I had been afraid of them, once, when I had first chosen to bear the mantle of leader, but I was resolute then as I am now that the position was in essence unfillable save for by anyone of my exact skill set.

I was made for them. The antidote to the ceaseless chaos of ever-shifting forms, unlike the set vessels that every beast carries from birth to death. I am stagnant, the eye of the whirlpool, an indentation caused by them, created for their purposes, and destined to dissipate if they were ever to likewise disappear. It fills me with a heat that gives flexibility to limbs stiffening with cold. "We're going to break into a shed. There'll likely be holes, so you'll all go in as mice. Dylan will open it from the outside and I'll enter from there. The owners will never notice, we'll have shelter for the night, and we'll set off tomorrow with the intent of peeling off the road and making breakneck pace to the nearest town. Alex, you're charged up again?"

Alex gives me a quick nod.

"Good. At least someone is doing their job."

Alex gives me a sideways stare. "Is there a problem?"

I look over towards Damien and Mary, who are holding hands, like a couple. "No." 

The house is a large cabin with the lights off, save for one, and besides the car, which gives credence to someone being here, the entire place is essentially dead. The shed is on a corner of the property, large enough to fit the specialized cars that people use for 'farm work', that is, cultivation of plants and animals, although there's little being 'cultivated' at this point in the year. The property is ringed with spiked wire, which we've experienced enough times to stay shy of, high enough that climbing it is impossible. The others shift under without difficulty, but Dylan grows wings and smiles at me. "Hop on, buddy."

I grip his back and lean in a little, so that I can hear his heartbeat. The sheer might of the noise fills me with something akin to bravery and something else that might be guilt. Nonetheless, he flies me over with a quick leap, although this ends with the two of us tumbling onto the ground on the other side. He's smiling. Focus. Red. High danger situation. Your attention should be on them and it's off in a thousand different places, playing make-believe when your very existence is at risk. Can you be off your guard for a second? Isn't that how people get hurt? How Damien gets strangled, Mary hits cars, Adaline loses herself, Trace fractures reality irreparably, Elle sneaks away without you noticing so many times that you can't fix all the damage? Look at them. You're fighting a losing battle. Slam your hand in the door.

So. The shed is in a state of near disrepair, with quite a few jagged, broken boards, but the front door is still locked eight times over. I sit at the front until they click open, revealing Kali. She jerks her head to invite me in, and I accept the invitation.

The interior smells like smoke and ale, with tools gleaming a piercing silver. A gun hangs on the wall, proud of its station, tilted upwards to catch the gray light streaming through the entryway. Kali situates herself in the corner with the others, who are awkwardly shuffled in behind a mountain of mulch. It smells unpleasant but I almost collapse into it from exhaustion. It has the heat of something that was living at some point, which seals the deal. The others relax, Damien stuffing his ukulele under the hay while Dylan packs our few belongings in the most isolated corner, and they all begin to take on small, inconspicuous forms. I am the only human in the room, amongst a few mice and a beetle (Elle, as usual, being a contrarian). I stare up at the wooden ceiling, listening to the wind in the rafter, and then there's a click from near the door, which has remained open, the howling wind now knocking it against the side of the cabin.

I don't move. Someone shifts the gun into position. I hold my breath, but someone is creeping closer, their unsteady footfall making the floorboards whimper.

I can sense some of my group shifting back up as someone rounds the corner, their eyes full of hellish fury and fear, but my own heart has taken me away from the moment.

Go back. Go back. Go back.

"Red that's a gun," Dylan yells, "Red--"

It's so cold. I'm tired. I can barely hear anything above the noise in my head, piercing as it is, but soon even that dissipates into a singular, pristine clarity. I sense all sound folding into a single moment of greater density than I had believed possible, an epiphany, a moment of pure chemical ecstasy, and I brace myself with my arms, but it's a weak gesture.

Light is streaming through the doors, in my eyes, across my arms, and then the light is inside me as the world slows down as the bullet pierces my very being.
Go back, I think. I've saved myself from the jaws too many times, but this time, something stronger has me dances with me. It is a mirrored version of myself, a silhouette made of my own blood, the thing coming out of me that has wings and purpose, and it grabs my hand and draws me upwards.

Go back, go back, go back, go back, go back...

A second of fear: as the moths have when the candle is blown out.