The woods around here are never silent. There's not a day that doesn't sing with its own melody, whether it be the somber drone of silver days brimming with rain or the bright, loud reverie of late spring at its sunniest. When I want to distract myself, I usually come back to sound to focus myself, but today I'm searching for different chatter.

"Guys?" I ask the trees. "Are you out there?" I can't sense them, and Mary doesn't like being anything small enough to be crushed underfoot, but they've tricked me before. More than once. In fact, I'd need both my hands and my feet to count the number of times Mary has tried to scare me out of my skin, and at least my hands to determine how many times that's worked.

The forest quiets down, unaware animals heeding my voice as the call of a predator and retreating into the brush. I can never blame them, but at the same time, knowing that I'm an outsider to this world has always made me... more than a little uneasy.

"Mary, please don't jump me."

A rabbit darts out of the brush, a few feet away. Its head swings in my direction, startled, but in its eyes I can almost believe it's been expecting me. The coloring is too average to be Mimsy, it doesn't have Dylan's blotchy coloring, and it's far too lean to be Gillian or Angel... it dawns on me this might be a rabbit, but it also might be more than a rabbit, and I'm lost. Anyone else in the group could have found their way home by now. They know the woods. They're part of the woods. Being lost is more than embarrassing, it's a sign of weakness. I hold back tears. I'm going to get a scolding at least, teasing at most, and...

The rabbit bolts for it.

I rush after it. "Where are you going?" At the back of my mind, I'm almost certain it's none of them, but I don't have any other leads. I dash after the rabbit, which springs between bushes and over the rocky terrain, then, as we burst through a thicket of small trees (well, I got the brunt of the branches), the rabbit swivels in natural, perfect time and I am distracted for a heartbeat by the distant noise of people. Familiar people.

Where is that coming from?

My field of vision connects as I realize that said people and a hungry river are far below and quickly approaching, the rabbit good as gone and my own body hurtling towards the ground. I feel my arms lighten, completely out of instinct, and my hair bristles as my pores burst forth with feathers. By the time I hit the ground, I've become a lark, but the awkward spread of my wings hardly saves me from the force of impact. My tiny body bounces when it hits the ground, my legs extending to jolt myself upright, and my throat swells and contracts in rapid succession as I look up at towering, grinning giants, only a little scarier than they usually are.

Fingers spreading out of my bird limbs and bones refilling with marrow, I return to myself to find my face is red. Mary, who is still half a foot taller than me, ruffles my head as my feathers turn back to hair. "Took you long enough." She's holding a cluster of dark spheres in her hand, which she offers me. "Grapes?"

"Elle got grapes?" I say, picking one from her outstretched hand and popping it in my mouth. I close my eyes as I taste it--it's so sweet that it's almost unbearable.

With a cruel smirk, Mary brags, "We sniped them off tourists, 'bout two miles south."

I gag on the grape, which has lodged itself deep within my throat already.

"There was water on it earlier." Alex says, tilting the grape to catch the light filtering through the trees. "Do you think they dropped them in the river? If so, we were doing them a favor. People don't eat wet food."

Mary shakes her head. "No, fruit's always wet. You have to wash them in the water humans have in their houses. It has stuff in it."

Gillian raises an eyebrow. "Stuff?"

"Stuff," Mary confirms. "You can't see it, but water without stuff will probably kill you. If you're a human, I mean. I think it might make fruit not toxic, too. I bet they pump chemicals into fruit that makes it dangerous unless you run it under water. That way animals don't eat it."

"What?" I peep, trying to string together another one of Mary's frayed chains of logic.

"I bet," Mary murmurs, chewing with her mouth open.

"Don't tell Red. We'll never eat grapes again." Alex says, popping a grape in his mouth. "Watch out, guys. I might die now."

"We have all eaten grapes. If one of us dies, everyone in the group perishes." Gillian notes dully.

"Thus ends our time together," Alex reaches a hand up to the sky, travelling along the arc of his body and pausing at the fullest extent, as if he's trying to grasp for the clouds. "Au revoir."

"So." Gillian grunts, "How did you manage to fall off a cliff, Damien?"

"I- I- I-" I begin, finding myself curled up against the stone wall of the ravine. "I was-"

"Ha!" Mary crows, leaning as far into my face as she can, "Were you lost?"

"Yes, no... n-not very?" I suggest, bashfully. "Does Red know you guys are out here on moving day?"

"I do now." A deeper voice sounds from around the corner and Alex and Mary flinch at once. Gillian merely raises her eyes, her array of freckles twitching on her face. Red flies around the corner, the tails of his trenchcoat fluttering dramatically in the wind. He has his hands on his waist. "What were you four thinking?"

"They likely weren't," Elle suggests, striding around the corner and admiring her nails instead of making eye contact with any of us.

"We were eating grapes," Alex says.

"Damien got lost. We were there just in time to save him from dying, Red. If you're going to be mad at anyone, be made at the one who almost died." Mary says, hurling me over the cliff. No bird wings can save me from the impact now.

I say several incoherent things beneath my breath, everything still and all eyes on me, and I feel a puff of air leave my mouth, wordlessly. Finally, I manage to get out, "I was listening to the forest-"

Mary cuts me off again. "You can't be harsh on Damien. He was just listening to the forest, right? You know, weird Damien things. You know who else hasn't been helping this morning? Mimsy. I guarantee Mimsy hasn't done anything. If you're going to punish us, why not punish Mimsy? Oh right, because she's basically a cat. Wait, wait... if I want to be a cat and run off into the woods, can I shirk moving day responsibilities?" She uses the word shirk like a knife. She's proud of that one: I can see it in her eyes. Gleefully, she stares back at Red, whose mouth hangs half open, his hands steepled.

"No," he says.

"No as in no punishment? I'll take it. Want a grape?" Mary grins, holding out the last few grapes in her cupped hands.

"I told you to stop stealing from tourists. It arouses suspicion." Red sighs. "Elle..."

"Not my battle." she says, still looking at her fingernails. They can't look back at you, Elle.

Red folds his arms over each other. "Elle."

Elle fixes us all with a cold, unfeeling stare. "You four are making this difficult."

"You could have at least brought Dylan down to lecture us." Alex says.

"Dylan has been doing everyone's work all morning."

"Teamwork is overrated," quips Mary.

Red takes another deep breath. Elle yawns. Mary is still smirking, her lips stretched far as they'll go and her white teeth sharp as daggers. I'm sitting in the corner, heart pulsing out of my chest over the mere suggestion of guilt, and Red runs his fingers across his forehead, bringing them together. "Get back to camp, please."

Camp is gone when we enter it. There's rarely a trace of our presence, even at our longest 'homes', but even the scattered plastic bags of the more permanent settlements are covered. Leaves have been inconspicuously spread over the area. The scent of smoke that used to hang on the air has dispersed into the earthy scent of the untouched woods. We might as well have never come.

Red folds his arms. Dylan smiles, plastic draped across his arms, which he has extended far as he can, so he looks like a gold-and-copper tree. His skin, which is splotched in huge patterns, seems to glow with health even when he's just standing there. In his dusty hair lie two nubby horns, and his teeth are just sharp enough to be discernible as those of a predator. He looks the least human out of us all, which is misleading. Actually, Mimsy might be worse. Anyways, Dylan raises his plastic-covered arms and announces, "Red, I know relationships are a two-way street, but you can't just leave me with all your baggage."

"Dylan." Red sighs, removing some of the bags from his left arm. The two of them are standing close to each other, almost uncomfortably close.

Mary squints at them from behind the glasses she doesn't need. They're rounder than Red's, which came first, and they're not obnoxious nor as obvious as hers. Mary wants you to know she has glasses. Mary wants you to linger on her face. "Can we go?"

Others emerge from the surrounding brush. Everyone, save for the four of us who have been 'out', carry some kind of luggage. We're stretching ourselves thin, seeing as we've never had much material to carry, but not one of us isn't baring it with pride. Angel, whose bag is so old and tattered that one of the straps is bound by the sticky gray stuff we borrowed in the last town all the way across, shoulders her books with pride. "We're ready." she says, holding in one hand apiece the two youngest, Trace and Adaline.

'Youngest' is relative with us, but no one's ever decided to shift the paradigm, outside of a few quick breaks by Mary, which even in her words "never felt right". I feel a tinge of discomfort as they pass, since Adaline is a hand taller than me, but this is cut off by Mary elbowing me in the head.

Looking up, rubbing my aching head, I see her jerk her head to the side, towards the others. Red is waiting at the exit while the other older kids are going on ahead. "Sorry," I say as we pass, which attracts glares from both Mary and Alex but what almost looks like a proud nod from Gillian.

"If you don't want to be judged when you're composing, you could always bring Mimsy. I know it can be oppressive to have to stick with the group sometime, but we have the buddy system for a reason."

I fold my fingers together. "Yeah, but... nothing bad's ever happened before."

Red's eyebrows raise. His mouth splits in a strange smile. "Of course. Well, in the future, we'd really like your cooperation. Moving days are always tricky, even if today has been short."

"Short?" I ask.

Red laughs under his breath. "Short." he confirms. "I... have some business to attend to at the front of the group. Dylan will be back in a bit, since you four can't handle yourselves."

"Send Kali," whispers Mary, her raspy voice so loud that the sentiment hardly qualifies as a whisper.

Kali hangs near the front like a shadow, deceptively slow-looking. Her dark hair carries an almost blue sheen in the sunlight, and the ruff of her coat, significantly nicer than the casual clothing the rest of us imagined up (though not as fancy as Elle's dresses...), interweaves with her mane, sending streaks of white through the darker strands.

Red tugs the neck of his jacket. "Kali's not big on... watching the younger kids." That upsets all three of them. Younger kids. Sure. Even Gillian is rightfully ashamed of being put on the same level as Trace or Adaline. Red stares us down like a pack of wolves, murmurs something under his breath, half to himself, and picks up his feet to catch up with Dylan, at the front. Dylan doesn't return immediately, leaving us with the woods, but only Mary would have the guts to break for it now.

The forest hums with midday noise. I can hear the press of our feet, the whistle of the wind, and the ever-present call of birdsong (my most obvious companions), which more than drown out the less obvious sounds of the forest. The cadence forms its own kind of song, at the very least, it's something to hang onto. The music of the woods is never the same, but it is familiar enough to carry me across who knows how many landscapes. Still, I'm almost certain I'm looking for something else, something far around the corner...

"Damien?"

They're going to eat you alive. "I'm here," I say, but I'm not.