Adam is late to dinner. I can't comment on the fact that his hair is wet, because my hair is wet. I can't tell him he was late getting home, because I took a few detours through some parks and was also late getting home. I can't complain about the pounding rain, because I am the pouring rain. (Alright, Will, back it up.) Nonetheless, I'm perturbed by how my brother's gone from 'in puberty' to 'vow of solitude', and when he stabs his peas, he aims for the jugular. Pea juice rolls down the cheeks of the peas' mutilated bodies like tears, and my brother looks on with his head in his hand, merciless.

My mother has been carrying on a conversation with my father, the kind that is so mundane that anyone can join in and no one would want to. My mom's strained smile turns on me. "How was your first test, honey? Are things going alright in Algebra?"

"It's a pre-test," I say. "They're not grading it."

"Okay," my mom says.

"And it'll be fine," I add. I move grains of rice around the plate and into my mouth, their soft, buttery flavor melting like snowflakes.

My father extends his fork in my brother's direction. "Adam, how's Algebra 2?"

My brother shrugs. After folding his utensils over each other, he says, already picking up his plate, "I'm on dishes."

"I can help," I add, already lifting my own plate. I half-expect Adam to reject it outright, but he just fixes me with this dull, sad stare, almost like the one he was wearing earlier when he was talking on the phone.

"More the merrier," Adam says. We wash dishes together, beneath the torrent of water, and Adam watches his bubble-coated hands the whole time. He usually whistles while he works. He's better than you'd expect, given he's tone-deaf otherwise. Once we were walking home and he whistled at a bird, which sung back. We will never know if it was a coincidence or not, since it flew away directly after, primarily because we started yelling like idiots afterwards. Adam just smiles smugly when I mention it.

It doesn't come up tonight.

Adam handles the pans while I dry them, and we're done within ten minutes. Our parents

have relocated to the living room, where they're bantering again, this time about Back to School Night and poker on Friday. When we finish, she catches Adam and I halfway up the stairs.

"Would you all like to watch a movie tonight?" asks my mom.

"I have homework," I say.

"Yeah, that," Adam says.

"Alright, I understand. High school's a big deal. You two must be very busy," she says, giving us both a kiss on the cheek.

"No kidding," says Adam. When we're done receiving a lethal dose of affection, I give her a hug and then bound up after my brother, who is already in our room, slouched against the bedframe, fingers flickering over the phone screen.

"Videogames?" I ask, falling back onto my bed.

Adam is immobile. "I actually do have homework."

"I don't see you doing it," I prod.

He clicks his phone off and throws his bag onto his bed, ignoring the messy desk our parents set up for us in the corner of our room. Papers spill across the bed, and he proceeds to organize them into a neat file, stamping their bottoms against a textbook as he sizes them up, and then he puts them down, staring straight ahead at the papers.

I get out my own homework. By homework, I primarily mean classwork I didn't do in class. I would get to homework, but I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing, which is somewhat of an impediment. After pulling up French on Google Translate, I lean over the side of the bed, towards Adam. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine." Adam's gaze is fixed on his homework, which he isn't really doing, either. "I'm just tired. It's been a long day."

I push my head further into my pillow. "Can I ask you something?"

"As long as it's a question, and not a lecture on your friends," he says.

I bite my tongue, which is painful, but unfortunately doesn't stop me from speaking. "Were you with Megan today?"

He pauses. "Kind of a weirdly specific question."

"Yeah," I say. "I mean, she wasn't there, you were there, you left unexpectedly, it all reads as a little suspicious."

"I guess," Adam says.

"Are you two close? It's been three days. She doesn't really seem like the hook-up type," I add. I feel dirty just saying that. I don't think people in our grade are already doing things, but it's more likely that they are and I'm well insulated.

Adam smiles, but then he shakes his head. This is even more suspicious. "Definitely not. She's just like any of the other fangirls."

"Is that supposed to mean anything?" I ask.

"They're a little bit excessive."

I feel my fingers ball up the fitted sheet beneath me. "You know you didn't have to say that to them today."

Adam's gaze flicks towards the wall. There's nothing there, but he seems unreasonably serious. "Sometimes you have to be honest with people."

"Adam."

"They're fine. I'm glad you're happy."

Am I happy? I lean back onto the bedframe, which creaks with dissent, and I say, "Me too."

"I told you this was a good idea."

"Right." I'm thinking of the stone in my pocket. The night drags on around us. Adam looks at me, as if asking me to continue, then turns back away, and I pretend to do homework while he does is. The silence is comfortable, moreso than its ever been around other people, but when he comes back from the bathroom and shuts the light off, I find myself still in my clothes from the day, which are more than a little damp from the rain. The bed's cold, too, even though I've been lying on it. "Good night."

He doesn't answer.

When I finally settle down to sleep, my bed is too warm. I kick the blankets to the edge, and then I'm too cold again. My temperature changes in waves, like it does when I'm having a fever, and the room is silent as death. I shut my eyes tight as I can and just bury my head in the pillow. When my eyes open of their own accord, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to make them do, a flash of red light informs me it's 2:55 AM. My heartrate accelerates, realizing that haven't slept at all, but it can't have been six hours since I got into bed, either.

I look past Adam towards the void. My wall has been replaced by a pane of darkness.

"Now?" I ask.

Whenever you're ready, Will.

"Thanks for making it easy on me," I say, slipping out of bed. I feel more awake than I have since the school year started, like all the stress of the day has slipped off my back as I pull my blankets away. The moon shines in through the window, slowly descending in the sky as its curious full eye watches me. I take out my matching stone, which hasn't left my person, and rub it for good luck. The floorboards whimper beneath me, concerned, and I step past my brother's bed. He looks smaller when he's asleep, and he rests like he's clutching his phone.

Can't even put it down now, can you, buddy?

I bite the inside of my mouth, trying to resist the urge to wake him up and tell him everything. It's easier than expected, which is frightening.

"We don't usually keep secrets," I tell him, "but there's never been anything to keep, either, so... here we go." It doesn't get the poison out of my mouth, and it certainly doesn't calm my accelerating heartbeat. The wall is a television screen turned off, temporarily permeable, waiting for me to walk through into the electric universe I've always been separated from.

I step towards it and extend a hand in. Something grips back on the other side, holding my hand, but the hand on the other side is gloved and smooth. I look at the pane, hoping to see a stranger, and still just see the darkness, dizzyingly thick.

"I'm supposed to go through, right?"

The voice prickles with irritation. Yes.

"I'm making the right decision, aren't I?"

Yes.

"He wouldn't want to be part of this, he wouldn't believe me, and I shouldn't wake him up this late, err, early. I'm tired of inconveniencing him, so I'm taking this on myself." I pause. I didn't realize what I was waiting for until I started talking. "Tell me I can do this, please. Alone."

You know better than I do.

I fall from darkness to darkness, and emerge in a world of violet occasionally stunned by veins of moonlight. I can no longer feel the moonstone in my hand, but as I grip one hand with the other, I feel smooth gloves, and I trace the outline of a mask across my face. My hands run over an elaborately stitched uniform, tracing every detail I can't see, and fall at last to a shield on my side. I unclip it from my wait, and hold it up. It emits a brightness that allows me to see down the corridor, and at the very end is a small, quivering figure in the dark, formed of coalesced shadow.

"Hello," I call out. My voice sounds different, too, not deeper but less prone to cracking, and stronger and more resolute in a manner I can't place. I walk towards it, holding the shield against me, and slowly the details on his form become more obvious, grayed out fur becoming obvious from nothingness and a small golden collar glinting off the light of my shield. Two purple eyes catch me in them, drinking me in, and a small smile appears across the friendly, furred face of what looks like a stuffed animal.

Do not be afraid.

"Do not be afraid."

"I have bad news for you," I say, with a slight smile, but I don't finish the joke-- if there's ever been a time when all fear has left my body, it might just be right now. He seems to know too, because his smile grows a little bigger, and I catch something like a suppressed purr. "You wouldn't happen to be the suspicious voice I've been hearing in my head, would you?"

Suspicious is a little harsh.

"Suspicious is a little harsh," he says.

"Who are you?" I ask.

You know.

"Shiloh," he says, and I did know, already, somewhere at the back of my mind. My mind jumps to the book we read in second grade, which must have been the first book I actually liked, but the name is familiar in another way, cozy like that of an old friend's. It's worn out in all the right ways.

"That's going to take some getting used to," I say, pressing my gloved hands to my temples. Even that gesture is smoother, more elegant than whatever I would have pulled off at home. It's like my movements are being guided by a slightly less awkward version of myself. "It's like FaceTiming someone in the room. You can see them, and then you see them on the screen, again."

Shiloh looks at me as if this is an excellent observation. I can't believe it landed, especially with an alien. "Yes, but it's a little easier to tell who the real one is in that situation," admits Shiloh, quieting his second voice for my benefit. "I doubt you've come here to make idle conversation, and my profession leaves me no time for it. I have someone I need you to meet. Can you follow me?"

Can I? I could run to the ends of the earth.

"Sure," I say. "Lead the way."

Shiloh begins to trot down the corridor, and I make out cloven hooves. I want to draw him already, so badly, but I don't have my sketchbook on me. As we walk, I add, "I don't mind idle conversation, by the way."

"I'm not a good conversation partner," admits Shiloh.

"That's not true," I object.

Shiloh lets out a soft, slightly pitched sigh. It's the only noise thus far that I would expect to have come out of a body that small. "I suppose it would fall primarily on who I talk to."

There doesn't seem to be anything else living down here. The walls aren't quite reflective enough for me to see my reflection, though they do let me see the ghost of my own outline, who thus far has been the only other companion to our tiny party. I want to go out on a limb and say the 'someone' is another human, who probably doesn't belong here either. Before Shiloh contacted me through the stone, was he alone here?

"You must be so lonely," I say.

Shiloh's ears, which are so long they almost reach to the floor already, slacken and fall further. I sense irritation in the prickling of his fur, but he only says, quietly, "There are worse things to be than lonely."

There is a stranger in the distance. I can identify her by the burning torch she's holding, which is long as her body, and it frames a curtain of golden hair which is lit so brightly that it may as well be on fire, too. There is a violence in her expression and the smattering of visible freckles beneath the fairly standard eye-mask she's wearing, but it also carries a sense of regal justness about it, like a real superhero. She's not wearing much more than a lopsided beret and a glamorized smock, which admittedly comes with more frills and ruffles than you'd ever care to take into a real studio, but she's also wielding what I now realize is a paintbrush the size of a lance, with a bristle like a pom-pom, if that pom-pom was on fire. As she points it at me, which should be a warning sign, I realize that I can't think of anyone I'd want more to be on my side in the thick of this.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"Luna," I respond, instantly, putting my hands out in a 'please don't murder me with fire' kind of gesture. I bring one of those hands directly to my face. "I mean, no-- if we're going to be on the same team, we should actually know each other's names, shouldn't we? I'm Will. Will Rosenbloom."

The fire goes out with a chuff. As she lowers the paintbrush, the girl's jaw drops, incredulous. "Will?"

"It's a pretty common name," I say. Usually this would be the point where I bail in conversation, but there's an easy confidence which I say it with, here, as if I were somehow proud of the name I can usually barely get out of my mouth.

"No, no. It's Amanda, you big goofball," she says. I don't know how I didn't recognize her before. Everything about her outfit so obviously screams Amanda that I don't think it could have been anyone else. She grips me in a crushing hug, which hurts more because it now entails pressing the brush against my spine, and when she lets go, I really hope that reinforced lungs or at least a titanium ribcage number amongst whatever powers I get in my new form, because I might need both. She shoots me a grin, and then points to Shiloh. "What is that?"

"Shiloh," I say.

Shiloh nods. "Do not be afraid. I haven't been able to converse with you, yet, but I am behind all the anomalies you have been experiencing. I have entrusted you both with a small shard of my own soul, which have manifested as stones in your world. I know this is a lot to put on you both, but I need you to save the world."

"We're in," Amanda says.

"Amanda!" I chide. "Let him finish."

"Go ahead," Amanda corrects herself, "For the record, though, I'm basically in."

"Me too," I say.

Shiloh blinks, his expression filled with warmth. "You have been given abilities which you will later be able to use in the real world, although only while in costume, which you will get into through frequent trips to the Veins. That would be our current location. I understand it's not hospitable to humans, but I will be able to create an area more to our liking, given how insubstantial the Veins tend to be. Your quest is simple. Out there in your world, someone like you has found something like this, a shard of the Diosite mineral which empowers my form. However, this shard is not attached to a cherub, and as such it acts more like a labyrinth which will drain and confound the human psyche. It is dangerous not only to the unwitting wielder, who will grow addicted as they grow in strength, but also to the world at large, which stands to suffer if their increasingly paranoid plans come to pass. I need you to retrieve it for me before any harm can come to other people."

"That's fair," I say. "Doesn't sound too bad."

Amanda shrugs. "Something always comes up. I'm sure it'll keep us busy for a while. Hear me out though, Shiloh-- how do you feel about reinforcements? I have these really kickass friends, and I was thinking, what if we let all of them in? There are at least fifteen of us, we're all prepared, and--"

Shiloh seems to steal the air from the room with a single tail-flick. "I can only pick so many aides, and I have already run through thousands, if not millions, of possible combinations. Other groupings tend to end in catastrophe. If you really feel you are not capable, I might be able to scrounge up a new group, but it won't involve you."

Amanda sighs. "Fine, I guess."

"You will not be working alone, however. There are two kids at nearby Lincoln High who are both, as you are, in possession of a shard, though they are not yet aware of their powers and are somewhat... harder to contact. This Saturday is a game of the human sport 'football' which, for their own separate reasons, both will be attending. I need you two to infiltrate it and bring them here, through the Veins."

"Like a kidnapping?" I ask.

Shiloh looks bemused. "That would imply a degree of unwillingness and temporal length we will not be contending with. What we are doing would qualify more as a recruitment."

"Alright," Amanda says. "I can get my mom to drive us there. Will, you down?"

"I'm down," I agree.

"Then put 'em high, pardner," Amanda says, raising a hand to high-five me, but when I throw mine up against hers with a satisfying clap, she twists her fingers around it, which leads to her drawing me back into another crushing hug. She doesn't need to say anything else, even though there's so much else we could say, primarily iterations of 'this is happening, and it's happening to us'. I clutch her back, and it feels more real than the last few years of dreaming.

I didn't realize I needed this.