“No.”

  “This is my chance! I have to!”

  “And I have to make sure nothing happens to you. Two people disappearing in one day is enough. Please don’t make it three.”

  Everyone was hunkered down in the most secure location they had ready access to at the moment: the library. Archivist Sharp-Search, while not remotely pleased with the situation, did not hesitate to let the ex-humans in once it heard what had happened to its Apprentice, and it immediately left to gather a few essentials to make hiding out in there more tolerable. The dim lighting and stuffy atmosphere did nothing to ease the tension as they all took turns attempting to corral a panicking Black-Leap.

  On some level, Maggie knew that arguing with her was pointless. The child wouldn’t be convinced to settle down by any sort of logic short of a threat, and threatening children was a line the myna was not about to cross. But she didn’t need to convince the kit. She just needed to keep it occupied until Sunny-Plume came back.

  If it comes back, the pessimistic part of her added, though she was swift to shut down those kinds of doubts. Sunny is going to come back. It’s only a few hours overdue. The rain probably just forced it to hunker down somewhere.

  “Then come with me! The Guardians are busy! We can just run!”

  That much was actually true. The attack on one of their own from an outside force had completely redirected the Guardians’ recent paranoia. Right now most of them were either hunting the perpetrators or reorganizing to defend “more important” targets. The ex-humans had been more or less left alone, and the only thing stopping them from leaving was a lack of anywhere to go. It didn’t make any sense, especially after weeks of steadily intensifying restrictions and scrutiny. Either some detail about the attack had rattled the Guardians more than she was aware, or this was a trap. A test to see just how “treacherous” they were, perhaps.

  None of this nuance mattered to Black-Leap, of course. All she saw was an open door and she quite reasonably wanted to bolt.

  “You want to help, right?” A low rumble from a freshly awakened Chase reached the pair, as the Komodo dragon approached and loomed over the kit, stopping her in her tracks. “So do I. What’s your plan?”

  “What the hell are you–” Maggie raised her voice as Chase seemingly began to encourage Black-Leap, but a raised claw stopped her and asked her to trust him. Seeing as now was a terrible time to start a fight, the myna gave him the benefit of the doubt, uneasy as it made her. She didn’t really know Chase at all. He was only awake half the time, and even when he was he more or less kept to himself. He didn’t even talk much with Eager-Horizon, despite Verdant-Trail actually asking it to try and get Chase to socialize.

  “I’m going to leave and search for my mother!” The squirrel was practically vibrating as she chirped out her response. “And then we’ll escape and find Gray and Ink-Talon!”

  “That’d be great to do, really.” Chase hunkered down as close as he could to Black-Leap’s eye-level. “So how do you plan on finding them? I do really want to help, but I have no idea where to look. Do you know? If you do, then we can leave and search together.”

  Oh, that’s his game. Maggie resisted the urge to give some bird-facsimile of a smirk upon witnessing the ploy. Too bad that won’t work.

  “You’re trying to trick me!” Black-Leap swatted at Chase’s snout with a forepaw before backing up, hackles raised. Despite the wild disparity in size, Chase actually flinched, clearly not realizing that his exact intent had come through exceedingly clear in his questioning. “You’re trying to convince me to stay put, not help!”

  “I’m trying to get you to slow down and think!” Chase swiftly recovered from being rebuffed and stepped forward, once more towering over Black-Leap, his rumbles fully shifting to a growl. “If you just run out there with no plan, people could get hurt. Not just you, but other people too. Is that what your family would want? For you to be the cause of even more pain?”

  “I think that’s quite enough.” A pair of loud snaps from across the room silenced the argument, and Garden-Blessing scuttled over to settle the issue. “Leave the poor girl alone, Chase. I know you mean well, but projecting is not the way to help.”

  “That wasn’t what I was trying to do, but… fair enough.” Chase sighed and turned around, the fact that he needed to take extra care not to have his tail bowl everyone over as he did only souring his mood further. “Sorry.”

  “That’s not to say that he didn’t have a point, little squirrel,” the crab continued, reorienting her eye-stalks to address Black-Leap. “This is a dangerous time, so we need to be cautious. Leaping is your nature, but please look before you do.”

  Rather than answer, the kit simply scampered under one of the rows of shelves in the room to sulk. From their own corner of the room, Song, Eager-Horizon, and the bat watched the scene play out in silence, either unable or unwilling to give any input. The tension in the air was unbearable, and Maggie couldn’t help but feel like it would bubble over into despair any minute.

  “Okay, that’s it! Everyone gather ‘round!” Leaping up on top of a nearby crate with a flap of her wings, the myna put on her best show-bird routine to rouse the group. “We’re going to actually talk strategy rather than sit here and wait for other people to handle our problems for us!”

  “Finally someone said it!” The bat squeaked as they rolled off of their back and crawled over. “If I’d had to instigate one of these things twice in a row, I’d be so mad…”

  “I assume you have something in mind, Maggie?” Eager-Horizon chirped, fluttering over and hovering in place for a moment before settling down in an empty spot.

  “Kinda. A strategy to find our strategy, more or less.”

  “That’s… less than reassuring,” Chase grumbled, crossing his forelegs and resting his head on them.

  “The reason I don’t have any ideas for a strategy yet is because we need a goal to have a strategy,” Maggie said, beginning to pace on her platform like she often did. “For as long as we’ve been here, our goal has been just to survive. But clearly that isn’t going to cut it anymore. It doesn’t matter how ‘well behaved’ or ‘reasonable’ we are. We don’t have time to wait for outside help anymore. So, what’s it gonna be? What do you all actually want out of this new, fucked up life we’ve been given?”

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  “Well, you already know my answer,” Garden-Blessing clicked. “I’m going to go home with Verdant-Trail, Chase, and Eager-Horizon, and then I’m going to explore this wonderful world.” The other Explorers nodded in agreement.

  “And… And I’m going too!” A sharp, nervous peep from the bat was the next thing to break the silence. “I hate the climate here. And having the same fruit every meal for the past twenty seven days has been terrible. And–”

  “We enjoy your company too, bat,” Eager-Horizon lightly slapped the back of the bat’s head with a swift wingbeat.

  “I’m sure Verdant-Trail would be thrilled to have someone with a sense for numbers along,” Chase added. “It tends to struggle with logistics.”

  “Right! That’s a good goal. Get to the Highnests. If we all–” Subtle movement from her right broke Maggie’s train of thought. Song had briefly swung her tail around behind her, the wet sound of the cloth keeping her damp sliding across the floor inadvertently expressing the mounting anxiety and resentment that the current conversation was sparking in her. “When we all make it out of this.” Maggie looked straight at the salamander as she spoke. “Nobody is getting left behind.”

  “It’s not worth it,” Song squeaked, now drawing the attention of the entire group.

  “What?”

  “Escape. So we end up somewhere else, then what? Just hope there’s people there to take us in? Knowing what we are?” Song’s tail thumped against a nearby box with a heavy thud. “Maybe the Explorers get a pass, they’re half-intact, and people there care about them. But you? Quiet-Dream? Ink-Talon? Me? What do you think they’re going to do with us?”

  “...Treat you like a person and help?” Eager-Horizon spoke up, hopping in front of the salamander to make sure she could see it. “I know my community, and we don’t treat people like this.”

  “And yet you’re here, and not there.” Song swiveled to face Chase. “You were conscious and mobile ‘back home,’ right? How did they treat you?”

  “Song, what’s gotten into you?” Maggie hopped down from her perch, getting in between the salamander and the lizard futilely trying to make himself as small as possible. Rather than answer, Song stepped forward and pushed Maggie aside with her massive head, knocking her over with a startled squawk.

  “Tell us, Chase. Did the people of the Highnests treat you with kindness and acceptance? Or did they resent you enough to make you feel guilty for existing? Because you clearly do.”

  Chase didn’t answer. He was frozen, his breathing quickened and much shallower than it had been, eyes transfixed on Song as she slid forward a bit more, coming close enough to clearly make out the terrified expression on his face and cringe. Her poor eyesight had hidden just how panicked-stricken this line of questioning had made him.

  “Never mind. I’m going back to my pond. Tell me what you come up with later.” Having realized what she was doing, Song dropped the subject, turning to walk past Chase instead. She slowly made her way to the door and pulled the latch lever with her mouth in silence, the rest of the group unwilling to try and stop her. After the door swung open, however, Song wasn’t the first one out. A black blur darted out from under a nearby shelf and bounded over Song’s back, eliciting a startled squeak from the amphibian.

  “Black-Leap! Stop!” Maggie shouted at the kit, but she was already out the door before the myna finished calling her name.

  In that moment, something in Maggie snapped. Her wings were haphazardly throwing her out the door and nearly into the opposite wall before she even could string together a coherent thought or register the frantic calls of everyone else in the room. All she knew was that she had to stop this. She had to stop this from getting any worse. She had to. If she couldn’t do this… If she couldn’t keep everyone from falling apart, then…

  She skid to a stop in the hall, steadying herself and turning as fast as she could before taking wing again and following Black-Leap. Sunny-Plume had been a good teacher, but she was still only able to fly about as well as a kid taking the training wheels off of their bike for the first time could ride. Well enough in a straight line through an open sky, but turning tighter that a wide curve just made her fall, and the halls of the College absolutely did not allow for wide turns.

  The myna very quickly gained ground on the squirrel, only for her to take a sharp right at the first available turn and force the bird to once again land and reorient herself. Black-Leap repeated the tactic at the next intersection, and at every subsequent one after.

  Maggie kept up this chase for what felt like ages, her heart hammering in her chest like a machine gun and her legs aching from the repeated landings and takeoffs as she neither lost or caught up to her fleeing charge. Only two thoughts occupied her mind: getting Black-Leap back, and her breathing. Lose sight of the first, and she was liable to give up on trying. Lose sight of the second, and she was liable to pass out in mid-air.

  Eventually, Black-Leap’s next turn took her out an exit and into the pouring rain. The area was deserted, no one was there to stop her. If she managed to cross the road and get into the city proper, she would lose Maggie in the twisting side-passages and climbable buildings in an instant. She needed to do something. Something that would be able to slow the kit down for just a moment. All she had was her voice, and her voice wasn’t going to do anything here.

  But someone else’s might.

  “Black-Leap! Hold still! Please!” The high-pitched, chittering cries of Quiet-Dream burst from Maggie’s beak and pierced the thrumming of the rain like a blade, authentic right down to the little anxious wavering he always did after shouting. The familiar call caused Black-Leap to slip and fall in the mud as she attempted to stop on the spot. She immediately looked back where the call had come from, only for the brief spark of joy in her eyes to vanish as she realized what just happened.

  The mimic slammed into the kit like a feathered brick, knocking the air out of both of their lungs as she sent them sliding and tumbling several feet down the mud-slicked street. Before Black-Leap could start to recover, Maggie grasped the kit’s tail in both of her feet and latched on to the scruff of her neck with her beak, wrapping both wings around her for good measure before collapsing on top of her captured charge, utterly spent.

  “Liar! You tricked me! Mom’s never coming back! Not if I don’t find him first!” Black-Leap squirmed and struggled against the myna’s impromptu wrestling hold, but could neither spin around enough to claw at her body nor find purchase against the wall of damp feathers wrapped around her to get any leverage. She was well and truly caught.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Maggie was able to muster in response, a pained, dog-like whine escaping her clenched beak. “I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry.” The leaden exhaustion overtaking her body threatened to knock her out, but she stubbornly held on to consciousness. Otherwise, all of this would have been for nothing. She refused to let this all be for nothing.

  All the while, the rain continued to fall, soaking feathers and fur in equal measure, drowning out the world around them and emphasizing just how alone they really were.

  Until they weren’t.

  “You two are going to end up deathly ill laying there exposed like that,” a low, creaking whisper of a voice from above them noted.

  “I am not sure it is thinking straight,” a second voice chimed in, similar to the first, but smoother and more confident. “That crash might have knocked the Gift out of it.”

  Before Maggie could even begin to gather her wits to respond, one of them dropped something soft and heavy over top of her and Black-Leap. A thick blanket of some sort, both shielding them from the rain and pinning the exhausted bird to the ground where she lay.

  “We will get you somewhere safe and dry, do not worry.” Ignoring the continuing protests of Black-Leap’s renewed struggles, the two larger animals began prodding and nudging her to wrap the blanket around them both before both ends were pulled tight and lifted off the ground, taking the two of them with it. While Maggie could no longer see her surroundings, she could still tell which way was up and what direction they were moving, and it wasn’t back towards the College.

  It turned out that she and Black-Leap would be escaping together after all.

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