Chapter Text
It’s the day of the first full moon after Spring Break, and Tracker can’t breathe.
It doesn’t happen when it would make sense. Not that morning at the breakfast table when she gets her crystal notification reminding her. Not that evening when she and Uncle Jawbone prepare to climb on Baxter’s back to fly to their favorite forest. Not under the trees, waiting for true night to fall.
Instead, she and Kristen are simply lounging on Tracker’s bed, door open to appease Sandra Lynn. Sunlight cuts in shafts through the blinds, printing thin rectangles across the sheets. Kristen rests on her stomach. Her legs, crossed at the ankles, kick up behind her. She scrolls through her crystal, humming absently, a not-quite-tune that might have been a Cig Figs song, once. Tracker lies on her back, eyes on the ceiling. They had tacos for lunch; the Manor still smells faintly of carnitas.
They’ve passed countless afternoons this way in the almost year since they’ve been together. Tracker loves these moments—when the worlds inside and outside their minds quiet down enough for them to just sprawl out, exist, be.
Or, well, she usually loves these moments.
Now, she finds everything scrapes at her. Kristen’s off-key mumbling. The scent of sour taco meat on her breath. The thumping beat of Gorgug’s drums, carrying up from where he and Fig practice out in the yard. The tiny crumbs beneath her on the sheets, because Kristen just had to snack in her bed, didn’t she?
The wrongness of it all burrows into her. A strong urge builds, to shift her fingers to claws and rake at her own skin.
Abruptly, she realizes she can’t move.
Someone cast hold person on me. The thought flashes through her mind, irrational and terrifying. Her breath hitches. Except—how? She hears no footsteps in the hallway. The windowsill doesn’t creak with the weight of someone who scaled the walls. The only person here is Kristen, and Kristen wouldn’t–
Kristen wouldn’t–
Kristen wouldn’t–
Sunlight through the blinds. Moonlight through forest leaves. Spells flying at her. Sick thoughts twisting and curling under her skin, blood on her teeth, curly red hair and glowing pinkies and her heart pounding so hard–
“Tracker?” The mattress shifts as Kristen moves. “Hey, Tracker, all good?”
Not all good, Tracker wants to scream, wants to howl, but her mouth won’t work and her skin sizzles with electricity and she can’t fucking breathe.
“Whoa, hey, hey. I think you’re having a panic attack. It’s okay, Adaine used to have these all the time.”
She needs to shut up. Kristen needs to shut up.
“Do you think you can sit up? That might help open your lungs, you know. I know it’s scary, but I’m right here.”
She hates Kristen. She hates Kristen with something deep and ugly, something that took root in the forest that turned all of her worst, most subconscious irritations into the soil from which resentment could sprout. She feels it building in her chest like a growl. She hates Kristen and it feels like an icepick to the head, because fuck, she loves Kristen.
She loves Kristen so much—her expressive hands and her goofy laugh and her big bear hugs, the feeling of her body tucked into hers, the way they can talk about anything and everything. But since Spring Break, everything that she loves about Kristen has felt…parodic, almost. Two centimeters to the right. It itches at some violent, angry, lycanthropic part of Tracker’s mind, but she would never hurt Kristen, not ever. She wants to protect her, she wants to heal her and kiss her and she would never ever hurt her, she could never forgive herself if–
Except she did hurt Kristen. Under Kristen’s tie-dye shirt she already bears the scars of Tracker’s attack, the ones she gave her moon-crazed and savage in the forest of Kristen’s new god. She hurt her and that makes her nauseous, makes her furious, makes her want to slam her head against the wall again and again, draw her own blood and pay in every way she can. Her throat tears raggedly with each pant she forces out, hard and fast and painful.
This has to stop. God, please make this stop.
Who is she even asking? Sol, the god who never answered a single one of her fucking prayers, in whose name her parents tried to drown her in shame? Galicaea, the goddess who is ashamed of her? Cassandra, the new goddex that Kristen won’t fucking shut up about?
Sunlight through the blinds. Moonlight through forest leaves.
Tracker can’t breathe.
She wants this to stop. She needs this to stop. She needs this to stop right now, right now, right now, right now, stop, stop, stop….
“You’re okay,” Kristen says. “Do you want to, like, try to breathe together?” She moves to take Tracker’s hand.
Tracker snatches her hand away, suddenly freed of the paralysis that had held it in place. “Don’t touch me,” she snarls. “Go away. Just– Go away.”
Kristen flinches back, stricken.
Tracker wants to feel bad for it, but she doesn’t have room in her right now. Her breaths have started coming as whimpers, and she can’t imagine a world that doesn’t feel as all-consumingly terrifying as this. Kalina is in her mind, cutting her open from the inside out just like she did Kristen, warping her thoughts and forcing sick fury to rise in her throat like bile. She must be, right? Otherwise….
“Go away,” she tries to snap again, but it sounds to her own ears like a plea.
Kristen’s eyes have glassed over. She nods too many times and swings herself off the bed. She stumbles as she makes her way out of the room.
Tracker squeezes her eyes closed. Yellow dots blur behind her eyelids. The room rocks around her like the Hangvan at sea. She balls her hands in the sheets beneath her hard enough to hurt, desperate to feel something, anything, real.
“Hey, kiddo,” a gravelly voice says. “How’re we doing in here, huh?”
She startles, her heart jackhammering in her chest and her neck. She hadn’t heard anyone approach over the sound of her own labored gasps.
“I– I–” She can’t make the words happen.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Uncle Jawbone says. “Can I hold you?”
She jerks her head in a nod.
The bed dips. Strong, gentle hands pull her upper body into his lap. She’s a tall, broad-shouldered kid, but Jawbone is a tall, broad-shouldered man. She fits easily in his arms. She curls into him, gripping tightly to his middle like a storm-tossed sailor would cling to a mast.
“I gotcha,” he murmurs. “I gotcha, Tracker.”
Tracker chokes on an almost-sob. Pack, her body recognizes. Pack. Because Jawbone isn’t her father. She doesn’t have a good track record with fathers, not the biological nor metaphysical kind, and unlike Adaine she’s never wanted a replacement. It’s all too wrapped up in forgive me father for I have sinned and the door to her childhood bedroom slamming open, handfuls of her recently shorn hair held up in rage.
So Jawbone isn’t Tracker’s father but he is her uncle, is her pack, and that matters to her terror-muddled mind more than anything else.
“You’re safe. I’m right here.” He pauses. “You can’t hurt anyone. You’re safe. Everyone is safe.”
She shakes her head.
“Yeah. I know it’s hard to believe right now, ‘cause your mind is all in panic mode. But we’ve been here before, right?”
Not for years, but they have. She squeezes him tighter.
“And those all passed, just like this will. You’re doing so good, kiddo. So good. You think you can try to breathe with me?”
She flinches. “Can’t.”
“Okay. That’s totally fine. We’re in no kind of rush.”
“I don’t want tonight to happen. I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t, I–”
“Shh.” He settles an arm around her shoulders. “We’re not our illness. We’re not our worst moments. I know stuff, uh, happened on Spring Break, but how many years have we been through this, huh? You and me? How many full moons? Being scared is normal, and understandable, and goddamn hard. But I’m sticking with you, kid, and we’re gonna get through it. I promise.”
A tear trickles from the corner of her eye across her temple and into her buzzed hair. “I’m tired,” she croaks. “I don’t wanna be in my body anymore.”
He sighs, old and sad. A werewolf and a sober addict and her uncle all at once. “Yeah. I know, Track. I know.” He takes a long, intentional inhale. “You think you can try to take a couple of those with me? I know it seems impossible, but they’ll make you feel a hell of a lot better, I swear. Just a couple deep breaths, now.”
She desperately wants to try. Because she isn’t some fragile little kid, hasn’t been one for years now. She’s tough. She’s independent. She’s the one who comforts. Especially after the Nightmare Forest, any moment where she doesn’t feel in control of herself makes her feel like a ticking time bomb, an explosion of gnashing teeth primed and ready to hurt the ones she loves.
She wants to breathe. She wants to be the tough, caring, knowing version of herself she managed to build out of her childhood, the one she projects over her insecurities well enough to hide them most of the time, not the freaked-out mess that came back from Spring Break.
But the fear and the exhaustion make it so hard.
“In,” Uncle Jawbone coaches. He demonstrates. “Out.” He exhales.
She fights to match him.
“In,” he says again. “Out.”
It takes long, awful minutes, but eventually, her hyperventilation subsides. Tears come in to replace it. She buries her face in Uncle Jawbone’s chest, against the thick fuzz that usually makes her joke, “Is that your fur, or are you just fantasy Irish?” which gets him chuckling and shifting his head just long enough to point at his pasty human face. “The hybrid form isn’t really a political thing, is it?” she always teases, then. “It’s just sunblock.”
Now, instead, she presses her eyes shut. She imagines herself as the wolf pup she never was—needy, blind, and utterly protected—and cries.
-
The two of them stay in her room for the rest of the day. Uncle Jawbone sits against the headboard, her head in his lap, and he tells rambling stories that veer frequently into R-rated territory. The light through the window turns slowly from white to gold.
Sandra Lynn brings them some water at some point, giving a Tracker a look both concerned and no-nonsense as she presses a glass into her hand. Tracker sips dutifully. Above her head, Sandra Lynn and Jawbone have a silent exchange with their eyes. They seem to be back in a good place, despite the whole Garthy situation. Tracker’s trying to be as forgiving as he is.
“Anything you want me to tell the other kids?” Sandra Lynn asks her, once some unspoken understanding has been reached. “They’re pretty worried about you.”
“Oh, uh.” Tracker bites her lip. “You can tell them I’m okay. But that….”
“You’re not up for the Solesian Inquisition yet?”
She nods, grateful.
“Got it. Feel better, sweetheart.” To Jawbone, she says: “Baxter’s gonna be here at six forty-five, alright?”
“Thanks, Sandy.”
“Of course. Let me know if you need anything else.” She rests a hand on Tracker’s sweat-dampened t-shirt before leaving.
At six-forty, they make their way downstairs. Thankfully, the other kids are nowhere to be seen—she hears faint chatter from the tower and figures they’ve holed up in Adaine and Aelwyn’s room. She remembers the times she’s warned the others when Kristen’s having a hard time, asking them to give her space or extra care depending on the day, and imagines Kristen or Sandra Lynn doing the same for her. It makes her stomach flip.
Did she hurt Kristen when she snapped at her?
Why does that possibility make her feel anything more complicated than pure guilt?
Just as Sandra Lynn had promised, Baxter stands in the driveway, clawed feet scratching against the concrete. His lion’s tail flicks behind him. As Jawbone approaches him, he dips his massive eagle’s beak in greeting. Jawbone gives him a friendly stroke of his feathers down the back of his head. Tracker offers a wave.
After some pleasantries, they climb onto his back. Even though they’ve done it for the past six months at least, riding Baxter still sets her on edge. She’s not used to flying under anything other than her own power, and he’s part cat. But he soars steady and fast, and soon enough the suburbs turn to woodlands. The ground beneath them rises into the foothills of the Mountains, dark and thick with trees.
He sets them down in a clearing after a spiraling descent. Tracker and her uncle slide to the ground.
“Thanks, Bax,” Jawbone says.
Baxter nods and takes off again, the beating of his massive wings rustling the leaves and ferns. Tracker shivers reflexively, goosebumps prickling along her forearms. Dusk has settled, pieces of peach fuzz sky peeking out between the trees’ branches, and the spring temperature has fallen with the sun. Dark shadows pool among the ferns.
Tracker walks over to a familiar tree. She runs her fingers over four parallel deep slashes in the bark. “Feels like it’s been longer than a month.”
“That makes sense,” Jawbone says, coming up behind her. “You guys had a hell of a trip. Crazier than anything I ever did on Spring Break, that’s for sure, and I once woke up naked on a diving board with a bong up my ass.”
She quirks her brow. “You told me it was a small bong.”
“It was! That’s what I’m saying. You kids had a way wilder time.”
She whacks a hand against his shoulder lightly, fondly. He grins a sharp-toothed smile.
From her back, she unhooks the strap of a knapsack. She sets it on the ground and sits down beside it, settling herself onto one of the large tree roots with her back to the tree. Jawbone joins her. His spectacles reflect the fractured twilight.
“How’re ya feeling now, kiddo?”
She pauses. The woods shift around her, birds cheeping their last calls before nightfall, diurnal mammals scampering through branches as they head to their dens. On one level, she sees her forest, the one she and Jawbone have run in for years now, but a second forest has been overlaid on it, like a clear plastic tracing sheet on an old projector. Sounds have a foreign, echoed quality. Trees don’t match their shadows.
Waiting for the full moon used to feel– Well, it used to feel almost sacred. Lycanthropy is a weird thing, a curse and an illness and her goddess’s blessing all at once, and she has a complicated relationship with it. Ultimately, her faith and her condition are inextricable.
She began to follow the moon because she has an innate, biological tie to her. The moon comes out—she changes. That concrete relationship had been so refreshing after so many years of abstract Solesian moralizing. The moon demands only the concessions of nature, not of guilt or penance or prejudice. And Tracker’s a part of nature, both in her human and wolf forms—everyone is. There’s a beauty in that, in the blood and growth and cycles of the world. She loves the sheer untamable force of it, the heaving of the tides and the howling of the pack.
Maybe, before she got bitten, she could have found a community in the faith of Sol that had a similar philosophy. The sun—a fusing, flaring ball of gas—is an untamable force of its own. Beneath its light, it raises plants and warms the air and browns her skin; it desiccates soil and dehydrates cells and boils animals’ brains inside their skulls. It’s a neutral, primal being. But Sol the god is a reflection of his followers, and so many of his followers buy into the conventions that tried to bake her in self-loathing.
After everything, dedicating herself to Galicaea had been both a rebellion and an act of defiant self-acceptance.
Here is a deity that loves me, she’d thought, in all my wild and imperfect ways.
And now?
“She hates us, Uncle Jawbone,” she says. The words taste sour.
He frowns. “Galicaea, you mean?”
She nods. “It’s stupid, it’s just– I think this might be easier if I knew she were watching over us, you know. Like, it wasn’t her making me shift in the Forest of the Nightmare King. It was a warped illusion, or something. I get that. So I’m trying hard not to think about it, about the way that this forest smells similar and sounds similar and looks similar. And normally I would pray, but I think that would be easier if…if I didn’t know she hated me.”
Jawbone scrubs a hand along the ruff of his chin. “The way Kristen talked about it, I don’t think all of her hates us, right? There’s a split in her, somehow.”
“Then she hates the part of herself that loves us. That’s like, the ultimate level of internalized shit.”
He snorts. “God, yeah, that’s one way to think of it. But—and I’ll be straight with you—I kinda think that should give you some hope.”
“Hope?”
“We all have internalized shit. You and Kristen and Ragh especially know what I mean. We’ve been through that, hating ourselves because others hate us. It’s hard, right?”
She stares down at her hairy legs, not looking at him. “Sure.”
“But you’ve come a long way since my brother reached the asshole hall-of-fame and made the biggest mistake of his life. Kristen and Ragh have come a long way too, just in a year. You’re yourselves, unapologetically and openly. Heh, Adaine would probably say too openly, in some cases.”
Tracker’s lip twitches.
“Aren’t you kids living proof that you can unlearn that stuff?”
Ragh, a rainbow patch stitched onto his varsity jacket. Kristen, beaming ear-to-ear at the small Elmville pride. Fig, even, whose horns have started to look shinier, better cared for. Gorgug, who asked Lydia at dinner two nights ago if they could practice speaking Orcish together. Tracker herself, with a Werewolves R Us pin clipped to her backpack.
“I guess.” She glances up. “Galicaea, though—she’s a god. I can’t, like, tell her to go to a support group.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Guess not. But from what you’ve explained to me, gods can change. Or the people who worship them can, which is almost the same thing, yeah?”
“Maybe.” With a deep breath, she reaches forward and unzips the bag. “We should get ready.”
“Alright.” He pushes himself up and takes off his spectacles, folding them carefully. “But if you wanna talk more about this, I’m always here.”
She nods. “I know. Love you.”
“Back at ya, kid. To the moon and– Well, a lot, is what I mean.”
She manages a small smile. In practiced movements, free of the restraints of modesty or embarrassment, she and Jawbone shuck their clothes and fit them neatly into the rucksack. When the bag is zipped up back up, they hang the bag from the nub of one of the higher branches.
“Uncle Jawbone?” she says, gaze fixed on the blushing purple sky. On a normal night, she would turn to prayer for this, but she feels anything but holy.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let me hurt anyone.”
“I won’t.”
It’s a bad ask, because he won’t be in control of himself any more than she will. His reassurance matters anyway.
She takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut, like she does before jumping into a swimming pool. Changing form hurts less if it’s consensual, so she shifts ahead of time—fingernails sharpening to claws, fur sprouting thick and dark along her arms, muscles reforming to accommodate four legs. Uncle Jawbone joins her, his thighs folding into haunches, his chest rounding and head rotating on his neck. Together, they settle into the dirt, furred flanks pressed into one another.
When the full white moon shines through the canopy, their eyes gleam.
The dark forest echoes with howls.
-
She wakes up still in wolf form, curled into the hollow at the base of a tree. The fur on her muzzle feels hard, stiff. She licks her chops and tastes blood. Fear grips her, the image of some poor hiker’s mauled corpse flashing into her mind, before she picks up her head and spots the deer carcass two yards away.
She lets out a small huff of relief.
A few trees over, the massive wolf that is Jawbone rests, still asleep in a puddle of sunlight. He bears similar marks from their midnight snack. She pads over to him and nuzzles his side.
He blinks awake and yawns, pink tongue curling between his white teeth.
The two of them follow their ears down to the small creek that crosscuts this patch of forest. Water rolls like molten glass over the sticks and stones. Tracker dips her snout into the cold mountain snow melt and washes the gunk off best she can. Her uncle follows suit. After shaking themselves dry, they set off at a trot downstream. When they hit a gnarled tree stump they recognize, they turn left and follow a deer trail back to their clearing.
Tracker’s backpack hangs from the nub, untouched. Few animals dare to touch things that smell so strongly of their scent.
Jawbone looks at her and cocks his head. Ready? his eyes ask.
She nods.
They shift back—her to her human form, him to his hybrid. It’s always a disorienting experience, ending up naked and on all fours. Dirt crusts her fingernails and she feels flakes of dried blood near her jawline that she wasn’t able to completely clean off.
“Heads up!” Jawbone calls, tossing her the bag. He has his folded cardigan and ripped jeans thrown over his shoulder.
She catches the backpack reflexively. Her hands shake as she reaches into the bag and pulls out her cut-off jean shorts. She puts on her shorts and her worn t-shirt and crosses her arms across her chest, trying to ignore the trembling.
“You cold?” asks Uncle Jawbone.
“Yeah,” she lies. “It’s fine, just chilly.”
“Alright,” he says, maybe a touch too knowingly. “How ‘bout you come over here and you can use ol’ Uncle Jawbone as a blanket till Bax comes.”
Her lips crook upwards. He knows what game she’s playing and she knows what game he’s playing and no matter what it’s gonna end up with her sitting next to him, his arm wrapped around her broad shoulders, his tongue licking the grime off her face.
“Sure,” she says. “That sounds good.”
-
They arrive home to find the Manor in chaotic disarray. Adaine bangs on the bathroom door, yelling at Fig to hurry up. Sandra Lynn not-so-patiently informs Zayn that most people don’t want to walk through ectoplasm at eight in the morning, so could he please be a bit more considerate in the future? Ragh thunders through the halls in search of his lucky mouthguard. His mom calls out helpful but loud suggestions from where she sits in the kitchen.
“Monday,” Tracker says.
“Forgot again, huh?”
She nods, grimacing. Not going to school has definite perks, but she tends to lose track of the weekdays. Were the weekends always this short?
Steeling herself, she follows Jawbone through the foyer and into the kitchen. He stops to say good morning to Lydia and Aelwyn, who sits stiff and wary-eyed in a chair at the table, nibbling slices of apple. She and Tracker make eye-contact for a split second before Aelwyn looks away. That’s alright by Tracker. She slips past the back of Lydia’s wheelchair and grabs herself a tall glass, filling it with water from the sink.
She catches Jawbone’s attention as she moves to walk out, jerking her head towards her room. He gives her a nod. “Gotcha, kiddo, see ya later.”
Exhaustion makes her legs heavy and slow as she climbs the stairs. She never sleeps much on full moons—she caught at most an hour or two between devouring that deer and waking up with full control of her mind again. At the landing, it takes her a second to remember which direction her room is in. She bears right, away from where she can hear Fig and Ragh trying to retrace the last memories he has of his missing mouth guard.
She doesn’t see Kristen until she nearly crashes into her.
“Whoa,” she says, stepping back. “Hey.”
“Oh, uh, hey,” Kristen says. She looks—well, the compassionate girlfriend part of Tracker thinks she always looks cute, but she also looks pretty shitty. There are dark smudges beneath her eyes, deep indents in the pale dough of her cheeks. Dried drool crusts the left corner of her mouth. Her bun sits messy and off-center, multiple curls that didn’t make it into the hair tie dangling down the back of her neck. She has on a wrinkled shirt from three days ago. “How was it? How are you feeling?”
She sighs. “I’m okay, Kristen. Don’t worry.”
“You sure? Because you can tell me, you know, if– I mean, I could stay. With you, I mean. If that was something you needed.”
Tracker is tired, and her feelings are all mixed-up, and she can tell from the water in the glass that her hands haven’t fully steadied. The last thing that she wants is to be fussed over. Even with all of Kristen’s genuine love, genuine care, genuine knack for making her laugh with the random shit she says, she can’t stomach the idea of having her in her space when all she wants to do is knock out.
“Thanks, ba– Thanks. I’m okay, though. You should go to school. I just need to take a big nap, you know?”
“Yeah, no, sure, totally.”
They look at each other for a moment. The dim old hanging light flickers.
Hold up. This hallway leads to the northwestern part of the house, not the southeast. “Were you in my room?”
A sheepish look flashes across Kristen’s face. She holds up her backpack. “Forgot this,” she says.
Tracker remembers seeing it tossed up against her wall yesterday, zipper open in some half-hearted tithe to the spirits of homework. “Oh, got it.”
“Will I, uh–” And that’s nervousness in her voice, Tracker registers. Apprehension. “Do you think we could hang out in the hammock after I get home?”
Tracker hasn’t forgotten the way she’d snarled, Go away. She guesses Kristen hasn’t either.
“Sure,” she says, because it’s the kind thing. The right thing. The good-girlfriend thing. “I’d like that.”
Kristen smiles for the first time this morning, a twist of her lips that almost reaches her eyes. “Sweet,” she says. “Cool.”
They move automatically for a hug, but Tracker’s holding a glass of water and Kristen’s holding a backpack and it ends up an awkward, one-armed embrace. They break quickly.
“Well, uh, I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah,” Tracker says. “See you. Have a good day.”
“Have a good nap!”
She waits until she hears Kristen’s heavy gait begin to clomp down the stairs to continue down the hallway. She pushes open the door with a profound sense of relief. She sets the water glass on the bedside table. On autopilot, she strips off her clothes. Ideally, she’d take a shower, scrub as well as she can, but she lacks the energy. She’ll just wash her sheets when she wakes up.
As she goes to collapse on her mattress, she spots something. A cluster of items, set carefully on her pillow. A box of breath mints. A container of face wipes. A folded old sweatshirt of Jawbone’s that had been in the dryer.
Her heart pangs.
Part of her wants to call Kristen back, to pull her to her chest and squeeze her tight, to soak in the warmth and comfort, to apologize for her distance. Another part of her fights the urge, irrationally claustrophobic—it’s too soft, too kind, and she just wants out.
Tracker takes a deep breath. She pops a breath mint in her mouth. She wipes down her face, neck, and pits with the wipes. She slips on the sweatshirt—Flogging Molly Leviathan Tour—and climbs beneath the covers.
In her dream, she runs halfway to the moon and falls.
-
She emerges from her room in the early afternoon, still muzzy from sleep. The house is quiet enough that she can hear every wooden creak as she walks down the stairs.
“Lydia?” she calls, when she arrives to an empty kitchen.
“She’s asleep.” A luminescent blue teenage boy slouches through the far wall.
Tracker flinches more than she means to. Zayn, she tells herself. Zayn, Zayn, Zayn.
“She had, like, a flare, so she went to go lie down.”
“Oh,” Tracker says. “Got it.” She’s only lived a week with Lydia, so she’s not entirely sure what that means or how normal that is—should she be going in to heal her? Should she call Ragh?
Zayn must pick up on her uncertainty. “She said she’ll be alright. Also, that there’s some leftover dinner in the fridge. I couldn’t tell you what it was though, sorry.”
“Damn, Zayn, how dare you not remember all the meals you didn’t get to eat.”
He snorts. “Right? Thank you.”
Tracker heads over to the refrigerator and pulls open the door. A cluttered stack of tupperware and tinfoil greets her, packed to the nines. Her sharp nose picks up something a little funky—fruit, probably a couple days past the mark—but she has no energy or motivation to go digging to the back of the shelves, so she lets it be. A big container sits front and center, half rice, half some sort of meat curry. That must be the dinner Lydia meant. To the right of the leftovers, she spots a separate container of chickpea stew. She pulls that out and sets it on the counter, grabbing a spoon and bowl off the drying rack.
She brings it over to the table, plopping down in a chair.
“You’re not gonna heat it up?” Zayn asks.
She shrugs. “I killed and ate a deer this morning. I’ve kind of reached my quota for warm, high-effort meals.”
The eye not hidden by his slanted fringe brightens. “That’s tight. Did you have, like, blood dripping down your chin?”
She pops open the lid, fighting the urge to wipe her sleeve over her mouth at the memory. “I guess.”
“Wicked.”
“Don’t you have some graves you could be haunting, or something?”
The words come out sharper than she means them to. Zayn’s form flickers, a full-body blink.
Tracker feels bad, she does, because she hasn’t really hung out one-on-one with Zayn before and if they’re going to be spending a fair amount of time together, this isn’t exactly the foot she wants to get off on. The irritation just spilled out before she could get a handle on it.
And Tracker hates that. Tracker has worked for years to get a handle on things.
Which makes her more irritable, at herself and at Zayn, which isn’t fair, which makes it worse.
“Sorry,” she says. She stabs her spoon into the stew.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I just came down from Aelwyn’s room. I’m pretty sure she has barbed wire for a tongue, so that was nothing.”
Being compared to Aelwyn does not make her feel better.
He clears his throat. “I’m, uh, gonna go sulk in the windswept shadow of a crumbling headstone. You can join me after you eat, if you want. Open invite.”
“Thanks, Zayn.”
“No problem. Catch you later.”
“See ya.”
He disappears into the wall.
Tracker slumps forward on the table. Her forehead thunks against the hardwood, and she lets it rest there. She takes a deep breath, then another.
Fuck.
-
“And he turned blue,” Kristen says. “Blue, with these itty-bitty orange polka dots. I thought Badgood was gonna pass out.” She mimes being dumbstruck, head jerking back and eyes slamming shut, and then dramatically slow-falls backward. The hammock jolts when she makes impact.
After a couple second pause, she opens one eye to peek at Tracker’s reaction.
Tracker manages a grin, shaking her head. “Polka dots.”
“Polka dots.”
“Wack.”
“Totally.” Kristen rearranges herself into a more comfortable reclining position. The hammock creaks and rocks slightly. Her legs shift where they intertangle with Tracker’s.
Tracker lets her eyes fall to the freckled expanse of her lower thigh, the round of her kneecap. She runs her fingers along the skin, following the grain of hair. The breeze has made it cool to the touch.
“I should, uh, give you a pen,” Kristen jokes. “Let you play connect the dots.”
Tracker quirks her lips. “I’ve always said you need more ink.”
“This isn’t enough?” Kristen pulls at the collar of her tank top. Tracker glances up in time to catch the cursive script, dark and small in the shadow of her chin. Her own neck prickles. She drops her gaze back down.
“Nah,” she says, forcing her voice to stay teasing. “You’d look better with a sleeve.”
“A sleeve?” She considers. “That would be hot as fuck. I need to get a sleeve.”
Tracker hums.
A silence stretches. Tracker avoids eye-contact. She can feel Kristen’s eyes on her and can feel disappointment leaking from her, too, because all she’s been trying to do for the last half hour is make Tracker laugh and Tracker has barely scraped out a chuckle.
She wants to laugh. She does. She wants to grip onto the edges of the hammock and turn herself around so she can lie back against Kristen’s chest, Kristen’s strong arms folding on top of her or maybe Kristen’s fingers running through her hair, and look past the aging shingles, faded and peeling, out at the dome-like overcast sky.
She wants to breathe together, smiling, and listen to the shushing trees.
Instead, she keeps her eyes on her lap, at the place where Kristen’s pale shin lines up against her brown thigh. At the next gust of wind, her leg hair pricks into goosebumps. She should have worn pants.
She could cast Warmth, but Kristen’s body heat already feels suffocating even at their limited points of contact. More heat would– Would warm her too much, somehow, more than she could stand. She might throw up.
“Babe?” Kristen asks.
Tracker stiffens.
“Can I, uh, ask you a question?”
Kristen doesn’t ask that. Or, Kristen doesn’t ask her that. Kristen might have asked her that, like, ten months ago, back when she was still shucking off the husk of her church girl repression, but the Kristen of ten days ago would never. She’s tiptoeing around her like she’s porcelain, and it makes Tracker want to shatter herself just to become sharp instead of fragile.
“‘Can you ask me a question?’” she echoes, eyebrows raised.
Kristen flushes, her ears going red. She chuckles uncomfortably. It’s both adorable and like– Fuck, does her face have to broadcast everything? Can’t Tracker be a little snippy without knowing that Kristen has the decency to be embarrassed about it?
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Right. Hah. I just wanted to, like, check in, you know? Are we, uh… Are we good?”
“‘Are we good,’” Tracker parrots again.
“Yeah.”
“Kristen, you know I love you.”
“Sure, of course. Totally. But it’s just…the past week I’ve kinda gotten this vibe? Like we’re…different.”
Heat sparks in her chest. “Wow, I’m sorry I’ve been off my romance game after getting mind controlled in a forest. I’ll work on that.”
“No, that’s not– That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you just talk to me? Like we usually do? I can’t help you unless you tell me how.”
Always the Solesian fucking savior complex. “Who says I need your help?”
Kristen stares at her. Her eyes are very green. “No, I didn’t mean to say you needed it, it’s just you’ve helped me so much, so many times. With my parents, with my cult shit, with my like five thousand gods, and I just want to, like, make sure I’m returning the favor. If something’s wrong, especially with us, I want to make sure I’m there for you and that I can put in the work to support you. Because you deserve that. And I’ve been thinking about what you said, you know, in the forest, and I know you’re right, I haven’t always done that as well as I should. So…”
It’s too much. The earnestness and the hand that’s moved to hold her ankle. The small scar above Kristen’s left eyebrow that moves when her brows crease. The fact that she’s finally saying all the right things, things Tracker’s ached to hear for months, but they’re prompted by words that were torn out of Tracker’s subconscious violently, painfully, against her will.
It makes an awful, wounded part of her want to lash out, want to drag her fingers into Kristen’s skin and rip, and that makes her want to vomit, want to cry, and it’s all just too fucking much.
“We’re fine, Kristen,” she says. Her voice comes out dismissive.
“But…”
“Just…look, don’t worry, okay? We’re fine. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be–”
“Stop telling me how I should feel!”
Kristen flinches.
Tracker’s eyes drop to Kristen’s torso. She takes a shallow breath. “Sorry.”
“No, I mean… It’s okay.”
“No, it’s– I shouldn’t talk to you that way. That shouldn’t be okay.”
“Babe, it’s fine, you’re going through stuff. I get it.”
Stop calling me babe! she wants to snarl. The thought guts her, more than a little bit, because that’s always been one of her favorite nicknames from Kristen—simple, classic, comforting. Maybe they aren’t okay. Maybe they like, really aren’t okay.
Instead, she grimaces and makes her tone carefully even. “Thanks.”
“We don’t have to talk anymore if you don’t want to. We can just sit.”
“Yeah.”
Quiet stretches between them again, more tense than before. A small red bird alights on a peak nearby. It fluffs its wings, chirruping out a song, and shuffles back and forth a couple times. Without warning, it dives off the roof. She catches sight of it as it swoops upwards again, joined now by a friend who must have been chilling in the eaves. Together, they dip and bob their way far out across the open field, disappearing into the tree line.
Tracker clears her throat. “Actually,” she lies, “I promised Uncle Jawbone I’d help out with dinner since Lydia’s still recovering. I should probably go start that.”
“Want a hand?”
“I think I got it. Thanks, though.”
Kristen nods, though her face has a wincing, almost vulnerable look to it. A furrow splits the difference between her pale eyebrows. As Tracker starts to get up, turning herself sideways and bracing her hand on Kristen’s knee for balance, Kristen’s mouth tries to slip sideways into a near smile, and she jokes, “Yeah, yeah, guess I’m not much help if it’s not corn dogs, huh.”
Tracker doesn’t laugh. She can’t lean into Kristen’s attempt to defuse tension when she herself feels like a limpet mine—like if she lets herself any closer to Kristen, she’ll clamp on and explode. She shakes her head and squeezes a hand over Kristen’s knee in some kind of attempt to communicate how fucking sorry she is. Then she stands, clambers over to the window, and slips into the Manor.
When she sneaks a glance back outside, all she can see is a mop of red hair, poking out from a lonely swaddle of hammock.