Chapter Text
“Excuse me, sir, are you lost?”
I blink at the Species standing before me in surprise. I am Vaughan, the Animal of Place. I cannot possibly be lost. And even if I was, no one reads me so easily but she’s somehow seen right through my Adjective facade. “How did you know?”
“Well, you’ve walked past here Number times with an increasingly Adjective name look on your face.”
Huh. I guess that would do it. “I’m looking for my friends.”
“Let’s get some food in you and you can tell me all about them.”
She leads me to a Adjective tavern on the Adjective side of town and orders me the Food and Beverage special. When I finish my first helping–I need at least Number–I’m a Verb ending in Ing young male after all–she says, “So tell me about them. Maybe I’ve seen them around.”
There’s six of us. We call ourselves the Noun.” I screw up my face and try to remember Adjective facts about my friends. “First there’s Gavriel. He’s big and blond and turns into a big Animal.” I hold up a second Part of the Body. “Then there’s Lorcan. He’s a little bit Adjective so maybe I don’t actually want to find him.”
She laughs and encourages me to go on. My Part of the body is full and adjective. It makes it easier to talk about my lost friends.
“Then there’s the twins. Fenrys and Connall. One adjective and one adjective. That’s the only way you can tell them apart. And finally…There’s Rowan.”
How to describe rowan. Adjective? Adjective? Adjective? None of that seems quite right. I start rambling
“Rowan’s got this mate, see? She’s a Noun breathing noun queen. And he Verbed his hair. And he’s got a face Noun. And he turns into a Animal. He’s so Adjective.”
When I look at her again, she’s got a Adjective look on her face. “Uh huh,” she says, one Part of the Body cocked. “Sure, Term of Endearment. I think I know where they are.”
I’m so excited to find them that I follow her out of the tavern and straight to a Noun with a sign overhead saying, “In-Patient Psychiatric Care.”