Archive of Our Own

‘Among the many fox magics her sobo had delighted in describing, the one that had most captured her imagination was the power to alter form. The most eldritch among foxes could turn (or so her grandmother would claim in that musical croak that was her storytelling voice) into human beings. Then they would creep into the lives of lonely and impressionable souls and offer them long-sought affection.’
- from 'The Trees' by Ali Shaw

If someone had told Grace a few months ago that not only would he find a way to save his whole planet, but that he would also get to stand inside an alien ship, he wouldn't have believed a single word. 

He also wouldn't have believed he could ever feel as happy as he is right now. He can barely hold back his smile as he walks—well, waddles, if he's being honest—into Rocky's ship. 

The flashlight in his hand shines across the xenonite, scattering rainbow light along the gold strings, and across the markings on the wall that, just like those on the Hail Mary, speak on behalf of those far away or long gone who's only wish is to be known. Grace takes as much of it in as he can, mesmerised. 

“What look like for Grace?” Rocky asks. 

Just like so many of the sights Grace has seen since waking up on the Hail Mary, he can't come up with any words that can truly express to Rocky the wonder and beauty around him. Not for the first time, he is reminded of a quote from one of his favourite movies: ‘they should have sent a poet’.

“It looks really beautiful, bud,” he says, knowing it'll never be enough. He leans towards one of the xenonite strings. “It's like an giant harp.”

“Grace can play, if like.”

Grace scoffs and gestures awkwardly at bulky suit enclosing him. “It's not gonna sound pretty.”

“Don't mind. Would like to hear the sound.”

Oh. Of course he does. Decades have gone by since this great instrument of ship has had another player; Rocky has not been able to listen to anyone but himself. Grace can't help but wonder with morbid curiosity what the ship had sounded like when the rest of the crew was alive. Would it have sounded like a symphony?

Well, he can't do a symphony, but he can at least do a tune.

The suit that Rocky made him might not grant him much dexterity, but the hands at least are fairly adjustable, with blocky fingers that move with his own. He presses them up against a few of the strings, and clumsily plucks at them in what is his best rendition of ‘Lean on Me’s opening notes. 

His best, of course, isn't great by any standard, but Rocky seems to like it all the same, shaking his hands as he chirrs happily. 

“Complete nonsense! Amaze!”

Right. Not an instrument. A communication array. “Guess jamming out wasn't on the table, huh.” He doesn't even wait for Rocky to speak before he is clarifying himself. “What I mean is I'm guessing you weren't allowed to use this to make music, since it was a tool to talk.”

“Not just talk. Also control system. Like buttons on Hail Mary; help with navigation, maintenance, ♪♫♩♪, many things.”

It's a bit harder to understand everything Rocky's saying without the translation program on hand, but they've spent enough time together now that Grace can still mostly get by without it. 

“Like a control web,” he says with a nod. “The vibrations signal other parts of the ship.”

“Yes!”

Grace considers the strings in front of him before grinning. “Beam me up, Rocky!” He goes to strum another one of the strings, but is stopped when Rocky frantically waves his claws.

“No touch! No touch!” he shouts, his voice high-pitched and quick. “Self-destruct line!”

With a yelp, Grace leaps away. Or rather, tries to; with the pressure suit enclosing him, there was no such thing as gracefulness (of which, he can admit, he already has very little to begin with). He staggers through his momentum, doing everything he can to keep himself from toppling over. After a few wobbly manoeuvres, he manages to steady himself. It was only then that he realises Rocky is laughing.

“Wait. Wait!” Grace points a finger at him. “That was a joke, wasn't it! You were joking!”

Rocky's tittering laughter grows louder.

“Wow.” Grace shakes his head. “Not cool.”

“But funny! Only human would think ship would have bomb.”

He grumbles. “...okay, maybe it's a little funny.”

Rocky waves for him to follow. “Come. More to see. Promise no more tricks.”

Grace wonders what the Eridian equivalent of crossing fingers behind your back would be, because whatever it is, he's pretty sure Rocky is doing it. Still, if enduring a few pranks are the cost of seeing the rest of the ship, he's happy to pay it. 

As they venture further in, something starts to tickle at the corner of Grace's perception. At first, he thinks it's little more than an itch on his nose, because they have a talent of always showing up when you can't scratch them. Eventually though, the whatever-it-is stops feeling less like an itch and more like the vibration of a tuning fork, buzzing away in his head. 

“Hey, Rock? What's that...” He can't quite find a way to explain what exactly it is he's feeling. It's not a sound, not quite, but it's also entirely visual either. Somehow, it's both at the same time. “That...hum?”

Rocky makes a few confused clicks that have no translation beyond expressing confusion. 

“I don't know how to explain it better than that, sorry,” Grace says. “It's...hold on.”

He turns back and forth, trying to see if he can find the source of the—sensation, maybe? Is that a better word?—strange humming. Somehow he does, not with his ears but with his eyes. His vision doesn't quite sharpen, but it does seem to...click into place as soon as he turns to his left. Like he's turned just the angle he needed to make an optical illusion line up just right. 

“It's coming from over there,” Grace says, pointing ahead of him. Somehow, even with all the chords and walls in the way, he can tell he's pointing in the right direction.

Rocky clicks his claws together. “Oh! Understand now,” he says. “That is north.”

“That’s...” He blinks. “Huh?”

“Grace bad memory. Told you this before. Blip-A has small magnetic field for Eridian comfort. That is what Grace is feeling.”

That does little to help Grace's confusion. “Is it, like, turned up to a 100 or something?”

“Need easier sentence.”

“I mean, is it on the highest intensity?”

“No. Low. Much lower than Erid magnetic field. More like Earth level.”

“But I can...feel it,” Grace says slowly.

“Yes. What is problem, question?”

Something else starts to creep into Grace's perception, except this time it's not pleasant or comforting. It makes him feel like there's something creeping up on him. 

“The problem is I shouldn't be able to feel it, Rocky.”

“Why not, question?”

“Because humans can't feel magnetic fields like you can. Not consciously, anyway. We didn't evolve any way to detect it, not like birds and foxes and—”

The monster that was creeping up on him finally pounces, and bites down deep. When the memories come gushing out, they come with all the viciousness of a flood, and he can do nothing more than be swept away with them, down down down into the dark. 

On the edge of the woods, not far from civilisation, there was a fox running for its life. It was not the first time it had been chased down by gunfire and it knew, with the resignation of the hunted, that it would not be the last.

The fox didn't stop running until the sound of gunshots no longer echoed in the air. Even then, it did not stay in the open, nestling itself low amongst a collection of thick bushes. There it waited and waited, ears and eyes alert to any movement that could be dangerous. 

But none ever came. The farmer, it seemed, had given up the chase. The fox sunk down to the ground, finally letting itself succumb to exhaustion.

It was so hungry. It had been for days, barely getting by on fruits and berries. But with the cold seeping in, even those were growing scarce. And so, against every self-preservation instinct it had, it let desperation drive it to one of nearby farms, one with plenty of chickens, plenty enough that the humans shouldn't have cared if one went missing. 

They had cared. Very much. 

The fox huffed. It hadn't even gotten to eat its kill. What a waste. But, at the very least, it had made it out alive. That was the most important thing.

It tentatively stepped out of the bushes, still on high alert as it peered around at its surroundings. There were some distant sounds of movements, but they were in the opposite direction to where the farmer had been. Probably a raccoon or—

A distant scream cut through the air. The fox scurried in terror back into its hiding place, curling its tail in close so that no one would see it. 

No one came running, nor did it hear any more screaming. Assured, it peaked its head out from the bush and sniffed the air. 

A sharp tang of blood caught on its nose.

It cocked its head, uncertain what to make of the smell. Blood could be as much as a promise of food as it was a warning of danger. On any other day, it would not have taken the risk. 

But it was so hungry. 

The fox followed the scent through the trees, down until it reached a small stream. It was there, on the edge of the water, that it found the source of the blood. 

It was a human kit. A very young one too, going by its size, barely bigger than the fox—which was only just on the brink of maturity itself—if it were to lie down beside the body. 

The fox stayed low as it ventured cautiously closer, only straightening up to full height when the kit did not react to its approach. It was only up close that the fox realised why. 

Despite the soft blue wool covering the kit's chest, it was easy to see that it was not breathing. The fox took in the blood on the stones beneath it, and how the kit's open eyes stayed still, even as the dappled sunlight cast down by the leaves above danced to and fro across its face. 

The fox had seen enough death in its short life—from the prey between its own jaws to the mad-death that had taken its own family—to know it when it saw it. The scream, it realised, was likely the last sound this kit had ever made. 

The fox sniffed at the dead human's face, first at its eyes and mouth, and then at the yellow fur atop its head. The tang of blood was strongest there, and the fox withdrew with a snort. It looked past the human, up the sharp incline that bordered the stream, up to the trail of distraction and blood that the human had left behind. It had fallen, and landed hard on the rocks, too hard for its squishy body to survive. 

The fox's investigation was interrupted by a crunch of distant footsteps. It startled to alertness, ears flicking back and forth as its legs braced for escape.  

A human voice shouted into the woods.

“Ryland!” 

It did not understand the word, but even so, it understood that a creature only risked making itself known to surrounding predators if it wanted its kin to hear it. It had to be calling for someone, calling for—

“Ryland!” the shout came again, sounding not unlike a wounded deer. Distress, the fox realised. The human was distressed, and searching for someone. 

The fox looked between where it knew the shouting human to be, and then to the young one that lay dead beside it, a terrible understanding washing over it.

The voice belonged to the kit's parent. A kit that was now dead. 

Humans did not take kindly to dead chickens. It was sure the death of one of their children would be far worse. It could not be here when the body was found. 

It went to run, in any direction other than that of the voice, but only made it a few steps before it hesitated. A small hesitation, barely more than a second, but enough to make it reconsider its choices.

It was to be the first of many great hesitations that would change the course of its existence. 

The distressed human did not yet know what it had lost, the fox thought. What if it never did?

It turned back to the dead kit, and considered something only a fox could ever consider.

(A snake might ponder it, yes, and an otter would certainly flirt with the idea, but neither would ever truly consider it. They loved the wild too much to ever leave it behind.)

There is a secret that all foxes keep, one they keep even from the deers and coyotes. It is an old secret, a secret so instinctual that it is remembered even when it is not told.

The fox knew, as every fox knew, the secret of transformation. To slip loose of red fur and yellow eyes and take on the form of a human. The life of a human.

It was not a choice to be taken lightly. A fox made human was a fox made tame, unsuitable for the wild. If it ever was to return, it would not live long, its life forever tangled in the one it had left behind. 

But then, it supposed, there was not much hope for it here to begin with. 

Humans had food. More food than they needed. They had warmth, and dens, big dens with plenty of space. But most of all, humans had safety.

It wanted that more than anything else. 

“Ryland!” the voice called again, closer now. “Baby, where are you!”

It wouldn't be long until the human found the trail down to its dead child. If the fox wanted a new life, a better life, it had to make the choice now. 

But of course, it already had. It'd made the choice as soon as it thought it.

The fox stared down at the human child, taking in its yellow fur, its blue eyes, its pale skin. It imagined its paws as the child's hands, its face as the child's face, its body as the child's body. And as it imagined, it felt its fur shiver, its bones shift. 

It felt itself change. 

With a cry—a cry that sounded so strange on its newly foreign tongue—it staggered upright, and looked down at itself. 

It was a fox no longer. 

It held up human hands, and curled the strange fingers open, close, open. It stomped its feet, and then jumped, wincing slightly when the rocks cut into its skin upon landing. This skin was delicate. It would have to remember that.

“Ryland! Please, please, come back to mommy!”

The fox's head snapped to the voice. The sound was duller with these ears, more muted, but it could still hear it clearly enough to know it was getting too close. It didn't want to be seen with the dead body. Any chance of safety would be gone if it were. 

It gave the kit one last look before it scrambled up the incline on its stolen hands and legs. It was difficult work, the fox clumsy on unfamiliar legs and arms that were clearly not made for running, and it received a few more cuts to its fragile skin in the process, but even so, it still made it to the top fairly quickly.

It was there that it finally spotted the other human. It was much taller than the young kit, and in turn, much taller than the fox, and at first, it drew back, the sound of guns still fresh in its mind. What if this human was cruel too? What if it was dangerous?

But then the human cried out in that distressed voice again, so desperate for its child, and those fears faded away. The fox would find safety here, it was sure. 

The human was batting frantically at branches, looking behind any crevice or nook it could find. In its frantic search, it did not hear the fox approach, not until there was only a few steps between them, and even then, it was only by accident. The human turned simply to start searching someplace else, and in doing so, finally noticed the fox’s presence. As soon as it did, it sprung up from the ground.

“Ryland!” it cried, no longer with that deer-like distress. “Baby!”

The adult human rushed over to it with a speed that was terrifying. The fox flinched back in panic, but did not have the chance to bolt before arms wrapped around it. It went stiff in the touch, shoulders rising up defensively, teeth bared and ready to bite at a moment's notice. 

But the human did not attack. It cradled the fox close to its chest, tight and desperate as it made a strange hiccuping sound. Fingers went up through the fox’s yellow fur, and damp cheeks rubbed at his forehead. 

“My sweet baby,” the human crooned. “You can't just run off like that. You scared your mommy to death.”

The fox thought of bloodied rocks, and let out a low whine. 

“Shh, shh, it's okay. You're okay.” The human withdrew from the embrace to check the fox over. Its wet eyes brimmed over as it noticed the cuts, but then its forehead wrinkled as it looked back up into the foxes eyes. “What happened to your clothes?’

The fox let out another whine. It barely understood what she was saying, and fear shivered across its skin. Would the human notice something wasn't right? That it was not the person it pretended to be? Would it be chased away again?

The human, it seemed, hadn't been expecting a response anyway, and just shook its head. “Oh, my poor baby. I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have taken my eyes off you.”

It cradled the fox close again. This time, it let itself sink into the embrace; even though it held none of the warmth of fur, there was still a comfort to it. 

“I'm so glad you're safe,” the human whispered.

The fox hadn't felt a kind touch like this in so long. 

“Safe,” it echoed. It was safe. 

The sun was going down when they arrived back at the human's den. It was a tall structure, squished up against many others like it, and while it was one of the smaller ones on the street, it was bigger than any burrow the fox had even seen. 

The human got out of the car and came around to where it was sitting and unbuckled it from the seat. The fox was glad for the help; it understood enough from watching the human take off its own restraint that all that needed to be done was to press the button, but unfortunately, the jacket the human had given it to cover up its body was far too big; its arms barely made it halfway down the sleeves.

Once the belt was unlatched, the human swept the fox up and carried it up hurriedly to the den. It was only once they were inside that the human slowed its pace, but it still did not put the fox down. 

“Let's get you cleaned up, okay?” it said.

The fox didn't answer. Most of the things the human said, it realised, weren't actually meant to be answered; the words were just a way to fill the silence.

And it was very silent in the den. There was no sounds of movement, no voices calling out in greeting. The fox looked around, confused. Where was the rest of the litter? Where was the human's mate? There were no signs of anybody else living here outside of the human and the golden-furred kit. It must have been the runt too, if it had remained here while its siblings moved on. Or maybe...maybe they'd all died too.

At least the adult was here, even if it was alone. 

The human took the fox upstairs to a room with fish-scale walls, and leaned over some kind of basin to turn a protrusion on the wall. The fox flinched back as water began to pour out of a tube, but its shock quickly abated. It leaned as far forward as the human's hold would let it, watching in awe as the water began to accumulate at the bottom of the basin. The human was making its very own pond!

As the water poured, the human set the fox down on the floor. "Let's get this off of you."

It took the big jacket away, leaving the fox's fragile skin bare. Free of the garment, it pressed itself against the edge of the basin to continue watching the water.

“Somebody's excited! Okay, baby, how many bubbles do you want?” the human asked with a smile. “Small, or big?”

The fox quirked its head. Bubbles? That wasn't a word it'd heard before. Given the adult's expression, it could only assume that whatever bubbles were, they were a good thing. 

“Big,” it said. 

It seemed to be the right response, because the human smiled wider and grabbed a few cylinders hidden behind one of the nearby little doors. It held them over the filling basin and poured from them something that wasn't water. 

It didn't take long after that for the fox to understand what bubbles were. It leaned over the edge and batted at the froth gleefully.

Its joy only grew in size when the human placed it inside of the basin. The water, to its delight and amazement, was warm. Very warm. No wonder humans were so eager to defend their territory, when they had marvels such as this to protect. It submerged as much of itself as it could, soaking in the man-made magic. 

The human let it soak quietly for a while, its smile soft as it watched on, but eventually, it held up a cup.

“Ready for a wash?” 

Again, no answer was expected. The human immediately dipped the cup into the water, and then poured it over the fox’s head, a few times over before it poured some sort of ooze into its hands. Before the fox could wonder what it was, the adult reached over and began to massage the substance into its hair. 

Oh. Oh, that felt wonderful. The fox went limp with contentment, and chirred happily. It could almost pretend it was a kit again, being licked clean by its guardian, safe and protected. Its joy fractured for a moment at the memory, and it held back a whimper; it didn't want to feel that sadness anymore. It had left that world behind for a reason. 

“Alright, close your eyes,” the human said. 

It needn't have asked; the fox’s eyes were already closed. Water was poured over its head again, sending the bubbles in its hair streaming down its face.

“Okay, all done,” the human said cheerfully. “Time to get out.”

The fox grumbled and sunk further into the water, which only made the human laugh. 

“Oh, being stubborn tonight, are you. Well, I know one way to get you out.”

The human batted away the bubbles to clear the water, and then reached down towards something at the bottom of the basin. With a tug, the thing came loose.

A gurgling sound began to fill the air, and the fox realised with disappointment that the warm water was draining away. The human's eyes drifted back over to the fox.

“There we—” it started to say, but its words were cut off by its own startled yelp. 

It toppled back onto the floor. The fox pressed itself to the edge to stare down at the human, who stared back at it with wide eyes.

The human eventually pushed itself upright, and cautiously returned to where it had been sitting beside the basin. Its gaze went straight to the water, first with fear, and then with confusion. 

“What—I—I swear I saw,” the human stammered. Then, in a quieter voice, it said, “No, don’t be stupid. Your eyes were just playing tricks.”

It looked between the fox and the fox's reflection in the draining water with a frown, before shaking its head and smiling weakly. 

“Sorry, honey,” it said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Mommy's just had a long day, that's all.”

Silence followed, punctuated only by the ambient woosh of water disappearing somewhere below the den. The human hesitated, and reached out to run its fingers through the fox's gold fur.

“Sweetie, are you okay? You've been so quiet.”

This time, the fox realised, an answer was expected. There was only one answer it knew to give. 

“Hungry,” it said. 

“Oh!” The human looked relieved at the response, its shoulders falling from the tense posture they'd be in. “Of course you are. I’m sorry, I should have given you something on the drive home. How does chicken and rice sound?”

The fox lit up. “Chicken?”

“Yes,” the human said, chuckling. “Come on, Ryland, let's go eat.”

It held out its hand. The fox took it without hesitation. 

The human world was a strange place, one that required a lot of adjustment. The fox's new human nose was practically useless, as was its hearing. It often stumbled, not just because of its weaker senses, but also because of the ridiculous feet it was now supposed to walk around on. How humans had become such great predators was beyond its understanding. They couldn't even feel the hum of the north to guide them, or see its gentle shadow when aligned with it. The fox kept seeking it out, only to find nothing. Those first few days without that familiar comforting presence was disorientating.

That was just one of the many things the fox didn't like about its new life. It didn't like how it wasn't allowed to explore on its own, or how what it could explore was made up of concrete and tar, or how it wasn't allowed to play-fight with human children. It had even been yelled out for biting once! It hadn't even bitten that hard. Mostly because human teeth were useless. 

It especially didn't like how its human guardian whispered to others that “he just been acting so differently lately” or “he looks at me like I'm a stranger sometimes”. The fox especially didn't like hearing her cry out for its lost mate late at night when she thought no one else would hear. 

But there were also many things it did like. Food being readily available was, of course, amazing, but it also really enjoyed baths—all those bubbles!—and watching movies and going to the beach to make sandcastles and explore the tidepools.

The fox liked best when the human read to it each night before it was time to sleep. It had taken some time for it to get used to falling asleep with the sun, rather than using the cover of darkness to hunt, but it found it did not mind. Not when it meant it got to hear a story. 

“‘But if you tame me,” the human said, holding the book in front of the two of them so that the pictures could be seen and the words read together, “it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.’”

With each story, the fox collected words. It understood more and more of what was said to it, and in turn, understood more about who it was supposed to be. 

“Good night, Ryland,” the adult human said after she'd finished reading, placing a kiss on its forehead. 

It knew now what that word was. At first, it was simply understanding, an acknowledgement of a term that it was referred by. But with each passing day, each bubble bath, each beach trip, each quiet moment snuggled up on the couch next to its guardian, that understanding shifted slowly into recognition. Into identity.

It wasn't just a name that it was called. It was a name that was his. 

Ryland smiled, and leaned into the kiss.

“Good night Mom,” he said. 

(And as he sunk deeper into the life he'd fallen in love with, he did not notice the fox he once was quietly slip out the back door.)

Ryland loved going to Golden Gate Park. Everywhere you went, there was something amazing. There was a carousel to ride on, a paddock full of bison, gardens of all kinds, of which the Botanical Garden was by far the best. There was just something about being surrounded by trees and flowers that made him feel at home, in a way that the rest of San Francisco never really could.

The Academy of Sciences was, of course, the best place not just in the Park, but in the whole world. It had a museum, an aquarium and a planetarium! It only took one visit for him to fall in love with the place, and no matter how many times Mom had taken him since, it was always exciting.

On this particular visit, he’d managed to persuade (which mostly involved saying ‘please’ many, many times) Mom to buy him a shirt from the shop that read ‘Earth, Ocean, Space’, with a picture of a t-rex, sting-ray and Saturn accompanying their connected word. He couldn’t wait to wear it all the time.

“Did you have fun?” Mom said, squeezing his hand in hers as she led them back through the park to where she’d left the car.

“Yes!” Ryland said, skipping along beside her. “I really liked what that man in the planetarium said about Polaris, and how it helps people find north. Can we try finding it tonight?”

Mom smiled. “Sure we can. If I remember correctly, we just need to look for the Big Dipper and it’ll point us the rest of the way.”

“It’s Ursa Major, Mom.”

She chuckled. “Right, of course, I'm sorry. Ursa Major.” Her hand came up to ruffle his hair. “My little astronomer.”

Ryland giggled, delighted. He raised his arm and—

He didn't see the dog coming for him until it was too late. 

There was a flash of white and copper leaping towards him before teeth bore down on his hand and bit down. Hard.

Ryland, driven by some strange instinct, let out a vicious screech, and swiped his other hand at the dog's face. It let go with a yip, which gave Ryland just the opportunity he needed to dash behind Mom. She didn’t let him stay there for long, sweeping him quickly up into her arms.

“Oh my god!” she shouted, her eyes wide as she turned her attention to his bleeding hand. She grimaced, but didn’t focus on the injury for long, her gaze darting back over to the dog growling ahead of them.

It wasn't a big dog—from its markings, it looked like some kind of Jack Russell—but it was still big enough that, if it wanted to, it could jump up and bite at Ryland’s dangling legs. With that realisation, he curled them up as high as they could go, wary. The dog, thankfully, didn’t come any closer, but it continued to growl, its teeth bared. A lead lay unattended next to it, still attached to its collar.

Before Ryland could wonder why, a man ran up to them, panting. “Holy shit, I'm so sorry.”

Mom shot the man a hard glare. “Is this your dog?” she snapped.

“Yes, and I’m s—”

“It bit my son!”

The man winced, and raised his hands apologetically. “I know, I—hold on, let me just...” He picked the dog up off the ground and stepped away with it. To the dog he said, “Bad girl! Bad bad girl! No biting people!”

The dog finally stopped growling, its ears folding back at the reprimand. Ryland, meanwhile, wriggled in Mom’s grip, no longer wanting to be up high now that the dog was as well. She obliged by setting him back on the ground. 

“Dogs are on leashes for a reason,” Mom said waspishly.

The man looked back over to them. “I know, I’m sorry, she just ripped herself right out of my grip,” he said, flustered. “I’m really so sorry, she's never like this. She's usually so gentle.”

As if to prove his point, the dog began to lick affectionately at his face, which only seemed to make the man more embarrassed. Despite the pain in his hand, Ryland couldn't help but find it endearing. Not the dog of course. That particular animal was much better enjoyed at a distance, he decided. No, it was the man’s drool-covered face and miserable expression that made him smile weakly.

“It's fine, Mom,” Ryland said. 

“It's not fine,” she said back, not even turning her fiery gaze from the man and his dog, as if she was saying it more to them than to Ryland.

“It doesn’t even hurt that much. I’ll be okay. Don’t be mad at him.”

Mom finally looked back at him, her expression conflicted. He smiled, hoping to reassure her that he really was alright. 

Eventually she let out a sigh, and turned back to the man. 

“Fine,” she said. “Just keep a better hold of the leash next time.”

“I will, I will,” the man said, nodding. He hesitated for a moment. “So... you're not going to press charges?”

“Just go,” Mom said flatly. 

“Yep, going.”

They watched the man and his dog rush off.

“Some people,” Mom muttered with a shake of her head once they were alone. Louder, she added, “Come on, let’s get back to the car. I should have some tissues in there.”

They made their way, at a much more hurried pace. All the while, Mom glanced around, as if worried that at any second another dog was ready to pounce. If Ryland was being honest, he was a bit scared of that too. Only once they were back inside the car did the two of them settle down. 

“Get the tissues from the glove box,” Mom told him. As soon as he had, she took a few and began to dab away at the blood on his hand. “It doesn't look like it'll need stitches, thank goodness. And the dog didn’t seem rabid, so at least we don't have to worry about that. I don't think I could afford—”

“What's rabid?”

Mom blinked, and then gave a wincing smile as she patted its head. “It's a bad virus animals can get, that they can give to us. That's why if you ever get bitten by a wild dog or fox, or any animal that's acting strangely, you come tell me, okay?”

“Fox,” he echoed quietly. He fiddled with his sleeves. “What kind of strange?”

Mom frowned. After a moment, she explained hesitantly. “It...changes how they behave, makes them more feral, more likely to bite. They become like zombies and die not long—oh honey.” 

She reached down and wiped at the tears on his cheeks. He hadn't even realised he'd begun crying. 

“I'm sorry, I know it's scary. I shouldn't have brought it up,” Mom went on. “I just want to keep you safe.”

Her voice was muffled, distant. His world had narrowed down to the scenes flashing before his eyes. He saw loving nuzzles that turned to bared teeth, guardians that had grown disorientated and vicious without any reason. In his fear, he had kept his distance, away from their strange, unnatural fury. His denmates did not. He had watched from afar, terrified as they all fell one by one.

(Many years later, a story of crewmates dying from something unseen would fill him with a kinship grief. At the time, he would not understand why.)

Right now, however, he did not feel afraid. He felt like something had finally clicked into place, in a puzzle he hadn't been able to see until now. A puzzle that wasn’t yet complete.

“—big day for the both of us,” he heard Mom say as he focused back onto his surroundings. “Why don't we go get some ice cream? That'll cheer you—”

“Can we go to the library on the way home?”

“Oh.” Mom looked surprised at the question. “I guess we can.”

Ryland bounced in his seat excitedly. “Yes, yes, thank you!”

Mom started the car, and drove back through the city to their house, turning off just before they reached their street to instead go to their local library. 

Once they were inside, Ryland ran up to one of the librarians and asked where to go to find what he was looking for. He was directed to 579, down in the science aisle. With a thank you, he darted off, Mom following helplessly after him. 

There were a lot of books to choose from, he discovered, many of which had very long titles with words he'd never even seen before. It was overwhelming, to say the least. 

He pulled out the first book that didn't have an intimidating name, and flipped it over to read the back. It promised that it would cover everything known about viruses, which meant it definitely would have what he was looking for. Excited, he held it up to Mom.

“Can I borrow this one?”

She leaned in, squinting. “‘Virology’?” she read out hesitantly.

“It’s about viruses. That's what you said rabies is.”

“Oh...um. Are you sure you want to get that book?” Mom asked with a grimace. “It might be a bit...grown-up for you, honey.”

“That’s okay. I have my dictionary for all the big words I don't know. Can I please get it?”

She hesitated. “...alright. So long as you promise you’ll tell me if any of it scares you.”

Ryland nodded, too eager to admit he was already scared. He just needed to know. 

An hour later, he was on his bed with the book laid out in front of him. He flipped through page after page until he found what he was looking for, in a table under the heading of ‘Rhabdoviridae of Animals of Plants'. 

Name of Virus: Rabies
Size (nm), mass, and shape: 170 x 70, 200 x 106 daltons, bullet-shaped
Hosts: Vertebrates
Comments: Lethal, cytotidal

His eyes lingered for a very long time on the word lethal, long enough for his eyes to water. 

He read through the rest of the chapter, and then flipped to a later chapter the book had directed him towards to learn more about rabies.

'The role of major traumas', the book said, 'is illustrated by the transmission of rabies through animal bites.'

Further along was written: 'At present, foxes have become overabundant in Europe and represent a dangerous reservoir in the spread of rabies, but in America, skunks and bats are now the most frequent transmitters of this disease.'

A strange sense of relief rushed through him as soon as he finished reading the words. It wasn't exactly the happy kind of relief, like when he got to snuggle with Mom on the couch. It felt more like the relief he felt when he finally figured out an answer to a hard question on his math homework. The relief of understanding.

(There was nothing he could have done to save them. There was nothing wrong with being the only one to survive, the only one to run. The fear that he was ashamed of was the same fear that had kept him alive.)

Even in his relief, he found he did not want to stop reading. He wanted to know more, not just about rabies, but of the other viruses too. Yes, it was scary, but it'd be scarier if he didn't understand it. The more he knew, the less unknowns he would have left to be afraid of. He could be prepared. And so, he read on, learning more and more about the hidden microbial world. 

The reasons for his curiosity faded with each page, but the curiosity itself never did. 

Ryland dreamt of running amongst trees. It was a dream he'd had many times, in many different ways. Sometimes, he was chasing after something; other times, he was the one being chased.

But in the end, he always found the body by the stream, and everytime, he did not recognise who it was until he was staring right at his own face. 

This time, however, the dream did not end with the horror of seeing himself dead. It lingered, letting him take in the blank stare, the blood-splattered rocks, the tragedy of it all. 

Somewhere faraway, he could hear Mom calling. She would find him soon. She would find the body. He needed to find her before it was too late, before she discovered what was wrong (with him, there was something wrong with him).

He took a step, his feet splashing in the water. He looked down, nothing more than a glance, but then he froze.

A fox stared back at him from the reflection. He flinched back, and watched in terror as the creature copied him. 

No, no, that wasn't him. He was real. He was Ryland Grace and he was real, he was—

"Liar," the fox whispered without moving its mouth. "This life isn't yours. You don't deserve it."

Ryland scrambled away from the stream, leaving the body and the reflection behind him. He ran and ran, but he never could get away. The fox was always there, dogging him with every step. After all, the one thing you can never escape is yourself.

Even monsters knew that.

Ryland jerked awake, his heart thudding.

Once he was able to catch his breath, he looked around his room. It was still fairly dark, everything cast in the monochromatic shades of pre-dawn blue, though it wouldn't be for much longer. The birds had already started twittering outside in preparation of the sun's imminent return. Ryland sat up, rubbing his eyes, and took a sip of water from the cup on his side-table.

Before he set it back, he looked down into it, taking in his reflection. Blue eyes peered back at him from a face he knew to be his. He sighed and put the cup back where it was. 

He was so sick of that dream. He shouldn't have to keep living through twisted versions of that memory over and over and...wait...

Memory?

He frowned, unsettled at his own thought. Was it a memory? He turned over the question in his mind. It felt like it could be—it was so vivid, more vivid than any other dream he'd ever had—but...but maybe he was just remembering it all wrong.

Other children pretended to be animals all the time; what if he'd exaggerated those memories of play until he believed something that wasn't true, that couldn't be true. People didn't just turn into foxes. He'd learnt enough from school to know that's not how the world worked. Gravity was real, atoms were real, bacteria, radiowaves, photosynthesis, those were all real. They had been proven time and time again to be real. 

But magic? Magic was for stories. Magic had no evidence.

At least, no evidence yet. Humans hadn’t known about the existence of viruses until the late 1800s, almost a hundred years after the first vaccine was invented to fight against them. Even though those scientists had lacked the technology to be able to see viruses with their own eyes, experimentation had provided them the evidence they needed to understand that the microorganisms were there. 

Ryland nodded to himself. Okay then. An experiment.

If the dream was real, he would be able to turn himself into a red fox. That would prove all of it was true. 

If it wasn't real...well, then it wasn't real. Nothing would change, beyond finally knowing for certain it had all been a dream. 

He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine himself as a fox. At first, he tried to see the scene through the animal's eyes, but he quickly found himself drifting into a role of an observer. He pictured it the way he'd seen it in books: labelled with information. 

Vulpes vulpes, he thought, part of the Canidae family. Omnivores with retractable claws. Can vocalise using 5 octaves, and have incredible hearing. Able to detect Earth's weak magnetic field. Roughly the size of a large cat. A symbol of cunning and trickery across the world. The target of dog hunts throughout history. A human's new fur coat. An unwanted pest.

(A lonely creature, tired of running. Orphaned before it was ready to leave, scared of the ones it was supposed to love. Desperate for shelter, for safety. Hungry, always hungry. Afraid, afraid, afraid—)

Ryland blinked out of the scene.

He looked down at his hands. 

His very human hands. Because of course they were. It had always been the most logical conclusion, after all.

Ryland shook his head with a laugh. It really had only ever been a product of his imagination. Why had he ever thought otherwise?

(It's funny how easy it is to believe something when you want it to be true.)

The night of the news report was the same as many that had come before: Ryland lying on the floor as he finished off his homework, and Mom on the couch, watching the television. He was excited for the movie scheduled to play afterwards, and hoped that he would be able to persuade Mom to let him stay up to watch all of it.

It was the same as any night, until it wasn’t.

“—a boy's body was found in Redwood Regional Park today,” the newsreader on the TV said. “We’re told the discovery was made by a hiker’s dog after it ran off the track. According to the park rangers and police investigating the scene, the body appears to have been there for at least a few years given its deterioration, but the exact time of death—as well as the identity of the boy—is yet to be determined.”

Ryland's vision went hazy. The voice continued to drone on the facts: blunt force trauma from a fall. Dressed in a blue sweater. Resting at the edge of a stream. If anyone has any information, please come forward. 

Something about it all itched at his mind like a scab, but he flinched away, not willing to scratch away and see what lay wounded underneath. It was only when the news report switched to something else that Ryland managed to shake the sensation. He quickly returned to his homework, content to drift back into the comfort of numbers.

A sob, however, drew him from his focus. He frowned, and looked over to Mom.

Her eyes were fixed on the screen, wide and unseeing, not even blinking as tears fell down her cheeks. Her breathing was fast, almost frantic, and a sick feeling lodged itself underneath Ryland’s rib at the sight. 

“Mom?” he said. “What's wrong?”

If Mom had seemed still before, now she was completely frozen, not even daring to breathe. An old memory whispered in Ryland's mind of rabbits freezing in place so that they would not be noticed. Unnerved, he shook the memory away. 

“Mom?” he said again, pushing himself up off the ground.

She flinched back from him, so hard that she collapsed off the side of the couch. 

“Mom!” Ryland cried out, rushing over to help her. 

She scrambled out of his reach, the white of her eyes exposed.

“No, no, don't!” she snapped. “Don't touch me!”

Ryland stopped in place. “Mom? What—”

“Get away from me!” she said with such viciousness that he leapt back in fright. 

Anger was bad. Anger was dangerous. Anger was something to get far away from, and so he did, backing away with his arms hugged to his chest.

(You don't belong here.)

The sick feeling beneath his ribs grew and grew until it felt like his lungs and stomach had been swallowed up. Breathing became hard. Trying to keep his tears at bay became impossible.

“Did...did I do something wrong?” he whimpered.

(You don't deserve forgiveness for what you've done.)

No answer ever came. Mom continued to stare at him, her eyes burning with the rage of something threatened. The expression only made him tremble more, so he lowered his head and kept his gaze instead on the floor.

They stayed like that for a long time. All the while, Ryland's thought hissed and spat at him cruelties he didn't want to hear.

(Imposter. Shouldn't be here. Wrong. Don't deserve this life. Selfish. Useless. You dumb animal, why did you ever think you could be loved? You're not even real.)

Eventually, footsteps broke through the cacophony, and from the corners of his vision, Ryland saw Mom approaching him. He stepped back, wary, but he didn’t make it far before she was standing in front of him.

She tentatively reached a hand out, and he could not help his own flinch as it pressed into his cheek. His eyes darted up to meet hers; there was no anger in her gaze anymore, but neither was there any affection in them, no fondness. Everything familiar had been stripped from her; she looked at him as if he was a stranger. That particular thought only made the nausea in his stomach worse.

“You're not my baby,” she whispered, trailing her fingers down his face like a scratch too slow to hurt.

Ryland's heart thudded with a fear he did not understand, and he glanced at the closest door, comforted by the possibility of escape. 

As if sensing his thoughts, Mom took hold of his shoulders. “But you're all I have left.”

She pushed him to her chest and cried, harder than he'd ever heard her cry before. He wanted to sink into the embrace, but something about the way she was holding him, as if he was a toy she couldn't throw away, left him tense and unsure. 

All the while, she murmured through her tears, “I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone.”

The rest of the night passed in a terrified and disorientating blur.

And though Mom never stopped loving him, she never looked at him the same way after that night. There was always a distance to her affection, an obligation to it, as if she was smiling at an acquaintance she had no choice but to keep around. 

Long after that night fell away into the faraway place where his dreams lay, Ryland never shook the terrible understanding that, wherever he went, he would never be good enough.

Given enough time, a river can shape rock and earth into something new, something almost unrecognisable from what it once was. It will wear away the ground until there remains only a canyon in its place. Only the traces of erosions left behind by the change would prove that it once had been something else.

For Ryland, though he did not know it, humanity was like a river. It eroded away the wild parts of him. Instincts once deeply engraved into his body disappeared, replaced with the muscle memory of pages between fingers and bouncing feet when a good song started to play. Memories of hunting rabbits in the grass sunk under the weight of late nights studying and arguments with scientists who discredited him at every turn until he could not take the humiliation anymore. When he was driven out of academia, he could not understand why it made him think of gunshots and hunger.

Eventually, even the dreams that plagued him as a child faded away, and in time, Ryland forgot entirely that he'd ever known any other life than this one. That he'd ever been anything else. 

But he still carried the traces with him.

He didn't think much of the constant alertness of his body, always ready to flee at any sign of danger, no matter how small it was. He simply chalked it up to an anxiety disorder that he couldn't bother getting diagnosed.

He didn't think much of his need to always know there was food in his house to eat, or the need to distance himself whenever someone became uncharacteristically angry. Everyone has something they're a little fretful about for no good reason.

He didn't think much of his preference for solitude, and his contentment with being alone. Not like being an introvert was that weird. And besides, it was just easier to keep people at an arm's length. Easier, and safer.

He didn't think much about the odd sensation of being out of place in every room he went into, or of the feeling that he was doing this whole human thing wrong. Lots of people felt that way! It wasn't unusual. 

He didn't think much of the foxes he collected. A keychain here, a trinket there. When he found a cardigan with foxes knitted into it, he simply took the swell of nostalgia and wistfulness as little more than appreciation of the design. 

He didn't think much of any of it at all, until the day he had to. 

On the edge of the civilisation, not far from the woods, there was a man running for his life.

Even in his terror, Ryland knew he wouldn't get far. He could hear all too well the feet chasing after him, and how they were steadily closing in. Despite knowing this, he still ran. It was all he could do in the face of the inevitable.

He didn't even make it to the fence before he was sent crashing to the ground. Hands pushed down on him, and he bucked and squirmed against them, his breath wheezing as he tried and tried and tried with everything he had to escape. But he couldn't break free. 

He was going to die, he realised with mounting horror. He was really going to die. 

“Please don't,” he pleaded, hoping at least one of them would listen. "Please, please, I don't—I don't want—no, no, no, stop!”

He could see a doctor approaching, needle at the ready. Ryland clawed at the ground beneath, barely able to breathe. 

Like some cruel joke, he saw what lay just out a reach; a hole in the fence, a promise of escape now impossible. What made it all the crueler was that he never would have been able to fit through it anyway. He would have been left to scrabble and claw at what lay on the other side, never able to make it any further. 

And yet, even knowing it could not help him, his eyes stayed fixed on the gap. It was if the exposed wires were scratching at his mind, digging away at the panic to find what lay underneath. Something that had been hidden for a long, long time.

When his body began to change, he did it without thought, without intention. It was nothing more than instinct, old and forgotten and discarded until it was needed again. 

His flesh rippled, twisted, tightened down down down until he was small, until he was fast. He bared his sharp teeth and screamed. 

The guards yelped back in surprise, giving him just the opportunity he needed to slip out of his tangle of clothes and out of their grasp. 

He darted away, faster now, towards the escape that was no longer impossible.

He squeezed himself through the gap in the fence, not caring about the pain of the wires, or of the strange shape of the body. All he cared about was getting the heck out of here.

He ran as quickly as his legs could take him across the golden fields. Above him, a rainbow shone in the sky ahead of him, as if it were guiding him to safety. The colours were all wrong though, made up of blues and yellows and greys in a way that was disorientating, so instead he focused instead on the horizon, and to the distant tree-like shapes he could see there. 

Eventually, just as he hoped, the field gave way to a small forest. Once he reached the treeline, he finally dared to turn around and see if any of the base's guards had chased him. 

There was nobody, not even in the distance. He'd made it out. He'd actually made it out.

Maybe tomorrow, he'd celebrate that. Right now, he was exhausted down to his bones. He fell to his stomach, panting from the exertion. It was only there, finally assured of his own safety, that he let himself look down at his body. 

“What the hay,” he said. Or rather, tried to say. All that came out was a garbled whine. 

Because of course it did. He'd turned into a fox. You know, as one does. 

This couldn't be real. No way. This had to be some kind of coma dream, right? Because, seriously, a fox? That wasn't something that happened. That was for fairy tales and DnD campaigns, not real life. 

Maybe they really had sedated him back there, and he'd just imagined—through the sheer power of dream logic—that he'd shapeshifted into a fox and made a miraculous escape. Yeah, that had to be it. This was just a really weird dream.

But what if it wasn't? What if he really was free?

He raised one of his arms—feet? foreleg?—and, in lieu of pinching himself, bit down on it. 

Ryland yelped, surprised by the sharpness of his own teeth. Then, once he'd shaken out his hand—paw, whatever—he let out a hysterical laugh, the pain proving exactly the hypothesis that made the least amount of sense. This was real, and he really was a fox.

Sure. Okay. Today was already terrible, might as well add scientific impossibilities on top of everything else. Not like he needed a second to deal with all the other traumatic experiences he'd had in the last 12 hours or anything. 

Still, even as the logical parts of him jabbered on in terrified confusion, he found he didn't feel particularly unsettled by the change. 

This strange inhuman body wasn’t his but it felt...strangely fitting. Like he’d put on a new jacket that was exactly his size. When he looked at his paws, he still expected to see human fingers, but the claws did not startle him as retracted them in and out. When he took a step forward, it felt as natural as walking upon two feet did. Wagging his new tail was no harder than waggling his tongue.

He noted other changes with fascination. His sense of smell was, honestly, kinda overwhelming. There were far more smells than he knew how to handle. And oh man, his hearing. He could hear so much. The trees rustling all around him, a bird jumping through the branches several yards away, even something small scuttling amongst the underbrush.

His eyesight was...well, actually, not as great as he’d expected. He was so used to things up close being blurred, and anything distant being clear, but now, it was opposite; the horizon was a mass of shapes, while he could see everything within a few paces of him with incredible clarity, especially the vegetation that was swaying in the wind. Sure, it was all dichromatic, a fact made all the more obvious by the fact that the trees around him were all an odd, vaguely putrid shade of yellowy-grey, but it was definitely a fascinating difference. From what he remembered about foxes, his vision would become much better come night-time.

There was another odd thing about his vision he couldn’t help but notice; there was a strange shadow that seemed to appear whenever he turned a certain direction. He turned around and around, experimenting with it, and yep, it was always the same direction. He looked to where the sun lay over the western horizon, on its way to setting. Which made the direction of the shadow...

Oh! Of course! North! It was north!

“Magnetoreception!” Ryland cried.

Once again, it came out as a garbled sound, but that didn’t matter. He had magnetoreception! He wasn’t seeing a shadow, he was detecting the Earth’s magnetic field! The very tool that foxes used to hunt for hidden prey. What other human could say they’d experienced that?

Human...

His elation faded, and he looked at his paws. Paws that he shouldn’t have, on a body he wasn’t supposed to be in.

Was he even human anymore? Had he ever been—

Nope, nuh-uh, he was not going there! He shook his head with a huff.

What he needed to focus on right now above anything else was finding a place to see through the quickly-approaching night. Beyond that he’d...well, he’d figure out the construction of that bridge once he got to the river.

He looked around for somehow to go, before remembering, oh right, I’m a fox. He instead took a sniff of the air, hoping he’d be able to decipher something from the miasma of scents. Something strangely familiar caught his attention, and he turned his head in the direction it was coming from.

He kept sniffing at the air as he walked, turning whenever the smell grew faint. Eventually, he got close enough to see the source.

A fox. It was another fox!

Ryland called out his best attempt at an excited greeting as he ran over to meet it. He knew logically it was a bad idea to approach wild animals, but right now, he was a wild animal too; maybe he could talk with it. That was if he could talk to it. He wasn’t entirely sure how that was going to work. Maybe it would be just like the movies and he’d somehow understand it in perfect English. 

Upon seeing him, the fox went tense, and made a series of clicking grunts that, believe it or not, did not translate into perfect English. Well, there went that theory. Thanks Hollywood. 

Alright, so maybe Ryland couldn't understand it, but maybe it would understand him. Surely he could speak some fox.

“I don't know what you're saying,” he said as he got closer to it.

What came out was exactly what a fox would sound if it were trying to speak English, which was to say a lot of grating whines and growls just barely resembling the shape of words in a mouth that couldn’t physically speak them.

The fox, understandably, didn’t appreciate the nonsense thrown its way. It shied away, hackles up. That, at least, Ryland could understand. 

You are wrong, that pose said, you are not supposed to be here. You don’t belong.

Ryland could almost laugh. “Well, this is familiar,” he muttered, the bitter words coming out in a series of strange grunts.

The fox opened its mouth and let out a piercing screech. Before Ryland could try to respond, it reared up on its hind legs and slammed down onto him, teeth biting down on his neck. He let out a pained cry and darted away, out of its reach. On instinct, his ears folded down, and he lowered his body, trying to make himself as small as he could.

Turns out he could speak some fox after all; all it took was a bit of fear.

The other fox didn’t attack again, but neither did it back off. It loomed over him, its mouth open and showing off its sharp teeth. It was a threat, and a warning.

For the second time that day, Ryland ran.

He ran until he could no longer smell the fox, and even then, he kept moving for another minute or so just to make sure he was far enough away that it wouldn’t come after him and try to finish off the job. By that point, the sun had long since set, the world around him was dark. He couldn't find the awe he had found earlier to be amazed by the vivid details of his night vision; it was simply a tool to get him where he needed to go.

The wonder of his fantastical escape had long since faded, the reality of his situation having finally creeped up on him. Stratt had (forsaken, betrayed, hurt) marked him as a sacrifice, as someone expendable. He may have made it out alive, but he would be hunted for the rest of his life. Fox or human, he would always be running.

He was never going home again, was he?

Ryland lay down amongst the fallen leaves, and let out a long screech, on and on until he ran out of air. It was all he could do in this body to release the cacophony inside him. No matter how much he whimpered and panted, his eyes stayed infuriatingly dry. They weren’t made for crying, not in the way humans did. They weren’t made for that kind of sorrow.

Eventually, he went silent, his emotions all hollowed out. He curled up in the place he’d laid himself down, not caring enough to try and find shelter, and closed his eyes, hoping in time he’d forget the world he’d left behind.

(Coward, you let them all down, just like always, why can't you ever be better? Why can't you ever be the person everyone wants you to be?)

It was always easier to forget.

Two nights later, Ryland stood at the edge of the woods, his eyes fixed on the distant base. He couldn’t make much of it out with his vision, even in the dark, but he still recognised the shape of the rocket that would be taking humanity’s last hope up to the ISS, and then eventually to the Hail Mary.

He’d tried. He’d tried so hard not to think about it.

But he’d always hated not knowing, and right now, he didn’t know if humanity was going to be okay.

The launch was tomorrow. Or, rather, it was supposed to be. Stratt had been so insistent on the schedule, constantly reminding everyone of what a few weeks delay, or even a few days, would cost them in human lives years down the line. It was why she hadn’t even considered waiting after the explosion. It was why she’d...she'd...

Ryland let out a breath. If Stratt was so determined to make the launch, then she would have found someone else.

Yet, not many times he reassured himself of that, he couldn’t stop the uncertainty that blared in his head. An uncertainty that was becoming terrifyingly close to guilt. Because if Stratt couldn’t find anyone else, and they didn’t launch on schedule, that would mean that he would be the reason thousand of—

No! No, it wouldn’t come to that. They would have found someone. Someone who was more capable than him, someone who would actually be able to see the mission through. Everything would turn out fine.

He just needed a little reassurance, that's all. Go in, confirm they found their new science officer, and then leave, for good this time. Then he could move on, safe in the knowledge that he hadn't ruined everything. That humanity would be okay without him. 

He took in a steadying breath, and made his way back across the field. He did not run. He tried to pretend it was because he wanted to stay quiet, but the thudding heartbeat in his chest made the lie hard to believe. 

As he got closer to the fence, each footstep got more difficult. It wasn't because the ground had gotten any more hazardous; with his improved night vision, that was hardly a problem. No, it was because each step felt like one more towards the edge of a cliff. It took all his willpower to keep going. 

His willpower, unfortunately, was no match to his fear. He stopped just outside of the fence, panting and whimpering. It might as well be a raging inferno, its presence enough to make him shy away. He tried to take another step forward, but immediately flinched back, the memory of hands pressing him down loud in his head. 

He lowered his body with a whine. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it. Not even to reassure himself of humanity's future.

(Useless. You are useless and weak and selfish and a murderer, murderer, MURDER—)

“Stop!” he keened, shaking his head, desperate to get the thoughts out of his head. 

They would find their solution. They would. They had to. There were other people, better people, braver people, people who wouldn’t cower at a god damn fence. That person would be the hero; they would be the one who would save everyone. 

It couldn't all be resting on him, it couldn't be all his fault—a quarter of the population—all his fault—thousands of animals and plants will go extinct—all his fault—the planet will be destroyed and it was going to be all his—

“I said stop!”

Except, he hadn't said it. He couldn't. All he could do was whine and whimper like the animal he was. He stumbled back on unsteady legs.

By the time he heard the click of the mechanism under his paw, it was already too late to escape. 

Jaws snapped around his wrist. In his fright, Ryland screeched, and instinctively tried to tug himself out of the unrelenting grip. All it did was send him toppling to the ground. 

Once he got his feet back underneath him and steadied himself, he inspected what his front leg was caught on.

It was a trap. A fox trap. 

Ryland's heart sank. 

They'd left this for him. They'd been waiting. The only reason they would have been waiting for him to return was if they needed him, if they had no one else to choose. Which meant if they found him here, they'd—

Ryland retreated from the thought, his breaths turning to whimpers. Oh god. He shouldn't have come back. He should never have come back! He was such an idiot! 

(He knew, though, that he wouldn't have made any other choice. This life, this world, the people in it, he loved it so fiercely that—even on the brink of his own freedom—he could not help but turn around to face it.)

He tugged and tugged at the restraint, to no avail. Even with the rubber jaw, the pressure on his leg ached, his frantic movements only exacerbating the pain. 

You're not some dumb animal. Think, Ryland. 

He swallowed a deep breath, and forced himself to still. It was hard, his body and mind both teetering dangerously on the edge of blind panic, but he managed to wrangle some semblance of coherence within himself. He regarded the trap analytically, searching for some means to break free.

There was a lever on the side, he realised. It had to be the release mechanism used to open the jaws and rearm the trap. If he pushed it down, he could get the trap to open. There was only one issue. There was a small lock keeping the lever in place; he didn't need to consider it very long to understand that his teeth and claws would be useless at detaching the lever from it.

Only human hands could manage it.

Human hands he didn't currently have. 

He groaned. Okay. Okay, it was still something to work with. He'd turned into a fox when being human kept him from escaping. Now he had to do the same thing, just the other way around. 

Problem was, he had no idea how he'd changed into a fox. It had just...happened. Like it was instinct or something. Becoming human again, it didn't feel like instinct. It felt like an intention. A choice. 

He didn't like what that meant. 

Don't think about that. Think about getting out. Think of being human. 

He closed his eyes. He imagined his hands, with all their scars and nicks he'd gotten over the years. He imagined his hair, always in disarray, and he imagined his eyes, slightly lopsided. He imagined everything he could remember about himself, about his body. Everything that made him him. 

And slowly but surely, he began to shift. 

The pressure around his wrist grew and with it the pain, enough to make him wince. To his relief, the trap bent ever so slightly open as his transformation pushed against the jaws. Even so, it still wasn't enough to break it apart. 

Good thing his other hand was free. He reached over to the release mechanism, and deftly undid the lock with his fingers. Once the lever was free, he pressed it down. 

The jaws opened up, and he did not hesitate to pull his hand free. He cradled it to his chest, grimacing. That was going to bruise for sure. 

He looked up from the trap and—wow, it was dark. Had it been this dark before? 

Oh. Right. Human eyes, human-levels of crappy night vision. He could barely make out anything beyond a few yards, his eyes still yet to adjust. At least he could see his hands and—oh, look at that, he was naked too. Wonderful. 

Maybe becoming a fox again was the best idea here; yes, it would make getting out of any traps harder, but at least he'd be able to see enough in the dark to avoid any others, and fast enough to get away from anyone looking for him. Then, all he needed to do was run back to the forest, and hope their hunt wouldn't follow him that far. He could live off berries and grasses until he found the courage to actually hunt something, and then eventually find somewhere he could be human again, away from the prying eyes of others.

Okay. Good. He had a plan. First step: figure out exactly how he was supposed to change back into a—

A gunshot sounded through the air.

There was no time to react. Ryland barely managed to turn his head towards the noise before he felt something pierce his shoulder. 

He flinched away, terrified at first that he'd been struck by a bullet, only to frown when he noticed that instead of blood, there was something sticking out of where he'd been hit. Dazedly, he reached up to pluck it out.

It was a tranquilizer dart. The same kind that a zookeeper would use. He looked between it and the fox trap, his stomach swirling with dread. Was that what they saw him as now? Nothing more than an animal?

(You deserve this, you deserve this, you—)

He threw the dart to the ground and got to his feet, tilting dangerously to the left before he could get himself stable. He stumbled forward, no longer caring where he was headed so long as it wasn't here. Each step was wobblier than the last, and he swayed, eyes fluttering. 

He needed to get away. The farmer was going to catch him if he wasn't quick enough, and he knew all too well what happened to foxes that weren't quick enough.

Fox. Fox. Right. He was supposed to be that. That’s what he was. Wait, no, no, it was just something he could become. Some magic that had helped him to escape. He wasn't actually a fox. But then why could he remember being hunted by farmers? Why did being a fox feel so natural? Why was it all so familiar?

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. All he wanted was to get away, and right now, being a fox was the best option. Even if it meant accepting he was never going back to the life he knew. That he'd never belong anywhere ever again. 

He reached as best as he could to the fear that had driven him to shift in the first place. Let me be a fox, he thought. Let me live. Let me—

(Coward, coward, you're a coward, you should be ashamed, you don't deserve to—)

—live, please let live.

He opened his eyes, and let out a cry of anguish when he saw his hands were still infuriatingly human.

He tried again and again, but his desperation could not overcome his growing disorientation; the power kept slipping out of reach, his mind in too much of a haze to keep the form firm in his mind. 

He dug his hand into the dirt and let out a whine, and—Oh. Dirt? Was he on the ground? He couldn't remember falling over.

Voices shouted in the distance, and he realised foggily that he could also hear footsteps, rushing in from every direction. Rushing in towards him. 

Well, here’s some déjà vu, his groggy mind supplied morbidly as he slumped to the ground, unable to hold himself up any longer. 

It wasn't long until he was surrounded. The guards approached like predators, ready to pounce. With the last of his energy, Ryland scrabbled away from their outstretched hands.

“No, no, don't touch me!” he screeched. 

They didn't even have to run to catch him. He was forced back down to the ground, in the same way they'd done before, as if the events of two days had simply been a rehearsal for the real thing. This time, when Ryland struggled, he bared his teeth and nails, willing for them to sharpen. He managed to get a few scratches in, but his hands remained blunt and useless. 

(Useless, always useless. You're not good enough to save Earth; you can't even save yourself. Everyone will die and it will be All. Your. Fault.)

"No," Ryland moaned. Then, angrier he said, "No! No! I won't let you kill me! I won't—"

“Hold it down!” someone over his head cried. 

Ryland's vicious struggling faltered as that one word rang in his mind: it. It. That animal. That thing. 

(Look at you; you're no better than a rabid animal.)

“I'm a person, I'm a person,” he tried to say, but his mouth, despite its human shape, managed little more than a wheeze. 

They wouldn't have listened anyway. He wasn't a person to anyone anymore; he was just a means to an end. 

(You deserve this—useless—you coward—dumb, rabid animal—murderer—you deserve this!)

He stopped fighting after that. He didn't have the strength to even try anymore. 

At least in this body he could cry. 

He let his focus drift past the hands forcing him down, and instead focused on the world beyond. The sun was peeking on the horizon, the first slivers of its light breaking through the darkness. He wouldn't be awake to watch it rise. But the stars, at least, still shined for him. 

He desperately searched the sky until he found what he'd been hoping to see. Polaris, the north star. A guide to astronomers and sailors and anyone in need of direction for millennia. He did not let his gaze waver from it even as his vision grew hazy, and his own body turned against him. 

When he slipped away into darkness, the north was there to see him off, one last time. 

Finally, finally, the past loosens its jaws and lets Grace free. He stumbles up against the xenonite strings that make up the wall beside him, sending a discordant harmony through the ship.

In that moment, all he can manage was a disorientated “oh.”

Rocky's voice begins to filter in, a panicked quality to his chirps. It sounds like he's been calling out to Grace for a while. 

He takes in his surroundings in a daze. Nothing has changed in the few minutes he was adrift in his memory. Nothing has changed, except for him.

“Can we go back to my ship?” he says, his voice distant, even to his own ears. 

Rocky warbles a response, but Grace's mind is too jumbled to even attempt to understand the words. He shakes his head.  

“I need to go back.”

Rocky hesitates. He says something else, this time with a questioning stomp, but Grace can't even manage an answer this time. He just turns and begins to wobble his way back. 

The return journey to his ship might as well be a dream, the kind that fades quickly upon waking. He doesn’t remember any of it by the time he's passed through the airlock and back in the Hail Mary. He doesn't even notice Rocky is gone until he is rolling back in his ball, his words once again accompanied by a nearby translation. 

“Need help out of suit, question?” Rocky asks.

Grace doesn't answer. 

Rocky waits, but eventually, seems to realise he won't be getting a response. He approaches cautiously, and pushes his claws up through the exchange panel to press down on the locks and mechanism that keep the suit enclosed. Soon enough, it folds open, and with nothing left to hold him up, Grace slumps out of it onto the floor. 

“Grace!” Rocky cries.

He rolls frantically around Grace's fallen body, his claws tapping anxiously as he tries to figure out what to do. Like he can fix this. Like he can help. 

Up until now, everything around Grace had been underwater, muffled and distant. But seeing his friend, the only friend that he has left, distressed over him, is enough to finally break the numbness. 

Grace sobs. 

Once he starts, he can't stop. Tears pour down his face, hot and messy, and he curls in on himself as he tries fruitlessly to stop his shoulders from shaking. 

“Grace!” Rocky calls, his tapping only getting more anxious. "Where hurting, question? Sick, question?”

He just curls up tighter. He wishes the numbness would come back. It’s one thing to realise your friend turned her back on you for the sake of everyone else. It’s another to realise you’d never chosen to be here.

But to realise you aren’t even a person?

It’s too much. It’s all too much. 

“Grace, please tell what wrong.”

“I'm not Grace,” he whispers. 

Rocky pauses. “No understand.”

“I'm not Grace.” He presses his hands to his face, his voice shaking. “I'm not even human, Rocky.”

He’s just an illusion. An imposter, dressed up in the skin of a dead boy who never even got the dignity of being mourned. No wonder Mom had pushed him away when she'd realised he was nothing more than an imposter. How could anyone love the creature that puppeted your own dead child's face around?

(How could anyone love you at all?)

Who would that Ryland have been if he'd had the chance to grow up? Would he have been someone so different that he would never have ever come anywhere close to Stratt? Or would he have lived a similar kind of life, and ended up here too?

Would he have been brave enough to choose this? Would he have been better?

“Grace, please tell—”

“Don't call me that!” he snaps.

Rocky takes a step back. “But is your name.”

He drags his hands through his hair. “It’s not. I'm not Ryland Grace! He died! He died, and I'm just the monster that took his place.”

“Grace not monster. Grace is leaky space blob.”

“I’m being serious, Rocky!”

“Yes, seriously stupid! Is saying Grace dead. But you are Grace.”

“No, that’s—you don’t understand!”

Rocky stomps, annoyed. “Then explain.”

He shakes his head. “You’ll hate me,” he whispers.

“Never. Tell Rocky. Will fix.”

“This can’t be fixed. I’m...I’m...”

(Useless.)

(Selfish.)

(Weak.)

(Gullible.)

(Wrong.)

“I’m a...”

(Coward.)

(Liar.)

(Fool.)

(Dumb animal.)

Dumb animal.

Dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumb animal dumbanimaldumbanimaldumbanimal—

The only thought the fox has in its head is run.

So that’s what it does. 

It doesn’t make it far before it collides into something it can't see. It scrambles back with a yelp, and only then does it realise there’s some kind of strange clear material ahead of it that's blocking the path ahead. It sniffs the air, searching around for another way out. 

The smells here are all wrong, as are all the sounds. There’s a constant hum that rings through everything, and then nothing beyond that, as if there’s some kind of barrier blocking everything outside from coming in. As if the fox is in some kind of enclosure. 

No, no, it has to get out. It can't be trapped, not again, not again, not—

A voice to its left sends it scuttling back with a startled yip, and before it can think too long on why that voice sounds familiar, it is running again.

It doesn’t know where it’s going, so long as it's far from here.

Footsteps—too many footsteps, and yet somehow not enough—race after it, accompanied by a rattling banging sound, which only makes the fox run faster. It jumps up shelves, scrabbles under tables, collides into walls, not caring if it gets hurt so long as it can escape.

It has to get away. It can’t let Rocky anyone see it like this.

But you can only run so far in an enclosure. It’s not until it finds itself with a room with no other doors that it realises it’s cornered itself. It turns, ready to dash back out the way it’d come in and find some other place to hide, only to discover in that moment why footsteps chasing after it have fallen silent.

The pursuer stands in the doorway.

“Grace,” he says.

The fox barks out a warning as it presses itself tighter into the corner, its tail curling forward as its ears draw back against its head. Anything it could do to say go away. 

The warning goes ignored, and the pursuer pushes himself further into the room, towards where the fox is trapped. It lets out another rattling bark and opens its mouth, its sharp teeth on display. That’s all it is, really; a display. It’s not a fighter. It never has been.

The pursuer raises a placating hand, and rolls even closer. 

The fox knows the pursuer isn't a threat. Of course it knows that. But right now, Rocky the pursuer is bigger than it, and despite knowing the lack of danger, it can't stop itself from flinching back, which only made it draw back even more in shame. 

It really is just a dumb animal.

“Do not need to be scared,” the pursuer assures. “Mean no harm.”

The fox lowers its head, letting out a low whine. It curls its tail around itself, hiding as much of itself as it can.

“Grace said was monster,” the pursuer says. “Only see small creature.”

It goes to hide itself even more, but then it stops. It doesn't want to talk, doesn't even want to remember but...

But this is Rocky. Rocky, who isn't acting afraid, who isn't being cruel, who is still speaking to it like he always has.

The fox peers cautiously over the brush of its tail. Rocky tucks his legs under himself and sits beside it. 

“Why did Grace not think Rocky would understand?”

The fox looks away, and whines lowly. Why wouldn't it think that? The one person who had ever realised what it truly was had never looked at it the same way afterwards.

Rocky is quiet for a moment, but eventually, he speaks, his voice gentle. 

“Rocky not understand black holes or how relativity works. But think can understand this," he says. "Grace said beach always changing. But does not mean different beach. Still same place, still same ocean, still same shore. Grace is like beach. Always changing, but always same friend.”

The fox goes to shake its head, but Rocky is already powering forward, his tone sharper now. 

“Yes, yes, always friend! Never monster! Grace is like carbon; still carbon when gas or solid or liquid. Friend when human, friend when small creature." Rocky taps at the xenonite barrier, in the direction of the scar on the fox's right foreleg; it's bigger on this body, but the shape is still the same. "Grace is stupid stupid stupid if think otherwise. If think this change anything.”

The words make the fox go still. Does Rocky really not care? Is their friendship really that unconditional that he could look at it, even like this, and still want to stay? Still want to care for it, the same way he always has? 

It doesn't feel like it deserves that, but... gosh, it really wants to. It really really wants to. It uncurls itself, and takes a step forward. 

“Grace?” Rocky says, perking up hopefully. 

Grace. Ryland Grace. It's a name it's carried for most of its life, save for those few days it had been lost completely from the fox's memory. It had been so happy when it had remembered. But that name was one it had taken, along with the life that name belonged to. It shouldn't think of itself like that anymore, now that it knew the truth. It should cast it away. 

But then it thinks of the boy by the steam, that boy who died far too young. And of a mother who had had no one else, save for her child. In another world, maybe the fox hadn't turned around that day and made the choice to become something new. Maybe it had carried on with its life, and let the tragedy play out as intended. Would things have been better in that world?

Maybe. Maybe not. It could never know for sure. 

But it did know this: Ryland Grace died by a stream as a child, but he'd also grown up to become a teacher who loved his kids. Ryland Grace had been an awful tragedy, but he'd also made his mom happy for a time, years after he was gone. Ryland Grace had been a victim, and he'd also been a coward, and selfish, and sometimes a little bit useless, but he'd always done his best to be a person.

A name was just a name, one that could change if needed, but it was also a way of carrying those who were gone with you. A way of remembering them, and of remembering yourself. Maybe the fox wasn't that Ryland Grace, but that didn't mean it couldn't be its own. 

Grace takes another step towards Rocky. English is beyond it at the moment with this mouth, but there is one advantage this form has over the other when it came to language.

It warbles out its best attempt at an Eridian “thank”. 

It's far from the melodic tones of Rocky's voice, the sound in its throat a bit harsher, a bit more, well, animalistic, but the tune is right. 

Rocky dances from foot to foot in delight. “Welcome welcome welcome! Say another word.”

Grace warbles out a “bossy.”

Rocky laughs. “Much better at Eridian now.” He pauses. “Will Grace stay like this?”

Grace stays quiet, its eyes low. 

“Is okay,” Rocky says softly. “Don't care what shape, what size. Care only that you are here.”

Grace is thankful it's a fox at that moment, because otherwise it might have started blubbering right then and there. Not that the sad whine in its throat is any better. No matter the form, it seemed its body will always be a traitor to its emotions. 

Rocky presses a knuckle to the xenonite barrier. “Fist bumps, question?”

Grace lets out a chirping laugh. It nuzzles its head against the xenonite barrier, and presses a paw up to where Rocky's fist rested. It closes its eyes, soaking in the affection. 

(You don't deserve this, its brain whispers. He doesn't know how much of a coward you are. He doesn't know the real you.)

For the first in a long time, its easy to shake the thoughts away. The fox knows they're all wrong. It knows, because it knows without a doubt that this is real. This bond, this joy, this care, it's all real. Just like the life it made for itself was real. Just like the person it is now is real.

When Grace opens his eyes again, his hands are human once more. He lets out a relieved sigh. Not because of the change, but how the change had felt.

He hadn't even had to think about it; it had been as natural to him as reverting to the form of a fox had been. The realisation settles a doubt that had lingered deep in his bones, one he hadn’t even realised was there.

This human body may not have been his to begin with, but it was now as much a part of him as his fox nature was. He'd lived in this skin most of his life, grown with it; the wear and tear of it, the scars and the blemishes, they were all his. 

Rocky's only response to the change is to move his fist to align with Grace's now much bigger hand. Other than that, he makes no comment. As if it's nothing more than another change of clothes.

Speaking of clothes, he really needs to put some on. 

“I'm sorry, bud,” Grace says as he goes to find his nearest bundle of clothing.

“Why, question?”

“I feel like I lied to you.”

“But did not. Grace did not know small creature shape. Correct, question?”

Grace shrugs on his shirt. “Yes, that's correct, but...still. I'm not exactly who you thought I am, in so many ways.”

“Hm. Rocky also lie. Apology.”

Grace raises an eyebrow. “About what?”

Rocky dramatically bows his carapace. “Not actually president of Erid.”

Grace, despite himself, can't help but let out a chuckle. “Okay, I never believed that for a second.”

“Yes, because wasn't true. But Rocky believe Grace human because is true.”

Grace grimaces. His friend is missing a lot of context. “Rocky...”

“Just like small creature is true. Grace is both. Always both.”

“...Oh,” Grace says. Then he laughs, and says again, "oh.”

He'd felt north back on Rocky's ship. He shouldn't have, not in this body, but he'd felt it anyway. Just like he'd still carried his humanity when he'd escaped as a fox back on Earth. Just like he'd always carried traces of his wild past as a human, even when his mind had been working very hard to keep each side of him apart, desperate to be a better human. But he didn't need to do that anymore, did he? Afterall, he'd never truly be one or the other.

He's still a fox, even as a human, but he's also still a human when he's a fox. So why settle for just one? Why not let himself be who he needed to be in the moment? Both were as real as the other. Maybe that meant he'd never be able to really belong in either body completely, but it did mean he could always belong completely to himself.

And to those, he thought, looking back over to Rocky with a smile, who decided he belonged with them too.

“You really are brilliant, you know that,” Grace says, settling back by Rocky's side, now fully clothed.

Rocky raises his carapace up proudly. “Of course know that.”

"So cocky." Grace shakes his head with a chuckle. "I still want to see more of your ship, by the way. I wasn't done."

"Yes yes, can see more. Rocky will put ban on remembering while in ship."

"I can't wait to see how you enforce that." It is only then, free of all the huge revelations his mind decided to throw his way today, that he remembers exactly why he was visiting Rocky's ship. He sighs. “God, what am I going to do without you?"

"Be stupid." Rocky pauses, and then adds, "more stupid."

"Ha, yeah, probably." Grace rubs a thumb along the xenonite. "I guess you've tamed me, huh?”

“Confused. Understand words, no understand meaning.”

“It’s from a book. It's a fox's way of saying we're tied together. It means you're special to me, and that I'm special to you, and that we'll always be reminded of each other for the rest of our lives.”

“Yes, will always remember," Rocky says softly. Then he leans his carapace to side. “What word, before ‘way’, question?”

“Before...oh. Fox. It's the small creature. It's what I am.” After a moment, he corrects himself. “A part of who I am.”

“Understand. Would like to see again, before Grace go. Can speak Eridian together.”

Grace smiles. “Yeah, we can do that.”

Rocky leans in against the xenonite. “Rocky will miss Grace much much much.”

“Me too, bud. Me too.”

Grace throws his arms around Rocky's ball, and hopes, in the years to come, this sense of wholeness inside himself will stay with him, no matter what his future brings, no matter what form he takes. He hopes it stays with him forever. 

(Years later, on a planet far from the woods and civilisations of Earth, upon a beach made of pebbles and rock that change with every tide, Grace will curl up beside its friend, and it will laugh along to a joke only the two of them share, content in the knowledge that he is exactly where he’s supposed to be.)