Young Writers Society

Damascus' eyes lit up at the prospect, and he pulled back from Engel to look at Boris.

"That's a wonderful idea, Boris!" He turned to gaze at the other boys there, and at John Watson, whose hand he was still gripping. "Oh please, can we? I've never had a brother."

Schadel nearly choked on her own spit at the suggestion.

(Actually, she did. But she was a grim reaper, so it wasn't like she could permanently die from something like that.)

Once she had finally stopped coughing, she was able to digest what had been said. They still thought she was a guy - so brothers would make sense. Just as she went to nod, she saw Edward Smith staring at her from the side.

"That was a bad cough."

She hesitantly nodded.

He crossed his arms and held William close to his chest. "Your face went blue."

"...It d-did?"

"And it looked like you couldn't breath," he continued, his blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Shouldn't you have died from something like that?"

She frantically shook her head. "N-No!" she protested. "Why would-why would I die from something like that? And I couldn't be sitting here if I died!"

He hesitated. "But you definitely died."

"No I didn't!"

"Liar, liar pants on fire!"

"I'm not a liar!"

"You sound like one!"

By this point, Schadel had gotten to her feet and had marched over to where Edward was. She was mirroring his folded arms, and returned the glare he was giving her as she towered over him. "I thought you said magic didn't exist, Edward! How can I have died and come back to life if it wasn't magic?"

He looked horrified at this flaw in his reasoning.

"M-Maybe I've gone crazy too," he said. "Or you-you're a gh-ghost."

"Or maybe I didn't die," Schadel helpfully suggested.

Now he was the one frantically doing the head shaking. "You definitely died."

Boris took a step back. He'd wanted to help the other boys feel better, certainly, but now John and Edward were just being too ridiculous.

"He's not dead, Edward!" Boris said, showing his exasperation.

"There aren't any spooks in the woods. They're too afraid of the bears." he teased.

"B- bears!?" Damascus squeaked out, pulling back to address this. "You mean the... the ones that eat and maul humans?"

He took a breath and his eyes widened in fear as something occurred to him.

"Wait- I'm a human now!"

"Calm down, there aren't any bears! I was joking." Boris said, in between small bouts of laughter.

He didn't even bother to question what Damascus had implied. He was just crazy, too.

The moment that Boris had started to tease Damascus, Edward had instinctively thrown his arms around John Watson's legs. (He was still torn between calling him Mr. Watson and John, since he wasn't really like the other adults he knew.) He should have known that it was just a joke, but he had been too frightened by the possibility of getting mauled by a bear.

Now he hurried back from John Watson, mortified that he had been so close to the man again. Or, at least, that was what was supposed to happen. He went to take a step back, but found himself suddenly sprawled across the ground, William having been flung a good foot away.

He looked down at what he could have possibly tripped on.

And let out a terrified scream when he saw living shadows wildly shooting out of the ground in a circle around the trembling John Watson's feet.

Damascus straightened up from where he was cowering when Boris disclaimed his statement about bears. Hang on... it seemed just like Boris was making fun of him- again. Why else would he joke about something as terrifying as bears?

That just wasn't nice at all. He turned to give Boris a long, heated glare, making his eyes glow a bit to convey that he did not like to be made fun of. This didn't last as long as he would have liked, however, because Edward let out a scream and quickly broke his attention.

Looking around wildly for bears, his gaze landed on the ground at John Watson's feet. There seemed to be black creatures doing some sort of dance there. He leaned in, trying to be inconspicuous, and whispered loudly to the man.

"John-Watson, um... your friends are showing. I'm not sure you want everybody to see- it might scare them." Of course, though he had good intentions, all this was bound to accomplish was alerting every else to John's condition.

Damascus went from looking frightened to very grave, quite suddenly, but Boris took no note of it. Until his eyes started glowing red.

Boris froze, and went very pale.

He took a moment to regret everything, pray, and reconsider the existence of all things he had thought the others were silly for worrying about.

Then his attention was pointed to shadows on the ground, swirling from beneath John Watson's feet. Shadows...shadows were coming out of him? From out of him? Was that what he was seeing?!

Boris didn't take the time to find out what was going on. He scrambled out of the way, fell backwards off the log, made a mad dash for the pile of firewood where James had first found him, and proceeded to crouch and shiver behind it.

She blinked when she noticed the terrified reactions, and slowly dropped her gaze down to where Damascus was pointing at. Friends? What was he talking about? None of the other grim reapers were here, and none of them would be down at her feet-

She stared at the darkness.

And then promptly gave a startled cry, the darkness shooting up even higher with the sudden surge of emotions. No, no, no! Blanx had said to never let anyone who wasn't a grim reaper see her magic, and even near other grim reapers, she was supposed to keep it under control! As she grew more and more terrified, the darkness continued to become more and more wild - shooting out in all possible directions, and going further each time it did so.

And then it came to a point where she just couldn't hold this form any longer, and it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Her limbs grew longer. Shadows took the place of skin. Her hair receded back into her head. Her eyes shifted from hazel to the color of polished silver. Now she stood at a good seven feet tall, easily towering over everyone present. Her body was made up of moving darkness, stray strands coming off of what had once been skin and licking the air around her. Her eyes were the only visible facial feature right now, since she wasn't trying to give anyone there a smile.

Edward gave another even louder scream from only a few feet away from her. When she turned to look at him, he had dived behind the nearest log and was now cowering there.

The darkness around her feet shot up so high that she could touch it with bending over, and a strangled cry left her as she took several steps back. "I-I'm not a monster," she said, her voice wavering as she spoke. There were three differences between her current voice and the one she had been using before: it was childishly high-pitched, clearly feminine, and her German accent was strong enough to be noticeable.

Damascus blinked as John Watson's form was stretched and melted away. Oh- it made sense, then! John-Watson wasn't exactly the same as him, but he was a shifter too! A smile grew on his face, until he noticed how scared the other boys were, and how John Watson seemed to be very upset.

He noted the change of voice too. If this was John-Watson's true from, did it mean that he was actually a girl? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he focused on diffusing the tension.

"Of course you aren't!" He said earnestly. "If you were a monster you would have used your shifting to trick us and do mean things to us."

Trying to encourage her, he reached for her hand, only to think better of it. Maybe trying to touch her would only make her more nervous.

"Is this your true form?" He asked quietly, both really wanting to know and trying to calm her down. "It's beautiful."

The whole time James just stared. The conversations were confusing and overwhelming, and it all felt too chaotic. He didn't know what to do or say about any of it. He'd remained sitting by the fire, hugging his legs for some time until Edward let out a scream, and Mr.Watson started to panic.

His eyes focused in on what looked like little tendrils of darkness around Watson's feet, and he was intrigued. Was that what magic looked like? With wide eyes, he started to crawl over until Watson's body started to change. He stopped, a wave of fear and awe-struck wonder washing over him as he watched Watson change from a human man to a very tall, person of darkness. He couldn't help but to stare. He'd never seen anyone like them - him? Her? Before. Their voice changed too. They sounded like a girl. A young girl.

Definitely not a monster. Was Watson a god? A magical being? A ghost? He heard Damascus saying nice things, trying to calm her down. He wanted to help too, and stood up slowly to try and show that he was not afraid. He tried to come up with something to say as he looked up at Watson.

"H-hi." Was all that came out.

Engel himself jumped back with a startled cry, nearly tripping over himself again. The rosary was clutched tightly in his fingers. He didn't speak, too surprised and unsure of how to handle this. He...she...It was...not...human, but at the same time, it had also so far shown kindness. But could that be a deception? Then again, Damascus didn't seem all that bad...Yet he'd been taught that anything that wasn't human was dangerous. Humans could be monsters, too, though; so didn't that mean monsters could be human?

Schadel looked around at the other people in the area, and let out a sob when she did so. Even though James and Damascus were being nice about this, Edward, Boris and Engel all seemed to be in different states of terror - Edward and Engel were both cowering, and Engel was clutching his rosary. That couldn't be a good thing. Blanx had said that sometimes people thought that they were demons when they saw their true forms, which was why it was so careful not to use it when dealing with living people or ghosts. They'd get scared, and they'd do mean, hurtful things.

And even though Engel wasn't that big, she was terrified of being harmed.

"It-it is my true form," she said, her voice still shaking as she spoke. "I'm not a human." Now she hesitated; did she risk telling the truth and frightening them even more? She wasn't really scared of what would happen if she told Blanx - he'd understand that she couldn't help it. "I'm a...I'm a grim reaper."

From behind his log, Edward made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whimper.

James looked up at Watson in confusion. "What's a grim reaper?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but Edward beat her to it.

"Th-The Grim Reaper takes your soul when you d-die!" She turned to see Edward nervously peeking over the log, his skin an incredibly light shade of pale. He was trembling - hard - and was now staring down at his hands. "Oh no."

"Oh no?" Schadel hesitantly questioned.

"Oh no," Edward confirmed with a small nod, seemingly too engrossed in staring at himself to realize who had just spoken to him. "I-I'm dead. I-I have to be. That's why all of this crazy stuff is going on, and that's why there's the grim reaper here!"

"There's actually more than one-"

Edward sunk back behind the log, clutching William close to his chest. "M-My mom is going to be all alone now. She-she can barely handle my-my dad not being home. What is she going to do without me?" His eyes widened with horror, tears starting to roll down his already flushed cheeks. "Who's going to translate for her?"