Young Writers Society

Boris followed, with Engel close behind. He was very glad that James was leading, with his level head, and his trail of white puffs. With James around, Boris felt as though bears could not appear, simply out of embarrassment over such a silly notion.

They'd take one look at his clever trail, and hear him say something like 'Come on, there's nothing there,' and they'd feel so stupid for having come that they'd leave without so much as a growl.

Boris shook his head. Before tonight he had never, ever been afraid of bears, and it had only taken one careless joke and one scare to get some idea of poetic retribution stuck in his head. He wasn't any better than little Edward.

He wondered if he'd ever get around to apologising to Edward, as he followed James just a little further into the dark.

Schadel started to hum and kick her legs back and forth as she worked on the flower crown. She had spent hours practicing. Blanx had a whole collection of flower crowns that she had made him, though he had to keep throwing them out because they started to die after awhile. She was glad she had made so many before - now she can make Edward the best possible flower crown!

When it was finally done, she presented it to him with a big grin on her face.

"Here you go, Edward!" she announced.

He looked down at the flower crown she had pushed into his hands. It had every color flower she could possibly find, and every type, too; she had wanted to make the perfect flower crown for her brother.

"Thanks," he finally said, giving her a smile. She grinned right back at him, happy that he liked her gift. "You should probably braid my hair before I put it on, though - it would probably be easier that way."

She gave a gasp. "You're right!"

She scooted a little closer to him on the log, only to get up and decide that it was best to work on his hair from behind. She hadn't really practiced on anyone before, but she had tried doing all sorts of cool things with her dolls. She could always just change her hair when she wanted to and make it look the right way, but it wasn't the same! Part of braiding hair was about doing it to make other people look good, so she had done her best to learn how to actually do it.

"Schadel?" Edward asked, shifting on the log. "...What are you doing with my hair?"

"I'm braiding it," she reminded him. She was more than a little confused on why he was asking, since it had been his idea in the first place, but maybe he had gotten distracted and forgotten?

"But why are you pulling it back-" He suddenly gave a startled cry as she gave his hair a little tug to get the braid tighter. "That-That hurts!"

"I'm doing a fancy braid," she solemnly informed him. "And it's got to hurt when I'm making it if you want it to look good."

Edward squirmed. "Can't you just do two down the sides, or something like that?"

She shook her head. "You're one of my first friends," she said, "and I don't know when I'm going to get to do this again, so I have to make it look super good to make up for all the times when I can't."

"...Oh," he said. "...You're one of my first friends, too-" He gave another startled cry as she tugged on the other side of his hair, but didn't complain this time.

Schadel got to work on the finishing touches. "You don't have any other friends besides us?" she asked. Human kids were supposed to have a lot of friends! She had always seen them in really large groups, so Edward must have just forgotten about them.

"I don't," he confirmed. "My mom...My mom can't talk in the way that we can. She has to use her hands to speak, but not everyone understands what she's saying when she does. My dad used to, but now it's just us..."

Schadel frowned. "So you have to translate?"

"Sometimes," he said. "But the other kids think my mom and I are weird, so I don't like to hang out around them. We just moved to the city, so I'm hoping it'll be different, but..."

They fell into a heavy silence.

"I don't think it's weird," she finally said. "I bet our brothers would think that, too!"

He turned back to look at her. "Really?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh!" She gave him a big grin. "Your hair is finished now, by the way! You can put on the flower crown now."

He raised a hand up and touched his braids, furrowing his brow as he grabbed onto the little ponytails she had made. "Did you give me pigtails?"

She gave an eager nod. "Yup!"

"You can do that with a braid?"

"You can do all sorts of things with a braid!" she informed him.

She hopped over the log and grabbed his flower crown, seeing that he wasn't putting it on himself. A second later, the flower crown was sitting all nice and snug in his hair - Schadel couldn't help but feel more than a little proud at how good his hair and flower crown looked together.

"It's too bad we don't have a mirror," Schadel said, "because I think you look very beautiful right now."

He fiddled with the flower crown, his cheeks turning slightly red at the compliment. "...Thanks."

"Now do mine!" she exclaimed. She eagerly plopped down on the log beside him, hoping that he would make her hair look just as cool as his.

Edward frowned. "...I can't."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I don't know how to braid hair," he admitted.

"...Oh," Schadel said, frowning. "That's a problem."

"...Yeah," Edward agreed. "I think we need another game-"

Schadel let out her second gasp of the past five minutes and jumped back to her feet. "I got it!" she exclaimed. "You like Mister Wells and his story too, right? What if we figured out what the Martians would look like!?"

His face lit up, and he hopped to his feet as well. "That would be awesome!" he eagerly agreed, William forgotten back on the log. "And you can change your form, too! What if you tried looking like a Martian? Then we could figure out if they really would look like that!"

Her silver eyes lit up with childish joy. "I'm gonna do it!" she declared. She screwed her eyes shut, trying her best to imagine what a Martian look like based on the description in the book. She finally settled on the right form, and let the changes occur.

"This feels funny," she admitted in her normal voice, pausing before making deep and scary. "But do I look like a Martian?"

"I think so," Edward agreed, turning his head this way and that as he tried to get a better look at her.

His flower crown threatened to slip off, so she quickly made sure to fix it with a tentacle. Then she realized the freedom tentacles involved, so she began to wildly wave them about and spin around in one big circle. Giggling, she fell back onto her back with a loud thud and stared up at the sky. "I like this game," she said.

After a moment of hesitation, he laid down next to her, narrowly avoiding a stray tentacle.

"I like it too," he agreed. "We should try it with other books, too, once you're tired of looking like that."

"I'm gonna do Sherlock Holmes next," Schadel declared, but made no effort to change her form - it was fun doing something so different. "I wonder how the bathroom trip is going right now?"

Having done his business, Boris returned to the fold.

"Sind wir bereit, jetzt zurück zu gehen?" he asked.

Damascus' beady eyes widened as Boris returned from the forest, and he tilted his head slightly. Oh, right. He had nearly forgotten that his brothers spoke chant-speak without the camp's magic to help them.

He shifted from foot to foot in James' hands. He didn't know what his brother was saying, and even though his tone seemed casual, only questioning, he wanted to make sure that Boris was alright. Only, he forgot for a moment that he wouldn't be understood.

"Ti eípes, Boris? Es kalós?" He peeped. (Is everything alright, Boris? Are you okay?)

Even though it was definitely fun laying down like this, there was only so long that Schadel could sit still without moving. She popped back up and looked over at Edward, tentacles hanging limply in the air as she waited for a new idea to come to either one of them.

Edward sat up as well. Some pieces of grass had gotten stuck in his braids, but he didn't seem to notice.

"They'll probably be back soon," Edward guessed.

Schadel gave a nod - but since her body was mainly a giant head, it was more of leaning back and forth than anything else. She absentmindedly reached a tentacle out to get the grass out; it was really bugging her. But just as she removed the last piece, she was suddenly hit with a great idea. Tentacles shot out to collect a wide variety of flowers. It was a little hard at first, but then she realized that she just needed to imagine them as tendrils of darkness. They were a part of her, too. They were just different than what she was used to.

Edward stared at her the entire time, confusion flickering across her face as she started to pluck the flowers from the pile she had been collecting in a tentacle. It didn't take long for her newest addition to his hair to be done. A beautiful array of flowers - matching the ones in his flower crown - now were in his two little braids.

He raised a hand up and touched one of the flowers, but she moved it away with her tentacle when the flower started to shift. "You have to be careful," she informed him in her now deep and scary voice, "or some of them will come out."

Edward nodded. He tried to pull his wrist out of her tentacle, but the two quickly realized that he just couldn't. They slowly glanced between the tentacles and each other.

"...Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

She eagerly nodded. "Mister Wells says that you're done for if a Martian gets you," she said, "which probably means that you can't escape the tentacles."

"And now that you're a Martian..." Edward continued, grinning from one ear to the other.

"...we can test that out!" Schadel concluded. "I'll wrap my tentacles around you, and then you can try to escape."

"Okay," Edward agreed, only to give a startled cry when one of her tentacles shot out and wrapped around his waist. He was jerked up into the air, but Schadel made sure to only hold him a short distance from the ground. And, just to be on the safe side, she kept a few tentacles underneath where she was holding him, just in case he escaped and fell.

When Edward apparently got over his surprise, he started to wiggle around in her tentacle. His legs kicked back and forth, but the feeling of them hitting her tentacle didn't really hurt - especially when he was barefoot.

At a loss for how else to respond Damascus' question, Boris reassured him with a little pat on his downy head.

He turned to Engel, to ask him a question. "Wissen Sie, welche Sprache das ist?"

He then switched to English, and repeated the question for James.

"You know do you what language is that?"

James shook his head.

"No," he said simply.

"But we should go back to camp, so we can understand him there," James concluded, giving Damascus an affectionate pet on the head before leading the way back.

Damascus brightened a little as he heard Boris switch languages and then James reply.

He had heard that language before! Back at home, many of the new spectors had been speaking it. He couldn't understand anything, but he could imitate some of the sounds he had heard.

"Please, help, don't do this to me," he said in heavily accented English.

He turned to look up at James and then over to Boris proudly, his feathers puffed and his eyes shiny.

"Vlépo? Égo boró et quoque loqui!" he chortled. (See? I can speak it too!)

Damascus in the shape of a duck had been, and still was, innocent and sweet, but now it only served to make his strange pleading, and subsequent laughing all the spookier.

"-Damaskus?" questioned Boris, his voice wavering slightly.

He looked back and forth between his three brothers, hoping that something would make sense.

Damascus tilted his head at Boris' concern and obvious questioning. What was the matter? Wasn't he proud of his speaking?

"Etiamos?" (yes?) he squeaked, though now he understood that he wasn't getting through to any of his brothers. "Quid est aftón?" (What is it?)

He carefully hopped down from James' hands so that he could shift back. He was technically breaking the terms of the game, but right then communicating was more important, and he felt like being a duck subtracted from that ability.

For a few seconds, he stood as himself, and worried his bumpy lip. It took that many moments for him to think better of it and shift back into the human form he'd been using before. He didn't want ro take the chance of scaring his brothers.

James blinked and stared at Damascus went from duck, to goblin-type-something, to human again.

"Damascus, we're not going to hurt you..." James said, unsure, his voice filled with concern. With a sigh, he huffed in frustration. "Let's-can we just hurry back to camp please? Come on, Damascus," he said, offering his hand for Damascus to take. He offered his other to Boris. "Let's go."

Damascus clutched the hand that James offered and gave him a bright smile, hoping that the worried face he had wasn't because of him. He tilted his head and thought a moment, only recognizing his name. After a little hesitation, he kept silent, figuring that if he said anything more it would only add to whatever misunderstanding was going on. Instead, he swung James' hand and took a few lazy steps back the way they'd come.

Boris was still confused, but he stopped worrying. Damascus seemed alright, and they'd be able to understand him again soon.

Boris went with James, though he did not take the offered hand. He was eight years old. He didn't need help walking in a straight line. Especially not when he had grabbed too many hands that night, already.

As they came closer to the fire, he thought he saw strange shadows thrown around by the flames, some curling in and out in fluid motions like cat's tails, others bobbing up and down in an irregular rhythm, hugging themselves tightly.

But they were only shadows. Yes, only shadows. It was probably Schadel, playing around with her magic. There was nothing to be afraid of.

As they came closer, the shadows grew clearer, and clearer. Boris clenched his fist. It was only Schadel, only Schadel.

But she was not there. When they came closer, she was nowhere to be seen. The shadows themselves were not being conjured, they were being cast; by a Martian, with liquid eyes that bulged from a looming, bulbous head, and Edward, barely visible in the great, writhing mass of tentacles.

Boris couldn't freeze this time. He had to be there.
He fought against his awareness of his own uselessness, and the tragic implications of Schadel's absence.

Both with and against his instincts, Boris ran further ahead.

"Edward! Edward!?" he cried out.

It didn't matter that the fear in his voice was clear as day. He had no hope of intimidating the beast, no matter what.

But maybe he could distract it.

As they neared the camp, Damascus caught sight of... something, sitting on one of the logs. At first, he frowned and squinted, rubbing at his eyes to see it clearer in the waning light. He stepped closer, and an icy dagger of terror shot through him.

It was a monster!! And... it had Edward.

Ashamed of himself even as he first reacted, all Damascus could manage was to let out a scream and barrel into James. He clutched his brother tightly, scared into his true form once again, and blubbered all sorts of frightened noises.

"He's... he's- it's going to eat him!" He managed to choke out, looking up long enough to spot Boris charging over. Guilt hit him again. "B- be careful, please!"

Burning, desperate tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes, but he still couldn't make himself move.

Even before he was falling through the air, Edward knew this wasn't going to end well.

The game with Schadel had seemed like a great way to pass the time. If he could break through the tentacles, it would take awhile. If he couldn't, they would be focused on the game until the others came back. But when the others finally did come back, Edward started to realize that it wasn't the best idea they could have come up with.

For the first moment, all he and Schadel did was freeze and stare at the four that had just returned. Then Boris set in, and even though Edward knew that Boris couldn't really do anything to Schadel, Schadel still panicked. Her tentacles began to wave about wildly as she did her best attempt at stumbling back. Edward started trying to get out of her tentacles with improved gusto, knowing that the only way he could get everyone to calm down was if Schadel wasn't holding him.

"You have to calm down-" he started to yell, not sure who he was addressing it to. But before he could finish speaking, he suddenly found that he was no longer being held by her tentacles. She had let go of him in her panic, and he was much higher up than he had been before.

Eyes widening, he frantically tried to grab onto one of her tentacles as he fell past them, but it was impossible. She was moving them too quickly, and the slower ones were just out of his reach-

A tentacle shot out and wrapped around his ankle. The world was abruptly turned upside down as she pulled him up. But she was still terrified of whatever Boris would do to her, so the tentacle moved from this way to that, jerking Edward along for the ride. The flower crown she had so carefully placed on his head fell to the ground and was promptly smushed by a stray tentacle, and several of the flowers she had stuck into his braids were threatening to fall out as well.

But before he could comment on any of that, a nauseous feeling quickly overcame him. He covered his mouth with his hands, his skin turning a sickly shade of green as she continued to swing him about.