Young Writers Society

James was very confused.

Admittedly, Boris and Damascus’s alarm was understandable, because there was a very large sea monster holding Edward. But it didn’t take long for him to realize the monster had to be Schadel. She’d taken different shapes before. Edward must’ve asked her to play that game again or something.

By the time it clicked he realized the others were starting to panic, and Boris looked ready to fight. With worry, he ran up as fast as he could between Boris and Schadel.

“No Boris! It’s just Schadel! Don’t be mad!”

It took all the conviction Boris had just to stand where he was, and not back away from the beast, as it coiled and writhed, flailing more and more violently at the slightest provocation. Had he only made things worse?

Edward said to say calm- he had to stay calm- but how could he stay calm? It lifted him high above its head- as if- as if it were preparing to eat him?

"Put hi... put him down!" Boris shouted, thanking God that he wasn't yet old enough for his voice to crack.

There was still nothing he could do. He could not frighten the beast. He could not fight it. Distracting it wasn't helping either.

All he could do was try to look brave, and wish that his big brother was here.

But then James said that it was her. Schadel.

That made...that made some sense. He wanted to believe it was true. Because if Schadel wasn't standing right before them, then there could only be one other reason for it. The Martian had eaten her first.

Boris looked at James, frightened and lost. "But if it is, why would she...?"

He badly wanted to believe that that was Schadel, that she was safe, but would she really have turned into a monster to scare them? That didn't seem like something she would have done.

Boris braced himself, blinked hard, and looked the great tentacled mass in its black, wet eyes. Then he jumped, and involuntarily took two steps back.

He shook his head, coughed assertively, and approached it again.


"Are you Schadel?" he asked, bravely.

"Ye-" Schadel started to say, only to cover her equivalent of a regular mouth with a tentacle a second later. Edward, though he was getting increasingly closer to throwing up, started to suspect that she had forgotten how different she had made her voice sound. But instead of changing it back and explaining things to Boris, she just stood there and stared at him with the most horrified look she could currently muster.

He removed his hands from his mouth. He was going to have risk throwing up if he wanted to help the situation. "Schadel!" he said. "Turn back! Please! I'm-I'm going to throw up if you don't!"

Then he frantically covered his mouth again, because he really didn't trust his stomach at the moment. Schadel looked at him for a moment, and then her body shifted. Not to the little boy form she had taken earlier, but to her actual, shadowy self. The extra appendages were replaced by strands of darkness.

But he wasn't being held by one of those. There was a sudden drop in height, and a shift as the feeling of a tentacle holding onto his ankle was replaced by the feeling of five fingers grasping it.

A second later, his world was flipped again - to the way it should have been - and he was placed gently on the ground.

The nausea began to fade. He looked back up at Schadel and was shocked to see how small someone so tall could look. She looked absolutely miserable as she stared down at the ground. "I'm-I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm really-really sorry. I just wanted to...just wanted..."

What sounded suspiciously like a sob left her.

"I...I..." She raised her head for a moment, looking at the array of faces before her. "I'm...I'm just going to go now..."

Before he could even try to stop her, she had gone rushing off into the forest that the others had just come from. And even though he knew he had to chase after her, he also knew that he'd never be able to catch up - her legs were far too long compared to his.

"Schadel!" he shouted, hurrying over to the edge of the forest. "Don't go! Come back!"

James pouted when he heard how sad Schadel sounded. He began to run with Edward. “No! Don’t leave Schadel! Please!”

Boris immediately regretted the way he'd confronted Schadel. He had been so caught up with worrying about wether or not it was her, that he never considered that he might hurt her feelings. They were her first friends, and they'd just gotten her to feel comfortable with herself, and comfortable with them, and now he'd gone and scared her off.

"Wait! Schadel, please-!" he called out.

He ran after her, but stopped at the edge with Edward and James. They'd all had enough of running around, and it'd only be harder for them to find Schadel if they had to look for him, too.

So Boris stood by his brothers, arms loose at his sides, still useless.

"How are we going to find her, in the dark?" he moaned.

There was no hope for it. She melted so seamlessly into the shadows, she was just invisible without the campfire.
If she didn't want to be found, then there was no way to find her.

Boris pulled his eyes away from the endless blackness, and looked to his brothers, searching for comfort, for sense.

"She... she's going to come back, isn't she?"

Damascus wiped his eyes as it was revealed that the monster was actually Schadel. He felt a pang hit him- of course it was her! Why had he been so dull? Being able to shift himself, he should have known that it was her. And- and he had called her a monster!

He stared off into the forest as she ran off with wide eyes, taking in the situation much too slowly. Finally, he let out a little indecipherable cry and ran over to his brothers.

"Wait!" He called, like they had.

When he reached the group at the edge of the forest, he kept running. As he cleared a few trees, he realized why they weren't going after her- they might get lost again. He wanted to reassure them, so he stumbled to a stop for a moment to call over his shoulder.

"I'll find her, don't worry! I can see in the dark! And I'll turn into something more useful." He couldn't just barely see his brothers through the trees, but shot them a big thumbs up all the same.

Turning back around, he thought for a minute, finally settling on idea. He shifted into a creature that was common to him- one that could fly fast and see in the dark like he could. A large leathery bat-creature flapped its way around trees, and Damascus squinted as he looked for shadows.

"Schadel?" He thought to call out after a moment.

Schadel didn't want to be found.

She hid behind a tree, head tucked in her lap as she pulled her legs close to her chest. Sobs - as silent as she could make them, so none of the others could find her when they searched - escaped her in a nearly constant stream, and she started to wonder if they would ever go away. Little strands of darkness rose from the ground. It would have normally made her feel a little better, but it only made her feel worse. She willed them to go away, and willed her form to fade from visible to invisible - she rarely took on the attributes of a ghost, but it felt right now. And her brothers wouldn't be able to find her if she looked like this, either.

Her grip on her legs tightened.

Blanx had said that getting to know humans hurt. It was right after they had met, when she had a nightmare about Adam again. He had sat down on her bed and talked to her as she hugged one of her teddy bears, rubbing her back when the tears became too much to speak.

"Humans hurt because they're different than us, my little soldier," he had said. "They don't understand us, and we don't understand them. Our lives are vastly different. Even though you and I pretend to be humans, we still can never fully understand what it's like."

Another sob left her, this one far louder than before. Blanx was right! Humans always hurt. It wasn't their fault - she knew it was her fault, and the fault of other grim reapers. They died. They got scared. They never understood what it was like to be something other than human, and it was stupid of her to think that she could have made friends with a bunch of humans. Even Damascus was scared of her, and something told her that changing forms for him was nothing like changing forms for her.

"It's not fair," she whispered, vision blurring with tears. She finally made friends, just like Blanx had wanted her to! But she had scared them by just being herself, and she knew staying their friend would mean pretending that she was something other than a grim reaper. Hadn't she done that already by sticking with human forms that hurt?

But she couldn't be friends with other grim reapers, either, because they thought it was weird that she liked humans so much. The yearly reapers didn't get it - when she defended humans and got made when someone brought up Adam, they just gave her funny looks before leaving. And she never hung around them without Blanx, because something just told her that they wouldn't care if they hurt her.

"I-I want Blanx," she said in between sobs. "I want B-Blanx and Rekune!"

Damascus landed as soon as he heard the sobs nearby, and shifted into his true form. He glanced around and took careful steps forward, but Schadel was nowhere to be found, even as her cries got closer.

He opened his mouth to call for her, but was cut off by Schadel herself- her voice choking on words, and definitely close by.

"S- Schadel?" he whispered, turning his head this way and that. All he saw was trees. "Why can't I see you?"

He knew she was close by, and that if he could hear her, she could hear him, and so he carefully sat under a tree and started talking.

"I'm really sorry we made you cry. We weren't- well, I wasn't scared of you, I was just really worried about Edward. I'm sorry." he apologized again, and buried his head in his arms. "I wasn't being brave at all, and I should have known it was you! I just don't know about a lot of creatures here and I was surprised, and..."

His eyes widened then, as he thought of a reason for her tears.

"And just because everyone was scared for Edward doesn't mean that no one likes you now! We all still love you!"

Engel didn't like the dark. He never had. He didn't like when he couldn't see, not when he didn't know what could be out there. He knew that bad things happened to people, sometimes, too. He'd seen it before--just little things, like the stray dogs with bloodied scraps of someone's shirt--but it was enough to make him wary.

But Schadel was his sister now, and he was her brother, and he couldn't let her go running out there alone. And Damascus, too...

Well, it simply wasn't safe, and it was his job as the oldest to make sure nothing happened. He glanced back at James and Boris and Edward. "I'll be back soon," he promised before turning and bolting into the woods after them.

And it was dark. Hopelessly dark. It didn't take long for his eyes to adjust, however, and with scarce light filtering through the canopy he was able to see enough to avoid most obstacles. He wasn't sure where she'd gone but it couldn't be far, right?

"Schadel?" he called, his voice thin. "Damascus?"

Schadel froze the moment that she heard Damascus. She had forgotten that her voice wouldn't become unnoticeable, too - Blanx still had to teach her how to do that. But then he sat down, close enough for her to reach and touch him if she wanted to, and she found himself listening to what he had to say.

"I-I keep forgetting I'm different," she managed to get out. Her voice was muffled from her head still being tucked into her lap. "I-I....I scare people. Even Adam was scared of me when he first me! And if they're not s-scared, they think I'm weird. They don't want to play with me because they don't like how I like humans. An-And Blanx and Rekune are the o-only two people who ever understand, but I don't want to worry them by getting sad around them, because then they get sad, too!"

She let out another sob.

"I shouldn't go back," she said. "I-I can't. Being-Being friends with humans hurts!"

She faintly heard someone calling her name in the distance, but she was too busy sobbing to figure out who.

James didn't want to let the others leave without him, but he'd already experienced twice the confusion and chaos of leaving the campfire, and the thought of leaving the safety of understanding each other was daunting.

But he was conflicted. He didn't want Schadel to feel like he didn't like her! He knew she could shift to different forms! She was really cool! She was magical!

But someone had to stay with Boris and Edward and make sure they were okay too. He didn't want to crowd Schadel. That wouldn't help...

He turned to Boris.

"Let's stay. They'll get her back. I trust them," he said confidently, though he wasn't fully confident.

Damascus sat quietly and solemnly as he listened to what Schadel had to say. He had figured that he'd chosen a good tree- by the sound of her voice, she was almost right next to him.

As he listened closely to his sister, his mouth pulled down into a thoughtful pout. He hadn't realized just how hard it was for Schadel to make friends or be herself.

He knew that their situations were most alike, compared to their brothers- they were the only non-humans, after all- but he was now realizing that maybe she had had very different experiences than he had, and the things that were making her sad weren't things that he couldn't completely understand.

Finally, he spoke, squeezing his knees tightly against his chest.

"I'm sorry, Schadel." He said softly. "I didn't know. I don't know what it's like to be different here- I- I've never been to Prussia before. And... you and our brothers are my very first friends. Where I live, I just play alone, or spend time with Mo-"

He paused and remembered again the terrible thing that he had seen Molleck do. Maybe that was related to all of this- to being different. He just hadn't felt it's full effect yet. In that little rush of understanding, tears filled his eyes, and he hugged his knees tighter.

"But I think I know about humans being scared of me." He said quietly, his voice shaking. "I know why. Back home, there are things called spectors, and they're- they're like humans, I think. I- I saw... I saw Molleck hurting one, and- and I think..." he gulped. "I think that's what we do. What they're going to make me do. B- but! But I won't! I will never hurt a spector, or a human! Ever."

"But, maybe that's... maybe that's why Engel was scared when he first saw me. Because he knows what my kind does."

His voice ended small, and he sniffed a few times before remembering that he was supposed to be comforting Schadel. He wiped his tears away quickly.

"But even with being different and knowing what I am, Engel had a chance to see that I was different in other ways than just that- t- that I wouldn't hurt him like other demons would. He had a chance to learn what was in my heart, and now, we're brothers. And it's the same with you, Schadel! You don't have to stay here or be alone- even if being friends with humans does hurt sometimes, it would be even worse to give up human friends who know and love all the parts that really matter!"

He smiled through his leftover tears, and turned to where he thought Schadel might be.

After a moment, he remembered that he had heard Engel's voice calling before, and he darted up to his feet.

"Engel's looking for us," he said quickly. "I don't want him to get lost or scared- if it's okay with you, can I bring him over here?"

As Schadel heard Damascus speak, she hesitantly raised her head and looked over at him. Specters sounded familiar - she remembered seeing the word in some of her books before. As she continued to stare at him, she started to realize that they had more in common than she had originally realized.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Humans hurt because they're different than us, my little soldier," Blanx had said. "They don't understand us, and we don't understand them. Our lives are vastly different. Even though you and I pretend to be humans, we still can never fully understand what it's like."

But she realized now that she was forgetting the most important part of the conversation: the ending.

She had asked him why they interacted with humans so much when it hurt so badly. He had paused for a moment, looking her over with the amused look he gave her when she was asking too many questions. But there had been a look to his eyes too - a look he was trying to hide, but one that she could easily tell.

"We might be different than humans, but they're people just like us," Blanx had said. "And they have a certain way of looking at the world that few grim reapers have - being around them makes us happy."

Even if she was afraid of scaring her brothers again, and afraid of seeing their reactions, she didn't want to leave them. Not really. She loved having a bigger family, and loved the little time they had spent together.

When she opened her eyes again, she was fully visible beside the tree's trunk.

"That's okay with me," she said.

She hesitated.

"And, um..." She faltered again as she got up to her feet, not quite sure if now was the best time to tell Damascus her guess on what specters were. But she wasn't sure she was going to remember it later, so she just went for it. "...I think specters are humans. Not living ones like our brothers are, but dead. I remember reading about specters in one of my books - they're ghosts, like the ones reapers deal with. If you've seen Mol-leck hurting them, maybe they did something bad when they were alive?"

Damascus turned back from where he had been preparing to walk out into the trees, and frowned at Schadel's explanation about reapers.

"Humans, but... dead?" he faltered, knowing what death was in theory but having no solid experience with it. "Does that mean that they lived here in Prussia once, but- their lives here are gone?" his gaze grew distant. "That's so sad. A- and you said that they were bad? A- are you sure? They are a little scary sometimes, but.."

He frowned again, and stumbled back around, remembering that he had to find Engel. He would have to think about this more later. Between his distracted movements, he turned around again and waved to the general area he thought Schadel might be, promising to return quickly before running off into the trees.

"Engel!" he called loudly between the clumsy running. "Pou eísai? Eínai mihi, Damásko!" (Where are you? It's me, Damascus!)

There it was--Damascus' voice. He had no idea what it said, except for his name, but it meant he had to be close.

"Ich bin hier!" (I'm here!) he called, starting to run towards the voice again. "Nicht bewegen! Ich komme!" (Don't move! I'm coming!)

Engel wasn't the speediest of individuals, nor the best suited for this sort of thing, but he did have good ears. It didn't take him long to find his brother. He raced over to him and stopped in front of him, breathing with a raspy pant as he tried to catch his breath. "Wo ist Schadel? Ist Schadel in Ordnung?" (Where is Schadel? Is Schadel okay?) He asked between breaths, his voice full of concern.