Young Writers Society

He looked away from where his son stood and was thoroughly engrossed in the conversation as God and Lucifer, and all the others started discussing how to and in which direction to start looking for Quinn and the others.

It was not until he checked again on where his son had been standing that he realised that Ethan was no longer there. Ciaran froze, eyes wide, as he stared at the empty space beside God and Lucifer where a certain young dhampir was supposed to be.

"Wait," he said, gaining everyone's attention for a moment. "Where's Ethan?"

Gabriel let out a groan the moment he realized Ciaran's son had slipped off when they had been talking. A quick glance around the clearing showed that he was nowhere to be found - he had disappeared into the woods.

"Not another missing child," he got out. "I am not ready to have kids."

"We need to find them," God said, "even though I'm still not entirely sure what's going on."

Lucifer nodded from his side.


Just as Quinn was trying to think of another topic to keep the conversation going, a scream rang out through the forest. Her eyes widened at the noise, and she did the first thing she could think of - she took a protective step in front of the tree.

Her new friend had to be protected, even if she currently had nothing to protect herself with. That was her job.

The screams finally ceased.

It wasn’t long before another sound replaced them: rustling in the nearby bushes. Hands shaking ever so slightly, she watched as a boy around her age emerged from the darkness.

And then she felt a jolt of terror, because the boy had a pair of miniscule fangs and blood on face. And while she didn't ascribe to the stereotype of people wearing black being bad news, seeing that Gabriel loved the color, it made him seem all the more dangerous.

Because, if she was right, she had just heard the screams of his last meal.

"Whatever you do," she said, keeping her eyes on the vampire, "don't get out of the tree unless I tell you to."

Ethan raised his head and blinked at the girl before him. She seemed vaguely familiar, and he wasn't sure where he'd seen her before. He tilted his head and rubbed at the dried blood on his face. Wait, since when did he have dried blood on his face? And where was Nich? Where was his dad? He frowned and glanced past her to see the otter boy in the tree. There was still a lingering echo of pain shooting through him, but he seemed to be okay now.

"Do I know you?" he asked, still frowning. She really did seem familiar, but he just couldn't quite recall when or where he'd seen her. "My name is Ethan. What's yours?"

She stared at him.

Ethan was the name of the toddler she had been with when she was turned into a little kid - she remembered leading him around and playing with him. And he had been a vampire, in retrospect, since she could recall him sucking blood from the man who had to be his dad.

If she focused long and hard enough, she could see the resemblance between the young boy and teenager before her. But if he was suddenly aging up, too, that implied that she wasn’t the only one who had turned into a kid.

"We have met before," she confirmed. "I know this is going to sound crazy, but I'm Quinn - I'm the girl you were with earlier. You’re...You're the same as the little boy, right?"

She stared at him, and he stared back. "Quinn," he said, and frowned, trying to push past the blurry section of his memory. "I think I was....a little kid for a bit there. I can't quite remember, but you're definitely familiar now."

He approached her slowly, still mildly confused, but less-so for her presence. Ethan stopped short of her and peered past her again. The otter-kid was definitely hiding in the tree.

"Is that... Aegeas?" he asked, gaze darting back to Quinn. "I think that was his name, wasn't it?"

"I think so," she said. She hadn't paid attention enough to hear what his name was when she was stuck as a kid-

She slowly turned back to Aegeas.

...He was a kid. She had been a kid. Ethan had been a kid. If she thought long and hard enough, she could remember Lucifer and God as their younger selves. Everyone else was an adult. Why would the forest turn some people into kids and not all of them?

...Had she been talking with someone who was stuck as a kid and hadn't even realized it?

"...Aegeas?" she hesitantly asked. "What's your last memory from before entering the woods?"

Aegeas, who'd wrapped his arms around a branch and had buried his face in the bark (he didn't trust Quinn's name or identity, but did like her enough to trust her advice) tilted his head in their direction. One eye scanned the two humans (or, one human and one not-so-human) while the visible corner of his mouth turned into a frown.

"I don't really know," Aegeas mumbled, voice muffled by the tree. "But I don't want to find out. You're not Ethan, you're not Quinn, and I don't want the forest to lie to me either. Also, why is not-Ethan so scary? I have bigger teeth than he does, but it's gross he won't clean his face up."

She shifted uncomfortably.

"I made a mistake," she admitted. "I thought that Ethan did something that he didn't. But why don't you want to believe me, and why don't you want to remember?"

She took a deep breath. She wasn't sure she could say this right, but she had to try.

"What if...What if you're like me? What if something turned you into a kid and took your memories? Wouldn’t you want to get them back if there was even a chance that you were missing them?"

Another deep breath, and a moment of hesitation.

"...Are you scared of what you'd be like when you're older?" she carefully and quietly asked. And then, as an afterthought, she added, "...Also, it's alright for you to come down now."

"I'm not scared," Aegeas growled, digging his claws into the tree. "I'm just more comfortable up here - I don't have to look up at people."

He paused, biting his lip, then went on. "And that sounds, stupid," he said. "How could a forest do that? I haven't heard of anything like that."

"I haven't either," she said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other again, looking at the forest around them. "But I'm new to dealing with things like this, and the person who sent me and my friends in here thought that there was something special about the forest. He wanted us to find it, but he never said what it was."

She hesitated again.

"...But what if you really are wrong?" she asked. "Wouldn't your future self be frustrated with you now if you could have fixed this sooner?"

"No?" Aegeas said, voice shaky. "There might be some weird thing lying around here, but I don't think it's doing all of that. It's the forest tricking us into thinking we're people we aren't. There isn't a future me who would want me to do anything differently."

Quinn was normally good with kids, but she was beginning to grow frustrated. She was sure of it - Aegeas just had to be someone like her! The forest took memories and turned people into children. When they got the memories back, they turned back to normal. It explained what happened to her and Ethan, and explained why God and Lucifer were suddenly so young.

"Aegeas, please," she begged. "Just try to remember something - anything. You have to be getting your memories back, too. I know it's scary to think that you're not yourself, but you have to at least check."

"No!" Aegeas said, crawling a short way up the tree. "This is me, and this was always me, and it's not going to stop being me! I know the forest is trying to get you and me to do things we don't want to, and I'm not going to do them."

She finally couldn't take it anymore.

"I'm not a liar," she said. "My name is Quinn Holt, and I'm the girl you were talking to earlier! I got turned into a little girl. I lost my memories. But I got them back, and I'm back to normal now - I know who I am! I've with all sorts of things that go bump in the night, and I've had to trust my heart a lot. And my heart's telling me that we're in the same situation, and that you just haven’t realized it because you're too scared of being wrong!"

Aegeas went back to staring at the bark, wrapping his arms over his head and covering his ears. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about the 'memories' he could feel tugging at his mind. He didn't want to deal with people who wouldn't admit they were wrong. He wanted to get out of this forest.