Young Writers Society

"That's....all very interesting," Cathal muttered, still staring at Arryn, but he'd tilted his head as if to listen to Nuada, and was watching Bear and Thytes out of the corner of his eye. "But what is a Jedi? I have never heard of those before..." He frowned, considering all the information that Carter had offered him--and then the quite fox-boy spoke up, startling him.

"Would you like to see one?"

Cathal turned to peer under the table at him. The little fox's gaze was still on whatever it was that he was working on, and Cathal had to blink as he recognised the torn-down parts of a Naquadah generator. "I would," he said, and then glanced up at Thytes. "You do realise he's taking apart a Naquadah generator and reassembling it into an explosive device?"

The lion looked over at Cathal and blinked, trying to process what he'd just been told.

Thytes found himself very relieved when Jaron crawled out from under the table and stood up. "I was hoping you didn't hear me," Jaron whispered, staring at the ground as he walked up to Cathal. "You keep saying were, so I don't know if this is the same thing, but..."

Gray fur rippled across Jaron, replacing the white. He grew a little taller, muzzle growing with the addition of larger and more pronounced teeth. His tail straightened out, his ears grew wider, and his claws grew longer.

In a few seconds, Thytes saw a wolf in front of him, this one wearing a slightly larger pair of overalls with mostly empty pockets.

"Ta-da," Jaron whispered, glancing at Cathal.

"Thank you, little one. That was most....educational." He gave the fox-turned-wolf a fond smile. "I appreciate the demonstration."

He's adorable, Nuada whispered, and Cathal silently agreed.

He is, but now is not the time, Nuada.

"Am I correct in assuming you were creating an explosive from the Naquadah generator you found?" he asked, leaning back against the edge of the table. "You are aware that that is probably not a very good idea, right?"

Jaron set his paws on his head. "I knew it was powering something, and I was just, scared of everything," he whispered. "I'm, pretty sure it's harmless right now, though."

"Pretty sure?" Carter looked at the newly transformed wolf, tipping his hat back once again and leaning forward. "Could you possibly be a bit more confident in that statement? Maybe a confidence along the lines of knowing the red shirt is going to die when Scotty beams us down somewhere."

Carter was starting to enjoy the blank looks, and Bear's obvious sighs of "Please kill me."

Shrinking away from Carter - he came across as both weird and menacing, thanks to that smile and whatever it was he was talking about - Jaron pointed to Cathal. "I don't know what you're talking about?" he stuttered. "But this guy does."

“That doesn’t sound good,” Ollie said, stifling a mental gulp as she and Fern (it was hard to tell if either one of them was doing the action more than other) looked Taleweaver over.

“Normal or not?” Fern asked, hesitantly poking Taleweaver. Ollie tried to draw her hand away, but it was too late by then - the action had already been committed.


“That’s very impressive,” Daniel overheard Benji say as the others continuing speaking, but he was far too distracted by what Benji had called him earlier. Acquaintances? They were more than that! No one could understand Benji like Daniel could - no one had ever tried. But maybe he didn’t understand him as well as he thought; it seemed like Benji didn’t value their friendship to the same extent that he did.

Which made him upset for reasons he couldn’t quite describe.

...Maybe he was relying on Benji more than he should have been.

Just as he was coming to this bitter realization, he became aware of the fox-man who had become a wolf. He had noticed him when he came in with Benji (and smelled him, too, along with the technology he was messing with underneath the table) but he hadn’t really gotten a good look at him until now. And the poor guy seemed like a wreck. Sure, fiddling around with explosives wasn’t the greatest idea. But he seemed to know what he was doing, and the attitude the other man (Carter?) was giving him only seemed to make him more anxious.

He walked over to the group.

“It means that he doesn’t want to cut to the chase and talk about his feelings,” he said. He couldn’t help himself - Daniel found himself shooting a glance over in Benji’s direction.

Benji met his eyes.

He faltered; he hadn’t expected that.

“Real mature,” Benji hissed.

“I’m not the one who said his friend was an ‘acquaintance’,” Daniel shot back.

There was an awkward silence. Daniel didn’t look away from his supposed friend, but he was sure that everyone else was watching them - or, at the very least, giving them the briefest of glances. Benji suddenly straightened and stormed over to him, grabbing him by the arm and bringing him into a nearby patch of darkness underneath a towering bookcase.

“I’m not part of your act,” Benji said.

There was an ominous, low roll of thunder.

“You agreed to this,” Daniel whispered. His voice grew in volume with each new word. “What, did you not read the fine print? You told me you wanted to help! That you wanted to find cryptids, and that you’d ‘do whatever it takes’ if it meant reaching our goal!”

“I didn’t agree to this!” Benji shouted back at him; he was only a little louder than Daniel had been when he had finished speaking. “I didn’t agree to pretending that I’m some way that I’m not! Maybe you’re okay with it, but don’t you see it? Don’t you see how they’re acting around us? They hate us. They’re not like them. They’re people, and not a single one of them seem entirely normal! Do you really think they’d like someone who comes in and announces that their entire life goal is to kill the abnormal? I hate when people see us like this, but you don’t seem to care!”

Daniel’s eyes briefly flashed red in the darkness.

“Well, I hate when my only friend says I’m just an acquaintance, but you don’t seem to care about that!”


The storm continued to rage on outside the castle, but it had begun to quell. Storms may have come quickly on Miri, but they never lasted quite that long. The worst of the rain and lightning had passed. Now, to the ominous rolling of thunder in the distance, he slipped out into the garden. His bare feet nearly slid on the grass as he approached the shed, but there was little he could do about that. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a pair of shoes that truly fit him, and wasn’t worn with age.

He approached the shed and opened the door with a long, drawn out creak-

-only to realize that even the shed wasn’t safe from the castle’s latest wave of visitors.

He stared at them with the same detached horror he had stared at the creature in the hall with.

They did nothing when they were poked and nothing strange happened. "It is what happens when there is not much light. I simply will not be able to move my vessel and manipulate light. I think we should head back and make sure the others have not killed each other."

------------------

Danny and Tammy watched Benji and Daniel argue with amusement.

Something flared up in Thtyes as he watched Benji and Daniel argue. When it came to Carter, Thytes got the sense that Carter's comments were as regular as they weren't necessarily mean. Those comments could absolutely be embarrassing and crude to Bear, but, if Carter really was upset by Bear and Thytes, he seemed like the kind of person who would've done something already.

Benji and Daniel, meanwhile, had issues. Their job, their expectations, their explanations, their feelings about each other - the two were taking all kinds of emotional shots at each other in front of everyone else. And it was getting on Thytes's nerves.

Marching over to them, the lion pushed them apart. "For a partnership, you do not exactly seem to be partners," Thytes said, glaring from one to the other. "The way that you mesh your professional and personal business does not appear to be working out for either of you, so why do you not just calmly explain what it is you are trying to do, and how you feel about the other person?"



All things considered, it took longer than Zech expected for Lunis to look up, see the figure open the door to the shed, and bolt out the nearest window.

Not that Zech could blame him. Between the thunder booming overhead, the humming underneath his feet, the way his fur stood on end, and whatever it was that was shrouded in darkness at the shed's entrance, the only thing stopping Zech from leaving was that he was a little far away from said window.

Picking up Lunis's pants, Zech waved to the figure and smiled awkwardly. "Hello?" he said. If nothing else, he could see if it was possible to talk to the figure. Not like he really had any other choice.

Taking advantage of the disturbance between the other groupings in the room, Bear pulled Carter off to the side of the library. He had the chance to pick a fight and he was going to take it.

"Carter, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Carter knew exactly what he was doing, but shrugged it away to Bear. He wasn't jealous. Exactly. There was a level of possession when it came to Carter's relation to Bear, but not in the way other beings had taken him.

"I was making sure that you weren't making a mistake. I was worried when I came through the portal and you weren't there and then you were flirting with someone."
"Says the man who was never interested."
"For different reasons. And I might have been a bit mean but you didn't have to say that."

Bear glared at him before turning away, head tilted and eyes beginning to glow. He forced his anger back down into his chest, looking up to Carter while he stroked his partner's hair.

"Bear, don't do that. It's fine." It wasn't fine but Carter covered any of his emotions by stating, "Besides, Thytes would probably prefer to have your hands occupying him instead."

Bear struck Carter against the cheek with the back of his hand.

"Now you're going to go over there and apologize to that fox-wolf being. And you're going to be nice. And you're going to make sure that Jaron isn't afraid of you."
Carter huffed as he asked, "Why would they be scared of me?"
"You're over six feet tall, carrying multiple weapons, and you yelled at them about safety."

That was actually understandable.

He wanted to fight that too, but simply turned about on his heel and marched over to where Cathal/Nuada stood with Jaron. Carter stretched out his hand while saying, "My apologies for not introducing myself before jumping into my references to our earthen pop culture. I was simply concerned for safety."

When the extended hand wasn't answered, he presented it to Cathal/Nuada (not being entirely sure who he was speaking to), and said, "Carter Lincoln. Pleasure to meet the both of you."

In another attempt to seem less threatening, Carter took his Stetson off and let his shoulders slump, hoping this would go peacefully. If the energy feelings were to be believed, the danger of the castle would require them to be sticking together.

And as the final last ditch attempt, he added, "Though a lot of people back home call me Dopey."

Though the hand wasn't really extended towards him, Jaron shook it anyways. "Okay," he murmured. He didn't quite like how Carter talked, but at least Carter was trying to be friendly. Jaron kept on looking at the floor, though that was his normal response to people. "I'm Jaron. You might already know that - I don't know what Thytes was telling everybody."

"That sounds like a plan," Ollie agreed, knowing that Fern would agree to that plan. Even if they were scared about the truth being revealed, they couldn't hide away like this forever - they'd have to face whatever reactions they got.

Fern gave a small nod in agreement.

"Look for light on way," Fern added.


Benji fell silent.

He wanted to speak. He wanted to tell Daniel exactly why he felt so uncomfortable with the whole situation, but there were some things that didn't need to be - and couldn't be - said.

Daniel was also silent.

He just kept staring at Benji with the betrayed expression on his face, hurt clear in the eyes that had returned to their previous color.

Benji took a deep breath.

He had to word things...carefully, but it wouldn't be impossible to. Daniel knew the context; he could be vague. "You know how people see us," he quietly said. "How they see me. I want...I want to be liked for once."

"Well," Daniel said, taking a deep breath of his own, "you know that people like us don't make friends easily," he said. "And it hurt that you didn't call me one, even though I thought that you were the closest thing to a friend that I've ever had."


The visitor spoke.

He stared at him for another moment before turning and rushing from the shed, coming even closer to slipping on the wet grass than he had before.

Thytes took a deep breath. "That is much better, is it not?" he said. He looked over to Daniel. "Have you considered that he might have chosen to use another word for the sake of professionalism, or because what you and he hope to achieve in a friendship varies? Not that it is inherently bad; it is merely something to reconcile."



For some reason, Zech found himself running after the figure. Maybe it was the figure not killing him, or Zech needing to explain why he'd been in the corner of the room while holding Lunis's pants.

Either way, Zech ran across the room, clinging onto the doorway. "Wait, don't run away!" he said as the figure vanished into a rain-soaked garden. Zech's heart skip when he saw the figure nearly trip, to say nothing of catching sight of the black blur that suddenly made a beeline for the figure.

Cathal looked at the handshake then at Jaron and gently touched the Fox-wolf’s shoulder. “As long as you don’t mix up the black wires with the green ones, you’ll be fine,” he said, glancing towards Carter. “You can go back to your..usual form now and return to what you were doing.”

He turned to take Carter’s hand and studied his face, looking for bruises but all he found was a red mark across the man’s cheek. Wasn’t Bear a Goa’uld and wasn’t Carter his Jaffa? Isn’t that why Bear took him aside and chided him? He frowned, confused and concerned. Nuada once told him that the Goa’uld were not a good people, that they were arrogant and violent and abusive to the people that were looking after them. Cathal hadn’t seen it that way until then, but now he didn’t understand Bear and Carter. Why wasn’t Bear more violent? And why wasn’t Carter deferring to him all the time? It didn’t make sense.

“Hello, Carter,” he said, tilting his head to try and get a better look at the man’s face. “My name is Cathal and my host is Nuada. Why didn’t Bear punish you more for your behaviour?”

They began walking back the way they came. "Something is telling me that I shall not find light anywhere except from a flashlight which is not sufficient enough to charge me."

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The twins had grinned at the hurt and betrayed look on Daniel's face.