Young Writers Society

Jane turned pale at the comment, and made sure to cling to me the entire time we searched for a shelter. I couldn't quite describe it, but it felt good having someone rely on me out of something other than necessity. I didn't know why she liked me so much, but it seemed like Jane and I were joined at the hip at this point.

Our shelter turned out to be a cave tucked between a couple of towering trees and a small hillside. It looked almost perfectly carved into the rock, and extremely picturesque - with a bed, a table, and a bookcase filled with books with unfamiliar titles. Little decorations were scattered throughout it.

As the rain began to pour outside, Jane and I made our way in - Jane offering me the bed to sit on while she wandered over to the bookcase.

"...You've been here before, haven't you?" I asked.

Jane faltered. "...A place like this," she quietly said.

Somehow, their shelter being a cave nestled between a pair of trees made perfect sense to Denebola. Outside of the storm (which Denebola had the feeling wasn't normal at all), it did make sense that someone might want to live in a quiet place with rainbow flowers and oversized trees.

Except that someone had a really weird sense of interior design for a cave without a door.

"Who lives here?" Denebola said, staring around the cave. "Why won't they show themselves?"

Enide, meanwhile, walked up to the bookcase. Plucking out a book and opening it up, she scanned through the pages. "And what do you mean by a place like this, Jane?" she said, not looking away from the book.

"It's similar," Jane nervously answered, "but not quite the same..."

She looked over at me - maybe for guidance, and maybe for support - but I just saw it as confirmation for what I had been guessing all along. I got up from my spot on the bed and grabbed her on the wrist, fully intending to bring her to a quiet corner and interrogate her away from Denebola and Enide's watchful eye.

But when I grabbed onto her wrist and opened my mouth to ask her to come over, my plan was foiled before it could even begin. "I want you to come over there with me so I can bug you about the pressure without them hearing-"

I swore.

Jane bit her lip. "What do you mean?"

I crossed my arms. "You lied earlier," I said, my subtleness gone in an instant. "You said my name was Skull. That's the name I go by, but I told you that it was Van Sullivan - my name from my first life."

I didn't mean to say that much, but the words came out before I could stop them. "That was when the pressure happened. And it happened again when you explained why you said Enide is a liar. You're causing it by lying, aren't you?"

Jane frantically shook her head, and the pressure returned as the wind began to howl outside. "N-No!"

Denebola crossed her arms. "Look, Jane," she said, taking a couple steps and glaring down at her. "I don't have any reason to dislike you - you seem pretty shy and friendly, and you remind me of a couple good friends. But if you're causing all this weird stuff to happen, and you're the only person who can lie, maybe it's worth, I dunno, telling us about it? Before you make it any worse?"

"Well, it certainly explains the Skull situation," Enide said, letting out what Denebola thought was a faint chuckle. Which sounded incredibly, intensely wrong coming out of Enide's mouth. "I thought it was an exceptionally silly name, though I have heard worse."

Jane made herself look even smaller than before underneath Denebola's glare, holding her hands close her body and hunching ever so slightly. When that did little to help, she scooted back in my direction - hand going up to touch something on her back that apparently wasn't there.

"It's not a silly name to me," I indignantly said, torn between focusing on the Denebola and Jane situation, or responding to Enide's comment. "It's short for the skull in the jar, since that was how I spent-"

I covered my mouth with my hand.

"-more than the last century as." I lowered my hand, glowering at a spot in the air. I might have been open to telling people about being a ghost back on Arium, but they rarely believed me - I was hoping to avoid the part where everyone thought I was crazy here. "And the name makes me seem more intimidating - being alive doesn't have the same perks as being dead."

...I swore again.

And then I turned my attention back to Jane, because I was very desperate for some answers.

Jane ducked her head down.

"I'm...I'm not lying..." Jane said.

Thunder boomed outside, and the pressure returned.

"The thunder says otherwise," I pointed out.

"But..." Jane shifted. "I...I want to say it's because I'm not supposed to say, but I think I could if I really wanted to...I...I'm just afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"...You," Jane whispered.

I blinked. "...Me?"

She shook her head. "Not you-you...All of you." She covered her face with her hands, taking a step away from so she wasn't resting her back up against my chest. "Y-You're not going to like me when I tell you! And...And I'll be physically alright if you decide to hurt me, but I...I don't want to be hurt anymore..."

Enide frowned. "I cannot exactly see how being dead might be more advantageous than being alive, particularly when you have to spend your time as a skull in a jar," she said, moving over to the bed and sitting down on it. She gently closed the book she was holding. "How did you come back to life?"

Meanwhile, Denebola let out a long sigh. "Maybe you could've just told us whatever your secret is when we first met, so it wouldn't hurt as much?" Denebola said at last, trying her best to control her voice. "And I'm not interested in hurting you, physically or otherwise. I've been around way too many scared people to hate you for whatever you've done. Scared people just do stupid things, is all."

"Morally, I shouldn't be telling you that," I replied. The words were already flying off of my tongue, and all I could do was listen in horror when I continued blabbing. "But I've been known to have gray morals, even though I've historically hammed it up to hide my insecurities - I actually have a working moral compass."

I managed to sneak in an angry look before I returned to speaking.

"And while I might be acting like this is a serious threat to how the world works, I have no idea how I came back to life. I have some theories, but the theories aren't strong ones."

Now that my rant was over, I realized just how much Jane had scooted away from me and Denebola. I didn't think it was because of what I had just said, but the fear was still there.

"You won't hate me for what I've done," Jane whispered. "You...You'll hate me for who I am. For what I am...I-I can't tell you, or..."

Her lips quivered, and she ducked her head down.

I tried to muster some kind of comforting comment, but my previous attempts to comfort people usually involved a rudeness that Jane didn't deserve; I only used that for people who returned my banter. But for once I was grateful for the obligatory truth-telling, even if I said a bit more than I should have.

"Well," I said, "whoever you are, I've probably been worse. I stole on the streets and ended up in a cult worshiping a guy who I've pretended to admire but only did because I wanted to mess with my friends. I died, haunted my skull, and made some morally questionable decisions and comments then. And now I'm traveling across a strange world with two strangers, and occasionally I steal, but not in the way I used to."

She shook her head, but with less gusto than before.

Not quite sure if I was doing this whole comforting thing right, I reached out a hand and awkwardly placed it on her shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze.

After a moment passed, she took a deep breath.

"...I'm Jane, but I'm also not," she finally said. "Jane's the name of this body, so it...it was technically the truth. I...I don't have a true body. Sometimes I have one, and sometimes I don't. But my c-current body is named Nathan, not Jane. Jane belongs to my twin."

This was far from what I had expected, but I still had an unanswered question. "So who are you really?"

There was a pause.

"...I have a lot of names," was the quiet, hesitant response. "I-It's all personal preference, and what m-makes you feel better. I-I'm the personification of not telling the truth. I think that's the best way of putting it..."

Denebola blinked. "What does any of that mean?" she said, a little more surprised than frustrated. "Why don't you always have a body? You have a twin? If your current body is Nathan, why are you in Jane? And if you're the personification of lying, does that mean I should trust you, even in a place like this?"

The lionness seemed to be asking all the right questions, so Enide decided to address Skull with, "You do know who you are talking to, yes? Do you think I would shame you for having ambiguous morals? For having intimidated, lied, stole? I am sure there would be plenty of people who would be alive if not for me, so I would rather that you, as they say, not stress it."

Nathan - or whatever I was supposed to call the personification of lying, deceit, etc. - said nothing in response to Denebola's questions in the minute that followed them being addressed. He just stared down at the ground, hands clutch tightly in front of him.

I took the opportunity to reply to Enide.

"If you're trying to make me feel comforted by that, it's not working - I have a thing against authority figures in general, and especially lying ones," I said. I felt a momentarily burst of joy - victory at last! I had wanted to say it like that, in just that way. But then more words came out, and I realized I was about to do another long ramble about my internal state of being.

Great.

Just great.

"And I wasn't trying to defend myself - not intentionally. The words just keep coming out of my mouth. But, since you think I'm feeling guilty about acting like I don't have any good in my heart - which I am - then listen to this: I really don't care about your opinion of me. I might if I know you for longer, but there's very few people who matter to me, and you're not one of them. It's those people I feel guilty about, even though I'd never tell them that if I met them again, so take that."

I looked at Enide for a moment longer before quickly turning my head away, cheeks flushed yet again at everything I had revealed. The feeling of guilt - the one I tried to always push away - had returned, so now I was left with both embarrassment and self-hatred.

Nathan apparently saw my silence as an opportunity to speak, so he did exactly that. "It's because I'm not a person," he whispered. "Not a person like you are...I'm a thing that likes to be a person sometimes, so that's why I can have a body or not have one. It's probably too confusing to explain it to someone who doesn't experience it..."

He hesitantly raised his head.

"And I d-do have a twin," he confirmed. "Sometimes she's my sister, sometimes he's my brother, and then sometimes they're neither. It just depends on the bodies we take. R-Right now she's my sister."

"But how can someone like have a twin?" I interjected.

"She's like me," he quietly said. "She's t-truth. This is her room, and her body, and her world, but it's all wrong. Sh-She wanted to see if we could take each other's places for a day, just to have fun, but t-then I ended up like this, and we have to tell the truth, even though her home doesn't work like this."

His gaze looked away from me and instead at Denebola, though he only met her eyes for a handful of moments before his gaze dropped back down to the ground.

"A-And I want you to trust me, but I-I don't know if you can," he said, his voice breaking at the last few words. "Th-That's why I didn't want you to know. Because no one ever likes lying, even if it's not black and white..."

"I would like to argue that one of the pillars of authority is lying," Enide said, watching as Skull turned away. "But I feel like you do care about my opinion. Not that you should - my opinion means little, particularly when it comes to the concept of morality - but your tendency to ambiguity in describing your morally gray actions, even knowing my reputation, makes me suspect as much. Or perhaps you are worried about Nathan's opinion, which would make far more sense, given how you seem to like Nathan's company."

"Okay," Denebola said to Nathan, pinching the bridge of her nose and letting out a loud sigh. "I hate this 'people hate lying' crap. The one person I know who hates lying doesn't exactly have his s*** together. He's stubborn and violent enough to hurt the people around him over a lie, and the only reason I hang around him at all is because my nephew likes him. And I've had to lie all the time. I've had to lie about my name, my parents, my life, just so I could try to get rid of the creeps and thieves in my life.

"Can I trust you? I'm not sure. But at least you're giving me a story that isn't making the storm outside any worse, and that's good enough for me. You're not the first not-person I've ever met, but you're a lot nicer than it ever was, and that's also good enough for me. So, what can I do to help you and your sibling get back to normal?"

"I really don't," I replied, growing all the more exasperated with Enide trying to see something that just wasn't there. "I just keep adding things on that I don't need to - I know I have a tendency to annoy people with how much I talk, but this is barely like that. I wanted to say that I had gray morals, but this place is making me clarify that I really don't."

I glanced over at Nathan, wanting to see what his reaction to Denebola's comments was.

...And I found him crying.

He wiped his tears with the palm of his hand, but they just kept coming. I had to dig around to find a tissue for him to use - I didn't care about Nathan's opinion, but I did care about his well being.

Just like with Lucy.

...Even if the voice in the back of my head was saying that I very much cared about how she viewed me, despite how I had acted towards her for the entirety of our time together.

"O-Okay," Nathan said. "B-But I...I don't really know how to get back to normal. It was my sister's idea, and I'm not sure I can get back to normal without her..."

Hnng, at least Skull had a tissue on hand - Denebola had zero idea how to deal with a crying stranger. "Do you know where your sister is?" she said, taking a step back and trying not to look away. "Or where she might be? And, you don't have to answer that right away, just when you feel a little better. You can sit down on the bed, if you want to? Or read a book, or something?"

"I was concerned about whether or not I would say too much," Enide said. "But, while I have not entirely accepted the nature of this place, I have embraced it enough that now the possibility seems less likely. It is far easier to say what I want to say when I know how I am going to say it."

Nathan blew his nose in the tissue I had given him.

"I-I'm not sure," he replied, sitting down on the bed. I was leaning towards Denebola's idea of Nathan taking a break before he continued - he was bound to get incoherent from all of the sobbing - but he apparently wasn't one for breaks. "If...If I'm in a place like hers, then maybe she's in a place like mine?"

After a moment of hesitation, I sat down beside him and wrapped my arm around his shoulder. I didn't meet the startled look he had to have given me; I didn't want to have acknowledge the act of kindness I had just done.

Instead, I looked up at Enide.

"Unfortunately, I have a tendency to blurt out things, even before ending up like this - all of that mental control and fortitude thing never really worked for me."

"What does that other place look like?" Denebola said, walking over to the bed and leaning against one of the posts, tail curling and uncurling around it.

Enide tilted her head, looking around Nathan at Skull. "It is not precisely mental control - merely self-awareness and acceptance. Knowing that you are liable to speak more than you intend makes it a tad easier to say what you want, or find ways to reconcile what you want to say and what you end up saying."

"I know that I'm going to blurt things out," I muttered, "but it's not really helping me."

Beside me, Nathan thought over the question - waiting until I had finished speaking before giving an answer. "It's like this one," he softly said, "but...different. I have an underground cavern instead of a cave, and the flowers that grow in my forests are foxgloves instead of calla lilies. It-It was my idea to have different flowers..."