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It's interesting, being at a school where no one knows you. Even more interesting is when you know all of them regardless of the fact that you've never seen even one in your whole life. Most interesting of all, perhaps, is that you've been going to this school for two years and no matter how familiar they all seem, you know that this is your first encounter with them. It makes one nervous, it does.

No one seemed to notice that Sibra's body was suddenly be-winged. Apparently, it was natural to randomly grow wings, though only a very few people sprouted them. Either that, or we had completely altered the timeline, which by this point I suppose was only normal. A long conversation with Sibra that weekend through the mirror familiarized me with his memories and he with mine, and we slowly managed to act naturally with this extra set of life we had been given. We swore each to do our best for the other, then turned away and set off for morning.

Of course, I experimented. As a spider and a medium, I am necessarily also a scientist. I'm also a teenage boy presented with a new body and a free weekend. What do you think I did? From sundown to daybreak I closed all the windows and doors and walked around that house totally in the nude, just touching things, getting a tactile sense of what it was to be furred. Everything was different: the pads on my feet were more effective than callouses at dulling the feeling; the claws on my fingers and toes were completely new and had to be dealt with; I hurt my nose multiple times, forgetting how far in front of my face it really was; and my wings were a constant problem. See, for the face, I had some of Sibra's muscle memory helping me out, but not even he had been prepared for wings. I knocked over more vases and paintings and small tables and bowls of food and domestic cats than I had ever before. It was humiliating, but no one was there. Except the cats.

I only masturbated four or five times. Yes, I know it was just two days, but come on! I already told you- teenage boy? New body? It's gonna happen. I sat down the first time in the tub, without the shower on, but knowing I'd probably need it afterwards. Simple anticipation of what I was about to do had gotten me hard, and his blue, slightly-pointed-but-mostly-human member fit comfortably in my hand. I stroked gently at the tip, revelling in the feel of my soft fur against my flesh. I toyed with the sheath for minutes on end, pulling at the soft, elastic flesh, shuddering and moaning in delicate pleasure as I dipped a fingertip within it... It was incredible.

I closed my eyes in bliss and imagined Sibra's hand at my groin rather than mine--it wasn't difficult--gently moving up and down, a simple pressure stimulating the entire length. My jaw fell open slightly from the sensations and my hand accelerated, my breathing quickening. I reminded myself to relax time after time. The dry, cool touch on flesh quickly slick with thin, fast-flowing pre sent coldshocks through my body. The first time, I hardly consciously noticed the knot, and just squeezed at the base and managed to quench the howl that tried to answer to a loud, high-pitched whine. When I finally felt the climax that painted my face in puppy batter begin, I was disappointed even in my spastic contractions that it had ended.

There were variations on this, of course, playing with my new sheath and fuzzy balls and, naturally, using my elongated muzzle for autofellatio. It was something I had never achieved as a human and now, it was hardly a strain. The weird idea of your own tongue licking around your throbbing shaft while you curl over it, your lips sucking and your teeth gently teasing up and down and over, and that thick, long, muscular tongue back again when you remember it, like a ribbon around my sapphire obelisk until with blinding intensity, you feel the warm jets of cum wet your throat... it is phenomenal.

But enough on my experimental autoeroticism. I was talking about school (and to remind you, this was one year prior to Chapter 1 of this story). School was basically the same as it always had been: teachers who loved me for not screwing around while I got away with most of the wrong things I did (nothing serious), friends who made a constant mockery of me for my social ineptitude, three-digit grades; the usual. It was hysterical and eye-popping to look at everyone and see all the different furs. It was also incredibly mind-opening to notice that yes indeed, furs had as many flaws as human beings. To my as-of-then untrained eye, they were only beautiful, but it was a few short days before I could pick out hairless patches, oily fur, lopsided ears, scars, and the like.

I saw Voxis immediately. I mean, I couldn't avoid it. He was there, this beastly, bright white, shining angel of perfection. There was no way I could miss him, and I had to make a conscious effort not to stare. He was actually very shy, especially because of his well-shaped physique, so I sat next to him, even though it wasn't Sibra's normal place in class. He glanced at me briefly, smiled back at my smile, and probably wondered significantly why I was continually shifting my weight. It was very difficult to keep from reaching my hand out to touch him, and more difficult to ignore the pressure in my groin whenever my thoughts wandered to what he might look like under his clothes. While I had made the perhaps misinformed decision that I was straight, I had accepted that men could fairly easily turn me on; therefore, while I couldn't ignore it, I could definitely mask it enough that if he smelled anything, he would put it down to the random, post-pubescent releases of pheremones common in high school. I stayed there over the course of several days and gradually learned to harness my thoughts about him, and through helping him through some of the more difficult concepts of chemistry, we developed an extremely vague friendship. As the days passed, I picked out the other angels, but couldn't really get close to them, yet. Suli was next, and then Rajah, as I continued to identify who was perfect and who was not. There was only one with whom I remained undecided.

Raiden. I knew who Raiden was. A bronze fox, with colors of red, orange, and yellow playing through his immaculately-kept fur. He wore glasses, was about my height, and was about my build. He kept mostly to himself, but we were best friends. And I knew that we were best friends even if he didn't, because I knew that this was Jason. That is, if he had come over.

My feelings for Jason/Raiden were hard to define. Occasionally, I felt like I might have fallen in love with him, but then I decided that we were just ridiculously close friends, but then I wanted to hug and kiss him, but then I realized that that might kill what we had, but then I went back to thinking about what it was we had, and proceeded cyclically from there. I have no idea what he felt for me, because the only hints we dropped could just as easily have been threads of irony to switch up the monotony of the day.

It took me a while to get up the gumption to finally ask him if he was Raiden or Jason. Until then, we took up the time in other ways.

"What if there were, like, a ninja squirrel army?"

"Not squirrel anthros, right?"

"Of course not! Natural squirrels. A natural ninja squirrel army."

"Well they wouldn't get on at all with the shogun koalas; how would we keep the infighting down?"

"Sign a peace treaty. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, so they're high all the time anyway, and we can just throw a bunch of nuts at the squirrels."

"Squirrels are after my nuts enough as it is."

"Shayla hasn't looked at you in a week. Don't get cocky."

"You know what I meant!"

However, eventually, I did have to pose the question. We were in a boring brown room housing the Algebra II teacher, learning boring equations off a boring projector. She knew it was boring, too, and try as she might, could not get up the energy to make it entertaining for any of us, even the ones who legitimately had to pay attention. How hard could trig honestly be, anyway?

"Raiden," I said, "you remember that project we did for English a few months ago?"

He didn't have to wait for the teacher's back to turn; she recognized that we two really only needed about ten minutes of instruction a day. "I've tried to forget it."

"Yeah, well you remember that bit of Celtic writing I showed you?"

"Yea- wait..." His gaze lost focus for a few seconds before he turned it back to me, wide-eyed and incredulous. Sibra and Raiden had found an Icelandic inscription. Not Celtic. "Glen?" he whispered.

"Jason!" I whispered back, whipping my head back and forth to check for listeners excitedly. "It's me; it's Glen! Dude, how did you get here?"

"Through a mirror, just like it said. Dude, this place is freaking crazy; what's going on?"

"I dunno, but isn't it fantastic?"

"No, it's not fantastic - it's messed up! I was minding my own business and got sucked through my bathroom mirror with no warning at all, I woke up with someone else's memories and someone else's parents and someone else's body, and we're not even human anymore! What the hell is this place?"

I couldn't believe he was angry about what was going on, but that was my adrenaline talking. My tongue flew through the words. "You mean you don't like this? It's a parallel universe. And I can't believe you haven't talked to Raiden. Look, what happened is, you took his place and he took yours. Same thing happened with me and Sibra. I don't know how to make it go back, but for the time being, I'm perfectly happy like this."

A sudden cold feeling swept through my gut, like an evil breeze, killing my good mood like a foul odor can ruin a performance. Only, it carried with it a sickeningly sweet fragrance and a black mist which seemed to coalesce into a whisper in my ear: "I know who you are." And as quickly as it had come, it went.

Frozen, I briefly answered the teacher's question to quell any suspicion. No one else had seen or heard the voice. Raiden looked shaken. He turned to me. "You heard it?"

I nodded. "What do you think it is?"

"You're the fantasy expert!"

It came again. "Spiders in a web!" and faded with maniacal laughter. I realized I was hunching my shoulders against the cold, even though it was April in the south. Everyone else was lounging about in their tee-shirts and shorts. Jason had gotten a hold of himself and was clenching his teeth so he could listen to another question. He cleared his throat, quietly answered it, and looked at me again. "What does it want?"

I tried to analyze it based on everything I knew about alternate worlds- all those I had seen in video games and movies and all those I had read about in books. Robert Jordan said a black wind would eat your soul. Albert Camus called it the great leveller. Gregory Maguire just called it flatulation. Slowly, I formed a postulate. "It doesn't want to kill us yet. It's going to take us later, abduction-style, whether it takes our souls or not. It doesn't like what we've done and it wants to mete out punishment. Those are all definites. There's one indefinite."

"Which is what? Don't dramatize this; this is reality."

I smirked. "Sure it is. Anyway, what it meant by calling you a spider is the variable." He had never been overly observant. Then again, he was frequently cornered by pretty girls and rendered too speechless to respond properly. They were so sure of his silence, they and many others, male and female, that they would pour out their lives to him just to use him as a receptacle for their perceived stress. He might have more influence than I knew.

"That's not important; I know what he means about me, and I can guess what he means about you. Look at Teva, though." He nodded in the lynx's direction, closer to the head of the class. She was shivering, the purple bow in her hair all aquiver. No one around her was, though. She had been called out by this wind.

"Who's Teva?" I asked him. "Like, from our world."

"It's Rachel, idiot. Can't you tell?"

I looked, trying to put Rachel's physique over the cat. She was an introverted type, like me, whom I had often considered a medium, like myself. Well... those might have been Sibra's memories. I don't know, but it doesn't matter. She was moderately athletic, tied me and Jason grade-wise, and rarely, if ever, socialized with us. She was a strong personality, but not strong enough to really enter the social world. She was too much of an artist, frankly. What she drew was stunning, but it meant she spent much more time sketching than talking with others.

We suffered through the rest of the class with random reminders from the thing, whatever it was, that he knew who we were. That was very frightening. I knew I had entered a world of magic just because of the wings, but this was pushing it. We cornered Teva after class and asked if she had heard it.

"Heard it? Yes, I have heard it. Many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it, yet I dared not--pity me, miserable wretch that I am! I dared not speak." She was shivering and holding back a playful, bashful smile by the end of it, and I was smirking. Jason just stared at her, disturbed. He had never liked to admit that he was in the same class of people as we, and awkward, creepy moments like that were exactly why.

"What was that?"

"'The Fall of the House of Usher,' idiot." I answered for her. "We just read it in English; come on! Poe has the best Gothic literature ever."

"Brownie points for Glen," she said, confirming our suspicions.

"So, Rachel," I stressed the name, "how did you get here?"

"What, Jason didn't tell you? He showed me the inscription."

I turned to him, somewhat shocked. "You said not to show anyone!"

"And then I did; so what? You did, too; you just happened to show all the wrong people."

"How did you-?"

"All three at once!" came a maddening cry, accompanied by the wind and chill. Rachel and I were through with this ridiculousness, though.

"That's enough of that!" I mumbled, and buzzed Sibra's wings furiously, seeming to remember from his distant memories that it allowed... eh, spontaneous magic, at best, but maybe it would be something. Teva's claws extended two feet in front of her and impaled the black wind when it whipped through, getting a shriek through our ears and minds, while I held it down. That was as far as we got, though; for kids working on nothing but instinct, I'd say we did pretty well.

Abruptly, the world vanished and we were transported to a less definitely real place. Pastel colors and pale grays predominated, streaked intermittently with a neon ray that would fade into the echoing roar of constant thunder. We didn't appear to be standing on anything but ominous clouds and cadaverous light. Suddenly, that black wind came whipping at us from out of the ether, shrieking and laughing as it did, a face of fangs and claws approaching with black smog like ichor bleeding out of its nostrils and eye sockets. Before we could react, though, a wall of pristine ivory imposed itself around us, and a ceiling formed above. There was a pained, frustrated moan, but it was cut short, and only silence enveloped us in our strange prison.

The beautiful comfort of it all surrounded me, keeping me from becoming afraid. All I knew was the softest voice in my mind, a voice oddly familiar, but distant. "Glen. Rachel. Jason. I am sorry for that. It was my duty to keep him bound, but he reversed the spell; I know not how. For now, know this- I am with you. Do not fear where you are; there will be a way back to your world, if you need it. Now go."

And we were standing outside the school portable, blinking at one another. Jason immediately rounded on me.

"Do you see what you've gotten us into?" he snarled.

"How was I supposed to know that would happen?" I shot back.

"You do this fantasy stuff like it's your job!" He looked at Rachel. "You're the Wiccan; you should be able to figure something out, too."

"Do not make me break my foot off in your ass, Jason."

"Well, you don't necessarily have to..."

She ignored him and turned to me. "Now look, Glen, as much as we need to discuss this, Sibra does not know Teva in this world, so you have to go to your next class right now and stop talking to me like you know me; people are staring."

Indeed, students were looking at our little trio and whispering. We had apparently not kept our voices as quiet as we had meant to, and the first bell was ringing. "Fine. I'll see you later, but we have to talk more about this." I readjusted my backpack and turned away with Jason.

"Damn right we do." She went the other direction, whichever that was. We were all left to our thoughts. Shifting planes that suddenly is not something we were accustomed to, even after our journeys to this side of the mirror.

Really, nothing came of that. Through a number of other adventures and trials, I ended up back in my world and Sibra back in his, and thus from here on out, the first-person point of view is from his.

Sibra here. Moving right along into our junior year, I called Teva's cell phone a few weeks after the incident with Todd. My hands were shaking, but I thrust my mind into an acceptable mood, licked my dry lips, and punched in the number. To my joy and chagrin, she answered my call.

"Sibra, why on Earth are you calling me at two in the morning?" So she had my number, too, and caller ID.

"I just thought it would be honorable to let you know that I owe Rajah my life." I had finally decided it was he, a heavily-muscled tiger on the track team, who had saved me from Tor. It had taken some deliberation, but it had to have been him. His tongue had been rough, and his body had been memorable.

There was a long silence. "So we're even, then."

My jaw dropped. "You orchestrated that?" She had sent him, in one way or another, to protect me. How...?

"Yes. Thank you, by the way, for taking care of my friends. I didn't know how to." The admission was quiet and bit itself off. She was a little ashamed.

"Todd is also no longer an issue. He's a tool, actually."

"That's more than awesome."

"Thanks! So are you doing anything Saturday night?"

"No."

"Wanna go see a kid's movie? 'The Golden Compass' was one of my favorite books ever."

"I know."

"It was one of yours, too."

"Yes. What time?"

"Eight fifteen."

"Dinner?"

"Seven. I'll pick you up at quarter 'til."

I could hear her grin, and relaxed slowly from my ruse of strict control. "What you mean to say is six-thirty, so when you leave at six twenty-five to get to my house at six thirty-five-"

"-you can be ten minutes late and we'll still leave on time. I get it."

"Hm-hm." A giggle. I had gotten a giggle out of her. My heart jumped. I had never asked a girl out before and I managed to get her to giggle on my first try. "I'll see you then, Sibra."

"See you."

The next night was possibly the best night of my life. She made herself ravishing with the barest application of makeup around her eyes and on her cheeks- a touch of some subtle, bright green stuff made just for us furs. Beneath her purple eyes, it was gorgeous. The girl was only an inch or two shorter than I, and was as inclined as I to remain silent on the way there. For a while. Neither one of us is capable of maintaining complete aural deprivation for very long- it's a quality of being on the lower end of society. If nothing's being said, it's obviously because we're doing something socially wrong. So, naturally, we interrupted eachother, tried to apologize, started again at the same time, chuckled nervously, and shut up. Eventually, she got out, "I'll go first," and I acquiesced.

"I'll just be blunt," she said, washing her hands in her lap. "Are you a- are you a ghost-whisperer?"

I focused for several moments on keeping control of the car so we wouldn't die while we tried to sort this all out. Finally, I managed to say, "My name for it isn't as aesthetically pleasing, but I call myself a medium. Is that what you mean?"

She breathed shallowly for a few seconds before answering with a nod. "It is."

We rode in silence for a long while, not saying a word. I didn't know what to say- this was all happening too fast. First Voxis hugged me, even if he didn't mean to; then he noticed me, brought me into his life, and told me just how much of me he had noticed; then Rajah saved my life and kissed me, disguising it as CPR; then Todd was a Thought and I a Philosopher; and now Teva was what I had been searching for for three years. Another medium. Another parapsychotic mishap. I put every ounce of concentration I had into driving. Otherwise, we'd be off the road in the blink of an eye.

Finally, I cleared my throat. "So... has Suli told you about... you know..."

She nodded, and whispered, "She asked me for voice coaching, just out of nowhere. I mean, I'm in the chorus, but I'm not that good, and then while we were practicing, she just... stopped, and asked me what I was... and so I told her, and she said she had expected something like that, with all the people who-" Here, she rolled her eyes incredulously. "Who idolize me. And someone has told you, I guess...?"

I nodded as I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. "So how are we going to do this?"

She hesitated as I chose a space and parked the car. "What do you mean?"

"Like..." How to word it? "Now that we know... who we are... Should we work together? Or keep going our own way? I mean... We can't just ignore that we know, now."

"I don't know," she whispered, looking at her feet. "I never thought... I never thought about any of this, because I never thought it would happen. I mean, I had dared to hope, but for you to really exist is just... it was beyond what I could honestly allow myself to believe."

We paused again, unwilling to leave the car while this still hung over our heads. Teva started the conversation again. "Well, I guess we can compare notes... who else do you know about?"

I opted not to tell her anything about Todd until I had assessed that situation further. "Only Rajah and Voxis, so far."

"Voxis?"

"The white wolf. You know, who makes Gary swoon whenever he's around?"

She giggled. "Oh, him! I always thought he was just a show-off. He's really a, um..." she balked at actually saying the word. I was grinning nervously just to try to ignore my own apprehensions. "An... an angel?"

I nodded. "He is. I went to his house the other day to help him with chemistry and he asked me who I was... It felt weird, to tell him. Was it easy to tell Suli?"

"No, not after... what happened..." Her face fell slightly.

I looked at her, concerned. "Why? What happened?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, really. Just... leave it that my uncle and his friends were really drunk, and Suli had happened to bring Andrea over that day." She grinned, suddenly. "You have no idea how girly I was being before they came over; I didn't think anyone was going to be home, and I was going to have two angels at my house, so I could teach them, and-"

"Wait- Andrea?" I looked at her skeptically from under furrowed eyebrows.

She looked at me, shocked. "You didn't know?"

I shook my head. "Which one is she?"

"What do you mean, 'which one is she?' She has the most gorgeous fur- it's like a rust color, but she's a ferret. She's so shy, it's hard to believe she really is one, but she is; she was the first one I knew about, actually."

"Shy? I always thought she was a flirt; all the jocks follow her around like she's some kind of queen bee."

"You need to get to know her; she's really sweet. You must have caught her before she was about to slap them all silly." She giggled again. It was a heavier sound than most girl giggles. Not anything in the range of tenor bells, but out of the tiny, tinkling, silvery ones. "But anyway, those two were over when my uncle and his friends just barged in with a twenty-four pack of empty beer cans and tried to..."

"Oh..." And I hadn't heard about it? Suli must have been more determined to keep that secret than I expected.

She cleared her throat. "Well... you can guess. It turns out Suli can play more than volleyball with that physique, and she tai-boed the hell out of them while Andrea..." She shuddered, and seemed unsure whether to chuckle or cry. "She carried me out- I didn't fare too well. Never had martial training..." She laughed. "It was pathetic."

"You are not pathetic," I told her. "If anyone is pathetic, it's me. I would have been a goner if not for Rajah..."

She gave me a flat stare. "The number of zeros in the figure Tor and his buds paid for that spell will drop your jaw."

I snorted and looked at some point far in the distance beyond the windshield. "We're a pair, aren't we?"

She mimicked the look. "You could say that."

A few moments were spent in complete silence. I just liked... being with her. It felt right. Someone I could share a part of this with, who understood what it was like, was something I treasured over anything else. Well... <i>~Glen~</i> almost anything... we had switched back, but neither of us knew how, and we hadn't seen one another in weeks, and I forced myself to forget about him for the moment to ask, "Do you want to go eat?"

"Yeah. Just hold on for a sec."

"Sure."

She pulled out a notebook and pen and started writing. When I stared, she said, "Oh, come on! It's not like you wouldn't guess what I was doing if I tried to hide it."

I laughed. "Fair enough." My own notebook and pencil quickly appeared in my lap and I began notating the lot of it, especially updating Andrea's page so it no longer said "skank."

The dinner was excellent, and the movie made me feel like a little kid again. I'm sure other members of the audience thought the two of us were strange, giggling like little children at the jokes and nearly becoming emotional when that one kid's dæmon died. Afterwards, we hit the theater floor arcade and I learned that I actually had competition in Dance-Dance Revolution. Yes. Not to brag, but I am a master at that game. I have met one person ever as good as I, and he was obsessed. Teva, though, kept me on my toes. We got a round of applause when we were done, and she won, which for some reason made me ridiculously happy, especially because it wasn't by very much. I don't think I had ever had as much fun with a single other person as I did with her. But that isn't even close to the date's keystone moments.

I dropped her off at her house and walked her to the door. Once there, she fiddled with her keys for a while, which apparently means the guy is then supposed to awkwardly flirt until he achieves a kiss. I, having had one aweful dating experience in my life from which to learn, did not know exactly what to do. She saved me.

With a grin, she said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done if you had leaned in for one, so... Yeah, don't worry about it." It was the only 'don't worry about it' I have heard to date from a woman which didn't mean, 'you're in for it, sleep with one eye open.' She suddenly became much more naturally fidgety while I grinned nervously to cover for my mistake. "Umm... listen, do you wanna come in? My parents aren't home, and I honestly don't know what I'm going to do for the next few hours before I go to bed."

I was taken aback. Was this supposed to happen on a first date? Did it mean anything? What was I supposed to do if it did? "Umm. I told my parents I wouldn't be home until one and it's only ten, so... sure, why not?"

"Cool! I'll pull out the ice cream and we can watch animé." She quickly unlocked the door and then turned back before opening it, clearly shy about something. "You do like it, don't you? You always talk about it with other people, but I can't catch the conversations and you always look annoyed..."

"No, no, I do like it," I assured her hurriedly. "It's just... other people view it differently than I do. Than we do. That is- I mean... You know, other people don't look deep enough into it; they don't pull out the aesthetic emotional content. If that makes sense..." I trailed off, uncertain. We really were pathetic. But I'm sure if the preps had seen it they would have thought it was cute, since I was clean-shaven (for a wolf) and she was made-up. And breath-taking.

She smiled. "Okay, good. Because I have a lot." She let me in through the door into her house. On the way up to it, I hadn't really noticed anything special about it- a nice, two-story brick house on a mid-sized lot, like most of them were, with a cherry tree and a dogwood gracing and flanking the driveway, and a willow in the middle, adding a very nice calming effect. Regular shutters stood guard outside regular blinds hiding regular window panes. The inside was notably different.

A large brass chandelier greeted us in the foyre, which had a well-angled flight of stairs rebounding off the wall to the upper floor, subtely concealed by a marble table that had been dyed gold somehow. I mentioned how cool it was to Teva, and she responded that her dad was a chemist and had made it for them. There was a definite homely atmosphere in the place due to the nicely polished oak molding and trimwork, but I still felt as though I couldn't touch anything. It was kept in pristine condition, the entire house. Teva had never seemed like an overly organized person (to my chagrin; I liked to have a modicum of methodology in how I lived), but her mother or father or both must have been neat freaks.

"Don't let the fact that it's clean fool you. I don't really do many chores around here; my parents are both very clean, and I try not to aggravate them by messing it up."

"Did you read my mind?" I laughed.

"No; you just ran your finger over a banister checking for dust." She smirked at me. It had been a long time since I had received a well-meant smirk. I swear, that night felt like I was moving through a dream.

She got out the ice cream (double-fudge brownie death by devil chocolate caramel), made some vague comment about how fat she was getting from the ice cream, mocked my immediate denial because her tummy was flat like a washboard, and served me a bowlful before getting out a DVD and plugging it in. I'm not gonna lie; her speakers sucked. "Hold on," I said, and went out to my car. From the trunk I dismounted two of the best speakers in the history of the universe; a creepy friend had said a while ago he'd help me plug them into my car somehow; it hadn't happened yet. I got them from my parents, and loved them like life itself. They were vaguely dome-shaped, black and silver, and could sterilize frogs from fifty yards at their highest volume. Teva met me at the door with a skeptical look and took one, then helped me set them up.

That night, we healed the next-door-neighbors' grandmother's arthritis. It helps for both listeners to have a strong affinity for music- they unconsciously transmit healing magic into the soundwaves, and if the soundwaves have been amplified enough, they tend to infiltrate other human beings' bodies and start working. It was how Glen had managed to concentrate that without my having learned to that baffled me. He and I had not exchanged all of our memories; for some reason, it hadn't been automatic, this time.

The movie was short, as most animés are, and the ice cream was scrumptious, as anything with that number of sugary adjectives must be, and yet, the night was not over yet. When the video ended, I realized that my body had resonated with the magic she was releasing; kind of a physical memory I had to focus on before really realizing what had happened. "So," I asked her nonchalantly, "where do you keep your magic?"

She smiled hesitantly at me. We were lying side-by-side on the rug in front of the TV with our feet in the air like little kids. The TV was humongous; another rich part of her life. I guessed her little brother and older sister were with her parents, wherever they were; I knew she had two siblings. "What do you mean?"

"Your magic. I have mine in my wings, and I just felt yours, so it must be powerful enough to warrant a physical representation."

"It's, ahh... in my claws..." She didn't meet my eyes.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, really. Just- this..." She splayed her fingers in front of her, palms facing away, and waited. In no time, I could see tiny, ivory points extend from the tip of each finger.

"What are you talking about? That's perfectly norm- holy God." The bony protrusions began to shoot out until they reached two feet in length, splayed out like garden rakes. My eyes went wide. "How the- how in the world?"

She shook her head and slowly retracted them. "I don't know. They get longer every year, and it started a long time ago. There's no physical explanation for it, but truth be told, there's no magical explanation either. My parents aren't magi. My dad's a chemist and my mom's a technical writer. So for me to have something this crazy is really beyond me."

"Hey, I think it's cool. It just startled me. I mean, look at me. My wings look like I've been cutting myself- all those crimson scratches are just weird."

"Yeah, but people think you cut yourself anyway."

"Hey! That is not my fault." I poked her side.

She yelped and twitched. "Yes it is!" In retaliation, she squoze my side, eliciting a yell.

"Hey!" We entered a warzone. Crouching on our knees, grinning like lunatics, we held out pointer fingers ready, waiting for an opening, circling slowly in the air, looking for a chance to strike. It was not long before the battle dissolved into a giggling fit and we rolled on the floor, holding our sides.

Finally she said, "You know what I want, Sibra?" She was abruptly very serious. "You know what both of us have wanted since ninth grade, if you really are this impossibility you've turned out to be?"

I caught her mood. "Yes..."

"Do you want to... do you want to do that?"

I looked her in the eyes. The violet of them, or lilac, or whatever it was, held me like an anchor. What we had wanted to do since ninth grade... to be held. To be loved. To be cuddled with and snuggled against. To be bare. To be close. I remembered all I had ever felt for Voxis, all I had ever felt for Rajah, and for any of the ones I had merely thought were perfect, too. To feel their arms around me, holding me... like heaven...

"Yes."

We reached for the hems of our shirts at the same time, then stopped, nervous and scared. Would she like the way I looked? My abs weren't exactly chiseled; my back was periodically less-than-smooth, I had never thought my butt looked all that good, and the groin region... I don't think any man has ever been truly proud of his groin region without artificial enhancement or one that guaranteed him a job. It's just not pretty. Ever. I mean, maybe, occasionally during an erection, there will be some small degree of aesthetic pleasure gained in looking at the organ but in general, it's just ugly.

We let loose dumb giggles and then discarded our shirts. "You're sure your parents aren't coming home?"

"Yes. They had better not be- we're undressing in my living room." I tried not to look at her chest - it would be rude. She was a decent B, maybe C-cup, but probably not. I can't judge those things. They looked good in the white bra, is all I'm saying.

"You can look," she laughed. "I'm looking at yours, after all, and I suggested this. All I'm asking it that you stand up and show me your behind."

"What?"

She laughed out loud, like tinkling crystal. "Come on, do it. Point for point."

"I assure you, females have more interesting points than us males do."

"Well, you're not getting any of this-" she slapped the back of her thigh with a grin. "And I'm pretty sure the rest isn't worth looking at. So..." She dropped it. This façade of experience was not working well. "I figure that's how it should work, anyway; I can't think of anything else that's fair."

"Oh no, I agree. Just... this feels so weird; I need to wrap my mind around it."

She nodded quickly while I started unzipping my jeans, turning around, and standing up to undo the tail-hole buckle. I hugged myself quickly in the sudden rush of open air on my thighs in the home of a girl I hadn't really talked to until a few weeks ago and tried to ignore the stimulative effect that idea had on my gonads. Luckily, at the very least, I had on my black briefs (I don't believe in boxers), so it fit with my fur. It took me a few moments to build the nerve, but I finally dropped my skivvies and covered my butt with my tail, ignoring the fact that I was now bare naked in the aforementioned uncomfortable place. As smoothly as I could, I knelt down, lay on my chest, and scooted myself around in a circle to face her, only to find that she was also naked and had done the same thing. My eyes wanted to lower themselves to her now-completely-bare breasts, but I wouldn't let them. Awkwardly, we elbowed our ways to eachother and embraced, then got sideways on the soft carpet, in eachother's arms. I could feel her heartbeat against me, and her quick breath on my shoulders as she respirated shallowly in counter-rhythm to my own lungs. "I want to apologize in advance," I started, "for anything untoward I might succumb to."

"Somehow, I doubt it's your fault," she said breathlessly. I stared into her eyes, and just... knew what to do. I closed my eyes and touched my lips to hers in the lightest kiss I could imagine, but then I didn't retreat. I just stayed there, holding her and kissing her, and then gasping when she grabbed the back of my head and pulled me in for a deeper kiss, pressing her lips against mine and parting them. I opened my mouth in response, and our tongues found eachother, battling for only a moment before we pulled away, panting. Suddenly, I could feel myself pushing against her waist, my member burning with lust. I scathed myself mentally for it, hating what it meant I still bowed to. My face must have reflected my fear, because she quickly pulled me in for another kiss, this one not as long, but just as tender.

"Please, don't let it bother you. Please. It doesn't bother me. I mean, you guys can't really see when we're responding the way you are, but... it does happen... at times like these..." She lost focus and looked away for a moment before turning back with a fire in her eyes. I felt her nipples prodding softly against my chest. "Sibra, I have a stupid idea," she said suddenly.

"No," I told her immediately. "No, that is way too dangerous. I will not."

"I trust you, though," she said. "I trust you, and I think we two, of any pair in the universe, can pull this off. Don't you?" There was a slight vibration of her chest on mine. She was shivering.

I started sweating, cold, and could smell it on her. "But... but what if I..."

She deflated immediately. "No, no, you're right, I shouldn't ask you about this after what's happened to you; Rajah didn't tell me everything, but the way he looked at me, and I can only guess what happened with you and Todd..." Her eyes widened even though I tried to shake my head and quiet her. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't even think about that; I'm so stupid..." She tried to pull away, but I held her in place.

"It's okay, it's okay," I told her. "Really, you know enough about me by now to know that it's gone to the back of my head. I'm just scared that..."

She paused as I mumbled into silence, controlled her breathing, and seemed to be reassured. "You won't. You won't any more than I will. Just do it, just..." She gulped nervously and pulled herself slightly up my body, positioning herself over me.

I tried to back away, but she held me in place. "Teva, I'm too scared."

"So am I. But it feels right. Doesn't it? Doesn't it feel right?" Her eyes bored into me, pleading me to tell her it did; she couldn't convince herself, not with only her words to do it, not with her voice vibrating like that. It did feel right, though. It didn't make any sense, but I knew this union was approved of by all the powers that be. This was right. We lay there, teenagers panting naked in the dark, about to traverse the threshhold into what can no longer even pretend to be called innocence, into a danger zone far more potent than either of us had yet experienced.

And we crossed it.

I rolled onto my back and softly grabbed her arms, admiring the muscle there, met her eyes for one last confirmation, and pushed myself up, against, and partially into her, slowly, smoothly, straining every millimeter of the way, fighting against the rudimentary, animal instincts that were trying to sieze control over my hips, so I wouldn't just rut her until the job was done. When my head first penetrated her, her intake of breath was almost enough to make me retract my invastion, but she nodded when I stopped, and began lowering herself over me. "Teva, Teva, no, I can't do it!" The space was warm, and moist, and throbbing with her heartbeat, and felt too inviting- I was too afraid, and thrust myself backwards against the floor in terror.

"Yes you can. We have t-" Suddenly, her breath quickened; she must have begun to consider the potential consequences if I screwed up. "No! Sibra, pull out, please, I'm scared."

Our minds were so confused. We switched roles a dozen times that night. Once again, my sense that it was a permitted and encouraged union was breaking through my fear, while her see-saw of rationale versus confidence had rocked the other way. "Calm down; it's okay. We're okay," I murmured, stroking her back and wondering who was bolstered more by my words. "Just hold me; we can do this." She fell into my arms, and we trembled against eachother, arousal forgotten. After a few moments, during which I softened considerably, we recovered. My lips met hers again, trying to comfort her, and it worked wonders. I could feel her body shape itself against mine as she squirmed delicately and slowly on me, while my tongue tasted every inch of her mouth it could reach.

It only took a moment to reach potency again. We continued through the motions, sliding smoothly and slowly, delicate as feathers on one another. I didn't want to hurt her, and she didn't want to hurt herself or embarrass me, and we were both so, so terrified. In the dark of the empty room, though, we were together, and we entwined one another tightly in our arms, for reassurance more than for the physics of the act, and then, before we knew what was happening, I had slid fully within her and could feel my knot parleying for entry.

She lifted herself up, letting her breasts hang in front of my eyes, the black nipples hard from her fear, and started to glance down before realizing how stupid that was and coloring slightly. "Is it... is it true that... that once that goes in, it doesn't come out until... *ahem* um... until it's over?" She lowered herself again, and I finally felt her warm bosoms soft against my chest.

I found it hard to breathe, as powerful as was the heat of her body around me and the pressure of her virginity on my ready self. I sucked air through my teeth once or twice before wiping my mind of external sensation so I could speak clearly. "I don't know... I don't think so, though. I think if you had the willpower, you could keep it from happening."

"And do you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know."

Again, she met my eyes with a sudden determination. "Do it."

"You're- you're sure? You're not..." I trailed off, trembling. "How are you not afraid of... I mean, we're not even using a condom... and I don't think your mom has probably bought you birth control pills..." Her sweet pheremones were filling my nostrils. The urge to just go at it swelled thickly in my mind.

She looked me squarely in the eyes, inches from my face, fixating me with her worried gaze and choked out, "I. Trust. You." She locked her lips fiercely against mine, and almost convinced me with no more than that. But even if she trusted me, I didn't trust myself. I pulled out of the kiss and shook my head, pushing her cheek tenderly away.

"But I don't know how it even works! All the books say, 'once the female is ready, the male can fully penetrate,' but it doesn't say how you know when that is- do they tell you?"

"They said, ah... They said we would... you know, loosen up, when we were ready, so I guess if we just push... like before..."

I couldn't suppress a chuckle. "Listen to us. Do you think this is one of those times when God is just laughing at the jokes he made?"

She laughed as earnestly as the situation allowed. "Yeah, I imagine so."

We lay there breathless for a while, only a little awkward in our position. Teva didn't know how to position herself, really, such that one or both of us didn't lose blood flow to our legs, so she was kind of tense against me with her arms on my shoulders. After a moment, I reached up with my hands and pressed against the top of her back, at the same time moving my hips up firmly, but I knew with not enough force to really make progress. I felt the friction of the movement and tried to not to shiver from nerves. "Teva, if I hurt you, tell me; I really don't know how sensitive you female people are... down there."

She kissed me lightly and gave me a no-nonsense look. I could still tell how scared she was. "Well, I do, and I can assure you, I'll let you know." She softened it with a weak grin and whispered, "Tie me, Sibra."

I began to feel her give and applied more pressure in response. My knot slowly, ever so slowly, moved within her, and my mind was so numbed by fear that the actual sexual stimulation I was experiencing from the warm, smooth, sliding way, and the jolts of electricty radiating from the center of my body which urged me to buck forward and onward, became nearly peripheral. Nearly. I felt each spasm ease its way through me, and saw Teva close her eyes and open her mouth with a gasp more than once. After what felt like an eternity of interlocking moaning and pushing, breathing and pulling with her breath of flowers on my face, in my nose, I was almost at the most bulbous part, and had to physically strain to continue. I watched her eyes close as she winced with the stress of it, but she nodded in permission before I could even ask. Closing my eyes and clenching my teeth, as I knew she was doing, I began forcing my way still further inside her. She was more prepared than either of us thought- it slipped in and we both let out cries of surprise as her lower lips closed tightly around the hard knot of flesh and my shaft slid an inch deeper within.

We panted in the stillness for a few moments, trying to ignore the sweet fragrance of our pheremones in the air and the hormones begging us to surge like animals. "Well..." she started. "It's definitely... in. Do you- do you feel like you can get back out?"

I gave a test pull, and shook my head no. But then, to my horror, I felt the connection tighten, making her pulse even more closely known to me. I had heard that sometimes the male actually swelled further once inside the female, but it felt like she- "Did you just- swell?" she asked.

"No, it felt like you just tightened. Is that supposed to happen?"

"Well, yeah; didn't you know that?"

"No, I thought we men were just supposed to maybe get a little bigger once we were tied; nothing about the converse." Our sex ed classes had clearly been severely lacking detail of how the act was really performed; in all honesty, we needed to have watched something pornographic.

"Well, now I seriously feel like we're stuck together." The humor of it dispelled a little of the terrifying prospect that I might actually have to come to climax before ejecting myself. Surely, though, there was a way, even in the heat which throbbed with her heartbeat around my pulsating member, and the slick moisture, and the closeness...

"Ahh! I'm sorry; I didn't mean to!"

We both spasmed and groaned into the silence of her home. After a tiny grimace, she responded, "Okay, now I feel like we're stuck together. What did you do?"

"I... started thinking about... sorry." I had flexed fairly significantly within her.

"No, it's- it's okay," she breathed.

Panting (carefully) I asked her, "Isn't there some sort of magic that can act as a contraceptive? Some sort of back-up plan?" I could feel my brain trying to take over and provide different excuses for reaching orgasm, and swiftly put up mental defenses.

"Not that I know of, and I can't exactly maintain a magic condom around you in the middle of sex."

"I mean, most of what I do magically is instinctive, but same argument here."

"Yeah..." We again just lay there, this time thinking how we could possibly become unstuck. It certainly didn't feel like there was anything to be done but wait it out.

And then I heard softly spoken into my neck, "Hey, Sibra?"

"What, Teva?" I answered.

She gave me a sly look. "Wanna play Scrabble?"

I raised an eyebrow in my most sardonic gaze. "Are you intentionally aiming for the most awkward thing, or does that just come naturally?"

"Look, if it hadn't occurred to you yet, it was going to eventually, so let's see if we can crab-walk over to the game cabinet or something. I don't think standing up is an option, but if you arch your back, I can reach the floor, I think, so I hold my own weight, and we should be concentrating so hard on doing it right that we won't, you know... climax."

I mulled the idea over in my head. The bouncing inherent of walking would no doubt make me moan, but she was right- I would definitely not be concentrating on the fact that I was technically having sex with her, and instead would be making sure I didn't fall down. With a mock-exasperated sigh, and still aware of how tight and warm our connection was, I bent my arms behind me and began scooting my legs up. In response, she swiveled around a little, ignoring both her convulsive shudders and mine as the movement touched sensitive nerves, and sat up on me. Yes, there was a strain on my male part, but she was very careful to sit on my hips instead of anything lower- as if she had much choice, anyway. I got myself up into the back-bend position and waited for her guidance (it was the wierdest back-bend ever- because she knew it would be hard with her sitting on me, she pushed up with her legs as I did, and our connection pulled me up with her). For a few moments, during which I felt her bouncing on me, I was about to yell at her and tell her how very few thrusts I was away from climaxing, when she let out something between a gasp and a laugh.

She had been giggling to herself. I smiled a little bit, but my arms were under a great deal of stress from the position and I was earnestly afraid of the pressure building in my 'nads. "Teva, you almost made me cum!"

"I'm sorry," she laughed. "This is just so ridiculous. Oh, God... come on, the games are over here." She slapped my left butt cheek and swiveled her hips in the direction she wanted me to go. It took a few moments to get into the rhythm of the hexapedal, dual-brained thing we had created, but we somehow made it to the cabinet. I lowered us to the ground while she shifted around a few boxes and eventually hoisted the one we wanted triumphantly over her head.

"Teva, you're insane."

"Makes the whole experience better, doesn't it?"

"How the heck are we going to keep from seeing eachother's pieces? I think we should play chess."

"I think you're being overly pragmatic."

"You just don't want to me to mate you."

"Let's not talk about who's mating whom," she said with an over-exasperated sigh.

Though I could tell I had again softened somewhat during our traversal of the room, our argument's laughter put us both back up to full sexual potency, though I was sure she had more control and less responsibility at this point than I did.

She sighed and got out the chess set, then rolled sideways, pulling me up. We started playing, the whole time joined at the groin. It was a fairly even match- pawn for pawn, rook for rook, queen for queen, we traded pieces until near the end. I noticed everything about the game of chess, only able to concentrate on our bodies' juxtaposition during her turn, but still aware of it in the back of my mind constantly, such that my body refused to back down. It was then that she began to purr.

I felt the rumbling before I heard it, but didn't notice it until by the time I did, the bodily functions of mine which had tended to defy my wishes that night were more than willing to respond to the vibrations. "Teva, I don't care how close you think you are to winning, one) you aren't and two) you need to stop purring about it in the next ten seconds or-"

I groaned and gasped, trying to pull my mind away from the stimulation at hand, but it did nothing to the vibrations around my shaft. She was terrified, her eyes wide as saucers. "I didn't mean to- I forgot to control it!" Her face became strained and angry as she fought to quell the unconscious oscillations, but my member had begun throbbing again inside her, now responding both to the purr and the quickening pulse of her heart to thicken and harden once more. The knot had begun to subside earlier, but not far enough to prevent it from slipping back in uncontrollably and accomplishing my second and final forward thrust that night. Again, I gasped. I could feel it happening- the warmth and the throbbing and the friction it caused were all too much even for total discipline; I knew I was about to orgasm, and there was nothing I could do to stop it but pull.

"Pull, Sibra!"

"What if I hurt you?! Your body isn't supposed to-"

"I don't care! My body isn't supposed to get pregnant either, yet- I can deal with the pain; I can't deal with a baby." She started pulling her hips away from me as hard as she could, wincing and crying out from the combined pleasure and pain, and even though the purring had stopped, I knew that if I thrust in one more time, it would tip me over the edge. So she pushed against my shoulders and pulled herself from me with insurmountable desperation, trying to force her muscles both to relax and strain at the same time, and I gripped her hips, hard. It hurt me, as well, and I think our very non-sex-oriented mindsets caused both her to loosen and me to shrink, letting me pull out violently and land with my sides heaving on my back, a thin trickle of near-orgasm spurting onto my chest. I panted and sweated into the night air.

She moaned on the ground, her hands at her inner thighs, trying to massage them without looking like she was masterbating. I sat up first and wiped my hand on my chest then, wiped that on the inside of my pants to conceal it, assuming that she probably couldn't sit up and wouldn't be able to for some time after that, and inspected her groin. Thankfully, I couldn't smell any of my own juices on her sex, which assured me that I had saved all my seed for once I was out. There was blood, though.

"Teva, you're bleeding. I'm so sorry... Do you want me to clean it off?"

"No, no," she muttered under her breath, keeping her eyes closed from the pain. "It's fine, and it's not your fault; I'll get it as soon as I can sit up-" She tried to, and immediately fell back on her back with a cry of humiliation. "Oh, God, this is so embarassing..."

Hesitantly, I got on my hands and knees while her eyes were still closed and lowered my head into her lap, to clean up the blood. My tongue darted in and out as I tried to cleanse her without actually applying pressure. My wings began to vibrate, and my magic staunched the bloodflow fairly quickly. It also began to numb her pain, I think, but I don't know.

About the time I finished, she grabbed my head with one hand and pushed it down so I was breathing in her heady scent directly off her delicate fur. I gasped, but knew what that meant- inexperienced as I was, I still knew what it was to go down on someone. I began to lick the groove before my eyes, slowly and tenderly, still not sure if she was okay and definitely having no idea what I was doing. Her body tensed, and I guessed it was because she was suppressing the urge to buck her hips. In response, I crawled to a less slanted position, put my mouth around what I could reach, and snaked my tongue within her, hoping this was how it was done. Her anwering gasp confirmed my theory, and I began licking in earnest, trying to respond to her sighs and soft moans in the silent darkness, trying to understand what worked and what didn't.

The taste was salty, and I wanted more. I scooted over so I was directly in front of her and redoubled my efforts. She draped her legs over my shoulders and back and dug in her heels, and I thrust my tongue in and around and out and over, tasting everything I could of her, finally lost in what I was doing without consequence. My hands gripped her flanks as I hunched over her body, pushing harder, ever harder. She cried out loud after almost no time and a rush of juices met my nose; I lapped it up without a second thought, savoring the salty taste and going for more.

She pushed my head away, then, and pulled herself up, gasping for breath. Lifting my chin so I met her eyes, I backed away, silently acquiescing to her silent request. "Close your eyes," she whispered, then pushed on my shoulder until I was kneeling with my legs splayed wide, my dark blue member again fully erect in my lap. I obeyed her instructions, and gasped as she cupped my testicles in one hand, gently massaging them. Her tongue, like the finest sandpaper, lapped once at what was drying on my chest, and she sniffed a few times as she rolled the taste around in her mouth. She swallowed and whispered in a tiny chuckle, "Maybe it's better warm? Tell me... if it hurts," she asked, and I nodded, lost to the sensations of her cool hands on my balls.

When she licked the tip of my now-sensitive shaft, hesitantly tasting the tiny trickle of precum, I spasmed, and when she fully enclosed me with her lips, I cried out, but she was in control. With all the previous stimulation, and her hands on my balls, and her rough, gentle tongue stroking me up and down and around, and this time thinking about the warm, moist environment around my member without fear, it wasn't even a full minute before I felt my muscles contract for the eruption. I pushed her away quickly and positioned myself so I could catch the mess in my hands as I convulsed; I didn't want to hit her gorgeous face. My body bucked and shuddered in its climactic dance with only my harsh breathing as accompaniment.

When it was over, I simply knelt there with a web of the stuff between my fingers, gulping for air. She took one hand cautiously and licked at a fingertip. I had never found the taste of my own seed appealing, but she then proceeded to clean all five digits, and those on the other hand, and I revelled in the touch of her tongue between my fingers. And then she put her head to my lap, and softly licked my orbs and shaft clean while I caressed her ears and throat before straightening once more and meeting my eyes.

Then, we were kneeling before eachother, lost in the darkness, suddenly aware of the loneliness which had fallen like a shroud from our shoulders. The hormones released for sex and the combined emotions of all that had happened that night melded together and though we tried to ignore them and go in for a kiss, we ended up squeezing one another tightly together, choking out silent tears which had been suppressed for more than simply the three years we had known of our place in the world, tears which would have never described how we felt to anyone else before then, tears flowing like rivulets of crystal down our cheeks. Sometime during the middle of it, I heard a buzz come from my pants where they were wadded on the floor. My father was texting me.

I opened my cell phone, wiping wetness from my eyes. "At least he didn't call," I commented with a small smile. --It's one o'clock-- the message said. I texted him back that I would be home soon, and he replied in some parental way I never bothered to look up afterwards so I could record it here. It didn't matter.

We dressed slowly, cautiously, still for some reason shy of our nakedness. But only a little- I enjoyed my view of her bare chest and bottom before she covered them. Once that was done, we cleaned up the games and the ice cream, and she helped me carry my speakers back out to my car. We were silent the entire time.

Finally, in the moment before I got in the car, I snatched her for a last, tight embrace and murmured, "Thank you. For being."

"I swear, if I wake up when you drive away, I will blame you," she said, resting her head against my chest.

I laughed, and then ran a thumb along her temple, carressing her. "I love you." It was the first time I had ever said that to a girl and meant it. The spontaneity hit me like a tazer.

She started and lost focus for only a split second. "I- I love you, too..." She paused, and I waited for the explanation I knew would come. "That just sounds so weird in my voice, and after just one night," she wondered. But then she shook her head and gave me a stern look. "Now don't you get into any trouble for this."

"Somehow, I doubt it would dampen my spirits." A thought occurred to me. "You can hide the smell, right?" She nodded. "Okay, then. Well... good night." The awkwardness took hold again. It would always be there, but at least it had subsided for that hour.

"Good night," she answered.

I got in my car and almost couldn't drive away. She meant too much to me to just leave her there... but I had to. She steeled herself and returned to her house, not once looking back. I pressed the accelerator and refused to watch her go. We had images to uphold- as much emotion of which it was clear we were capable, we couldn't possibly be seen showing it.