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You never told me what happened to you when the Scissor-Tail garage used to be a brothel. I sensed, Peacock, that you kept it to yourself because you hated the idea of giving any time or power to those memories, but the memories lived in your body, I learned. I learned you never slept with someone unless you trusted them with your life, which made our first night together all the more special. From the first, both of us trusted each other with our lives.

You also took total control. If I offered to try and do something for you, if I asked you to just lie on your back and let me explore, you got tense and uncomfortable. We tried a few times, which spoke to how much you wanted to try for me, but I accepted the focus of our lovemaking could not be on you. Your total attention needed to be on your partner; you needed to forget you existed and lose yourself in the body of another. Even in bed your being seemed to be about serving others. It was a quality that made me both sad and proud. Everything about you is done for others. The girls knew it, I did, fuck the whole town might have. We always fought you to take days off, to take care of yourself, to relax.

So it came as no surprise how you responded when I asked one night, “What do you want to happen when you die?”

We had hauled your mattress out on the roof of the garage. The summer air was humid but cool with a cornucopia of stars spilling out the Milky Way.

You said, “What does it matter? If I die, I die. Folks can do whatever they want with me.”

I propped myself on my side with my elbow to look down at you. At night, your scales almost took on a black color, but your eyes still shone out of that dark hide. I said, “Come on, you’re going to tell me you’ve never once thought about it?”

“I talked with Motmot about it, I suppose.”

“And?”

“Mostly about how she’d succeed me if I died. I told her even if I came back bonded she would be in charge of the group.”

“So you want to be buried?” I asked, resting a hand on your abdomen.

“Or burned. However the girls want to remember me.”

“But how do you want to be remembered?” I insisted.

“What about you?” you asked, sitting up, facing me, and sitting cross-legged. We were both naked, and our only sheet had been kicked off the mattress. The scent of recent sex still lingered in the air.

“I want to be buried, I think.”

“You wanted to be bonded?”

“Oh come on, Peacock, don’t give me that look. I’m not going to run out and kill myself in a field like some sad sack.”

It was a common suicide method. A bullet up through the jaw or slit wrists in the field. The thing about trying to become bonded, though, was Earth didn’t make everyone bonded. It all looked like random chance, and not even the bonded could tell you why they were brought back to life. Most folk just became meat for scavengers.

I sat up and nuzzled your cheek to reassure you. “All I’m saying is, I’m not afraid of becoming bonded if it happens to me.”

“Mmm, I suppose I’m not afraid of it happening, either,” you said. “But it’s more like I don’t care, Tera. I’m not afraid of dying.”

I snickered. “I think everyone knows that.”

“I’m not! Honestly, being bonded scares me more. I come back, then what?”

I cupped your cheek and gave a gentle kiss. It turned into something deeper, a tilt of the head, the exchange of tongues. Both of us kissed each other languidly, savoring the taste of one another. I tasted my sex on your tongue, but I liked that, liked being reminded what we had been doing before this. When I broke the kiss, I whispered, “Then you live, Peacock.”

***

“You got a death wish or something?” Frost asked me. She was a tall woman with dark skin and a hard face. She’d been through more shit than most in Hypoxia, and, while we butted heads all the time, I respected her. She looked out for this town much as I did. “Anything in that noggin of yours?” Frost tapped the side of her shaved head, where the old gang tattoo of Antler, Hypoxia’s once-warlord, was etched. It was a set of ram horns that curved around her head. Must have hurt getting that.

“We’re going back,” I said. “We don’t know what that shit is, and we need to tell if it’s growing or not.”

“I got guys on that already, Peacock. Canaan and Straps are out there right now watching the damn thing.” She stood at her desk in the small office above town hall. Frost more or less ran Hypoxia, or ran it more than anyone around did. We technically voted on changes to the town, but the day to day operation was Frost’s business.

“We’re going in there,” I said, already in my riot gear. “I’m just doing you a courtesy. If you don’t hear from us, don’t let our bikes go to waste out there.”

“At least keep some of the girls here—”

I shook my head. “This is Scissor-Tail business. My girls want to come with and I’m not stopping them.”

Frost folded her arms over her chest. She wore trousers and a leather vest. Even when the weather turned the cold it never seemed to bother her. “Fine, but take Grock with you.”

“Grock?”

“Yeah, this is some maelstrom shit, right? Better to have our maelstrom professional with you. Plus I know you won’t go suicidal if he’s along for the ride.”

She was right about that, but I insisted, “I’m not suicidal, Frost.”

She gave me a long look that said she’d be the judge of that. I sensed a bit of doubt in myself, too. I wanted to die last night when Bloom held me through that storm of grief. A part of me still did. Everything felt so fucking bleak without you, Tera. I swore the sky took on a greyer color cause you weren’t around. But I wasn’t going to let myself waste away or crash my bike into some tree. Other people still depended on me, and that was enough to keep me going.

I also wasn’t about to sit on my hands. Which I told Frost, “This thing could be a ticking time bomb. I’m the only one who’s seen it up close, so I’m going back. I’ll take Grock with me and keep him safe, and we’ll figure out what the fuck is going on.”

“Fine,” Frost said, sitting back down.

“Any idea where Grock is?”

“Do I look like the bull’s keeper? He’s probably out meditating in the river or some other dumb shit.”

Turns out Grock was taking breakfast at Za’atar. Motmot often found him there in the mornings. She always got breakfast there, her being a morning person while most of the girls—myself included—were morning lumps in bed.

Grock, when he first came to Hypoxia, had been this big, lumbering adventurer who looked like he wrestled scourge-ants. Then, one day he came back bonded, clearly meeting his match out in the Green Sea. Never told anyone what happened, and since then he’d gone soft. Still bigger than most, but he had a gut now, flab on the arms and legs. His brown hide had scattered patches of mossy green growths, most covered up by a torn, woolen sweater and trousers. A patch climbed up his collarbone onto his throat, but what made the bull obviously bonded were his horns: each one split at the tip like a fountain with flowering vines that spilled down nearly to the floor. Grock kept them braided behind his back, which made the vines stand out from the shaggy black hair that stretched from his brow down to his nape.

He shut the book he read and stood from the bar soon as I walked in. “Be seeing you, Banyan,” Grock said, wishing the fellow bonded a good day as the caribou worked the kitchen. Tarragon, like me, stayed in bed most mornings.

Grock came to the door, and I asked, “Expecting me?”

“Mmm, no, but I sensed we had business,” Grock said as we both stepped outside, heading toward the garage.

His senses always proved eerily accurate, which was the thing about Grock. He seemed not only in touch with the maelstrom, but in touch with the psychic energies of individuals as well. It wasn’t guaranteed, but plenty of bonded ended up with strange powers. Banyan could poison food and water at a touch surely as Pine could purify it from the river. Grock was a psychic. Stories out of the Cauldron claimed some bonded never needed to eat or sleep, or that they could set something ablaze by staring at it for too long.

I told Grock, “Frost asked I take you with me to the Welt.”

“I heard what happened there.”

“Everyone has,” I said with a roll of my eyes. Sometimes, Tera, I swore this town’s chief export was gossip.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” Grock observed.

“I don’t. We’re going and you’re coming with because you might help us figure out what is going on.”

“The maelstrom is strong there?”

“Strong and strange. Weirder than it is in the Growth.”

“Mmm, I wonder if any bonded have been drawn to it.”

“Have you?”

“Nothing reaches for me here in Hypoxia.”

“Fair enough,” I said as we reached the garage. Though, something had reached for me last night, I was sure of it.

***

I didn’t sleep well out on the roof. You did, Peacock, but when you slept nothing got you up. I came to soon as the sun cracked the horizon, bleary and curled up. You’d rolled to the other end of the mattress with the sheets bundled around you. A twinge of annoyance became a gentle bit of affection. I sat up, kissed your head, and grabbed my panties and shirt before heading downstairs.

Motmot was in the kitchen on the second floor. She had this great big mug coffee with her. “Coffee,” you know? We didn’t have a clue what the old stuff tasted like. Ours came from the migratory flocks of humming-stings, those fist-sized, feathered insects that shed their stingers in the spring. Folks in Hypoxia made a holiday around going out with baskets to collect them. They were harmless once shed, and when roasted and ground up they steeped into a bitter, dark liquid that resembled old descriptions of coffee.

It’s funny how stingers can become something we drink. I can’t even imagine what bored soul had to think that up, but I suppose when you have a lot of something worthless you find some way to make it useful.

Motmot gestured to a carafe on the wooden counter. “You can have the rest if you want.”

“Thanks.” I took a mug from the cabinet beside her. Pouring a drink, she took a loud sip, whiskers twitching. “Something on your mind?”

“Used to seeing you and Peacock up at the same time.”

“Hard to sleep in when you’re up on the roof,” I said, going over to a shoddy dining table. Its surface was made from two doors glued together with a large board over them to create a smoother surface.

“Heh.” Motmot took the seat across from me. “Yeah, we got bedrooms for a reason, kid.”

I sipped my coffee, tongue recoiling a little at first before I swallowed. It was lukewarm and far too strong a brew for me. I said, “We wanted to try something different.”

“Sounds like the two of you.”

“The two of us?” I asked.

Motmot offered a toothy smirk. “She acts different with you around, you know? It’s like she’s got something grounding her now.”

“She’s always seemed pretty grounded to me.”

Motmot tapped the table with a long, vicious claw. “I started the Scissor-Tails with Peacock”

“I heard.”

“So I know Peacock, better than anyone, probably. You being here, she’s asking stuff like, ‘What’s the risk of that?’ She used to act like we were fucking immortal, or at least like she was. I mean, who brings a sword to a gunfight other than Peacock?”

I chuckled, but it had an edge of anxiety to it. “She still brings the sword to every fight.”

“She’s changed, though. Smarter about it,” Motmot said. She hefted her claws, looking more like a bear in that moment. “Personally I don’t need a sword with these, but I’m also not trying to get shot.”

I’d never taken count, but I knew about your scars, Peacock. I asked, “How many times has she been shot?”

“Plenty of times,” Motmot said with a flick of the wrist.

“Plenty?”

“Eh, you lose count after a while. Bloom gives her hell about it every time. If that doctor weren’t a miracle worker I’d definitely be running things here.”

I stared at my coffee, biting my bottom lip. The disc of dark brown liquid swirled with specks of dust on its surface. My anxieties drifted above an ocean of uncertainty, threatening to be drowned in the bottomless dark. Peacock, how could you just risk your life so carelessly? This town, these girls, I… we needed you.

“Hey.”

I started when Motmot’s large paw took hold of mine. “We’ve got her back, don’t worry. And like I said, she’s more careful now, which makes her practically invincible.”

“But what if you’re not there when she needs you?”

Motmot cocked her head. “Isn’t that why you decided to stay in town? To be there when we’re not?

***

Grock rode on the back of my bike. The extra weight made it a bit sluggish, and we both barely fit, but out of the Scissor-Tails I was the smallest, so it made the most sense he ride with me.

We reached the Welt by midmorning. About two hundred paces from the tree line, a topless jeep rested off the road. Canaan, an athletic grey wolf with a prosthetic arm, and Straps, a rhino almost as broad as he was tall, both lounged in the jeep. Canaan sat on the hood of the jeep, bushy grey tail tucked around him while he cleaned a machine pistol. Straps lounged in the back with his legs dangling off the side, a pair of binoculars hanging from his meaty neck.

We parked our bikes and talked only for a short time. They had no updates. We expected as much, but that close and Grock already felt that amber lump. We drove closer this time, taking our bikes right to the edge of the forest. The smell of the Welt mixed with the maelstrom and assaulted all our senses, but we weren’t about to back down.

All eleven of us packed heat and those of us with armor wore it. We were ready to gun our way through, but before we got even ten paces into the Welt, Grock said, “Wait.”

“Something wrong?” I asked. I stood beside him, at the front of our party which spread out in a wide-angled V.

Grock said, “The girls should stay behind.”

“Excuse me?” Motmot asked. The badger snarled, and pointed her shotgun into the woods. “There’s no fucking way we’re staying on the sidelines.”

Lark, a leggy, spotted feline, said, “If there are scourge-ants in there we’ll all survive better as a group.”

I said, “The girls are right, Grock.” I meant what I said to Frost earlier—I wasn’t keen on getting myself killed over nothing. I wasn’t the type who thought I’d see you in some afterlife, Tera.

“That may be, but that thing from before, it incapacitated you, didn’t it Peacock?” Grock asked. He flicked a horn as if it was an antennae. “I can sense it, and it can sense us, and it feels threatened.”

The Welt did feel different than before. A residual anxiety existed that I just noticed. I thought it just mission jitters, but this was something else. Grock was right. I made a point not to fuck with the maelstrom, and I trusted our resident psychic to know best on this stuff.

“Fuck, Grock is right,” I said.

“Peacock you can’t—”

“Quetzal I can,” I told the human to my right before turning left. “Motmot, you’re in charge. If you don’t hear from us in two hours go back to the settlement and tell Frost to get whatever artillery we have and come back to burn this fucking place down.”

“That will piss the maelstrom off for sure,” Quetzal protested.

“Yes, but all you have to do is lay low in Hypoxia for a week,” I said. “In the meantime, this threat will be dealt with. Believe me girls, I want fucking vengeance for what happened to Kestrel, but Scissor-Tails are smart enough to know when and how to pick a fight. This isn’t how and now’s not the time.”

A curse from Quail. “Fuck the maelstrom.”

“Fuck the maelstrom,” several girls echoed. I mirrored their next gesture, hocking a loogie into the grass.

“Like I said, burn the fucking place down if you have to. Especially if one of us don’t come back.”

“You can count on that,” Motmot growled.

I nodded to Grock. “Let’s go.”

We headed in alone. I had an old handgun at my side, but I hated guns. Unreliable, and monsters of the Green Sea tended to soak a whole clip. Worked well enough on raiders assuming you were a good shot, but bullets got expensive. Our gang spent more on that than we did on food.

We lost sight of the girls before long. Grock made the trip faster than ours, Tera. Unlike our cautious meandering, he moved with a purpose toward the hill.

“You are still thinking of her,” Grock said to break the quiet.

“It’s hard to let it go,” I said.

“What if we find something you don’t want to see?”

“There’s never been anyone better at keeping their cool than me.”

Grock grunted. “I didn’t know her much, but I could tell there was no one more important to you than her.”

“Stop with this.”

“You need to be prepared for the worst.”

“And what’s the worst?”

“You tell me, Peacock.”

I scoffed. “And I thought you were psychic.”

“You’re afraid she won’t be dead, aren’t you?”

“Fucking quit with that shit,” I warned. My thumb brushed the safety of my pistol almost on reflex, as if I was one more comment away from putting the pistol to Grock’s back to keep him quiet.

Grock sensed my anger, of course. I watched those broad shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. He said, “If you wish to talk about it, I can.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said and smacked his back. “Let’s get a move on.”

“I’m not some pack animal.”

“And I don’t want to be here when they start shooting rockets into this fucking place.”

“Fine.” We picked up the pace, walking fast as these woods would allow. It was still strange traversing this place. The jungles of the Growth had more than the trees: there were bushes with eyeballs blossoming in them, mossy growths along the ground, thorny undergrowth with thorns that resembled teeth. None of that here. Just dead Green Sea grass, our footfalls sloshing from the nonstop blood, and the trees.

“We’re here,” Grock said, and I stepped around him to see the tree line and the hill. A scourge-ant lounged at the mouth of a burrow like some resting pet. I lifted my sidearm, but Grock grabbed the barrel. “Wait.”

Scourge-ants had no eyes, but this one’s head still pointed in our direction as if it watched us. Its mandibles clicked in some kind of keening chirp.

“They’re not hostile,” Grock said, and, trembling, I stowed my pistol in my holster.

Still, I asked, “You’re sure?”

“They were expecting us and see us as guests.”

“You can read animal’s minds?”

“Not usually, not more than the most base emotions, but these are different. Smarter maybe, no…” Grock’s eyes drifted from the burrow to the top of the hill, “It must be that. They share a connection to it.”

“What is that thing, then?” I asked.

“I am not sure. Let’s get closer. We won’t touch it, and if it takes over your mind I will hold you back from it.”

“How are you sure it won’t take over your mind?”

Grock flicked his horns again. “I’m fortified. No matter how bad it’s gotten, the maelstrom’s never hurt me since I died.”

As we began to climb the hill, I asked, “How did you die, Grock?”

He stayed quiet a moment, then answered as if he had been distracted, “I don’t remember much. I was sleeping on the road, next to a fire. I heard a scuff of stone, woke up, then woke up again bonded.”

“Sounds like someone got the jump on you in your sleep.”

Grock said as we crested the hill. “It matters little in the grand scheme of things.”

I think the way we died mattered a lot. I, for instance, wanted to die doing something defending Hypoxia. And I never wanted you to die the way you did, Tera. I wish I’d just given you a quick out.

“Speaking of that incident, your sword is still here,” Grock said, pointing out the discarded blade. It was dried with your blood, which made me sick, but I picked it up out of the dirt. Grock sat on his knees before the amber mass.

“How long will this take?” I asked, glancing around the hill. I spotted more scourge-ants just milling about: two younger, smaller ones were prancing and playing. Their chitters unsettled me enough that I went to sit by Grock. “Well?” I pressed.

“I am going to need silence if I am to commune with it.”

I took a deep breath and decided to leave Grock alone. I unclipped my canteen and busied myself cleaning your blood off my blade. It was a painful ritual to complete, but one I wanted done. About ten paces around the other side of this thing was the spot on the ground where it happened: your blood everywhere. If I could, I’d have washed that away.

I swore then, Tera, I planned to wash this all away. If not in water then in fire. For what this place did to you, made me do to you. My blade quivered in my hands—I wanted… I wanted…

“You came back.”

Your voice seized me in its grip. For a breath, I couldn’t move, didn’t want to. I think you sensed it Tera, because you told me, “It’s alright, Peacock.”

Slowly, feeling sick, I faced you.

And it was you, clothes stained in the blood from my gruesome amputation. From the stump of said arm grew thick wedges of aloe. A plant I only read in books that now sprouted down almost to the length of your forearm.

I teared up. You came back. You came back, but you did not come back to me.

That’s why the thought of you being bonded scared me so much.

“I… we… we hoped you would,” you said, taking a step to me. The step was wrong. Your posture wrong. You didn’t stand like you normally did, but walked like you just learned how.

It was horrific. I glanced at Grock, but he remained locked in a trance. I planted my sword in the ground and used it to push myself onto my feet before I said, “Who’s we?” It came out a rasp.

My accusation stopped you in your tracks. We should have ran into each other’s arms, but…

“We,” your eyes flicked to the amber pod behind me. “We waited.”

“You’re not Kestrel.”

“We occupy her, but she is still here. Still her.”

“Give her back,” I spat, turning on the amber mass now. “I’ll burn this whole place to the ground if you don’t release her right now.”

“You will burn her as well,” you said. Your voice said for this thing.

I resisted the urge to pick up and plant my blade in the side of this thing. I turned to you, Tera, grabbing you by the elbow and pulling you close. “Kestrel? Tera? Come on, I know you’re in there. It’s me, Peacock.”

The film over your eyes cleared. Your other arm, the one of aloe, wrapped around me and we hugged each other tight. I buried myself in your chest, but you smelled different. You smelled of this place: fresh cut wood and overturned earth, the rot and spice of the forest around us. It made me shiver with rage a moment, but it passed when you kissed my head and whispered, “Peacock, you’re here.”

“I’m here,” I echoed. “The girls are at the edge of the forest. We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

“I…” you stepped back, aloe rubbed my arm and you asked, “Can I go back to Hypoxia like this?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course you can. May not be able to drive a bike but this,” I grabbed your arm where fauna became flora. “This won’t be a problem at all.”

“No, I mean…” you stopped and stared at Grock.

“What is he doing?”

“He’s here to help figure out what’s going on. We have no clue—”

“Stop him, Peacock.”

“What? Kestrel, come on.”

You shoved me aside and grabbed the sword, lifting it over your head to bring it down on Grock’s. I grabbed your wrist and shoulder checked you, which made you stumble back. You became unnaturally clumsy, toppling over. I grabbed my sword to keep it away from you and said, “Kestrel! Talk to me, don’t just—”

“He is not welcome!” You hissed, before tilting your head back. You shrieked, aloe limbs wriggling as you did, and the sound made me sick.

Before you even stopped, Grock had gotten up and grabbed my hand, yelling, “It’s time to go.”

We ran. I unholstered my pistol with my free hand, noting scourge-ants trying to get in our way, but I barreled ahead of my escort, sword swinging. The bugs hesitated when I got in front of them. My blade hacked into the head of one, dropping it, and I turned my sidearm on the nearest one. I unloaded three rounds, exploding its brains in a spray of ichor. I yanked my sword free of the other corpse while Grock dashed by, and we retreated into the woods while a chorus of scourge-ants wailed.

We got about fifty paces into the forest before a psychic shout of, “Come back!” rang through my mind. It was your voice, Tera, but tangled up and thorny like a knot of bramble that lashed across my skull and made me stumble. I heard the scourge-ant’s stampeding towards us, and yelled to Grock, “I’m going to slow them down. Get out!”

If he were one of my girls he’d have tried to argue. If he were Bloom he’d have refused. Grock, fortunately, had some shred of sense and self-preservation. He didn’t so much as look over his shoulder, just kept running. I spun around and faced our pursuers.

Scourge-ants could run faster than any person, but having to weave through the thick cluster of trees gave us a chance to outrun them. I was angry and sad, but not scared what would happen, Tera. I raised my pistol and emptied the clip into the hoard, then dropped the gun to grip my sword with both hands.

You don’t stop a stampede by running into the middle of it, Tera. Best you do is make it stumble. I swept my blade low and cleaved off the front two legs of a bug, planted my feet, then stabbed into another scourge-ant’s thorax, sword piercing out the back of its furry hide with dripping green ichor. The weight of all those bodies collapsed on top of me. I lost hold of my sword. I heard you ask me in my head, “What have you done?” Then, like before, I blacked out.

***

Peacock, you never take pride in your body. It’s something I noticed—happy to call others stunning or beautiful but totally unwilling to see yourself that way.

I always thought you were beautiful, I adored even the things you complained about.

Your hide always came up: tough pebbly scales that “couldn’t feel much and aren’t nice to touch like skin or fur.” But that dark green hide, gradually lightening as it wrapped around your belly, always appeared sensual to me. Light changed its colors so often that every night to morning a different shade of beauty greeted me. Plus the touch, you complained about often lulled me to sleep as you cuddled into me while I stroked your bare back, admiring every pebbly bump and smooth track of scales.

Your flat chest didn’t bother me at all. In our world, plenty of women, especially the ones made from animals after the Wakening changed most of us, didn’t have breasts. You had nothing there but tough scales, muscles, and ribs that you broke enough times that you had tender spots in places I memorized in our many nights together. Your body, you thought so unfeminine, but you had these strong, full thighs I loved to squeeze. This trim little stomach and v-line of muscle that guided the eye to your slit. Your cock you long since accepted. And your internal testes saved you the trouble of fretting over an external sack.

Your arms were defined but lean. You had all this wiry, athletic muscle on your body with a layer of scales stretched around it to make you look even stronger.

You had a good ass, too, but I know pointing that out always embarrassed you.

During work, when on your bike, you tended to forget about your body, but back at the garage or when we took a day off together, you became so self-conscious, even admitting you would want to try makeup if not for the fact it was such an expensive thing to have. You never bought for yourself—first time you ever tried eyeshadow was because I bought it for you. Not that you needed the makeup. Your reptilian head had a pointed, angular quality to it that I found alluring. You always looked predatory and determined, but not masculine.

Does that make sense, Peacock?

Probably not, no need to roll your eyes at me!

Most of my memories were of you and us together. Your body constantly came to mind.

That same morning I shared coffee with Motmot, you woke a few hours later with some of the girls. After taking breakfast, you found me in the garage, helping Quetzal with fixing the suspension on her bike. I’d taken to the repair work in my time there; even if I wasn’t a Scissor-Tail yet, I wanted to earn my keep with the gang somehow, and Quetzal was a very good teacher.

You pulled me away to help get your mattress back in your room. It was almost noon, and the summer sun obliterated any of the enjoyable morning coolness. I came from dry badlands, and Hypoxia had comparatively miserable humid summers.

Which is to say I still wore only a shirt and panties and you a simple cotton dress that ended at your thigh. You shoved me onto the mattress when we got to it and fell on top of me.

Laughing, I held you close while you growled into my neck.

“Peacock!”

“What?”

“It’s the middle of the day!”

“So?” you asked before planting a kiss on my lips. “Only people who can see us are folks out on their roofs. Besides,” one of your hands rubbed at my mound, “I like it when I have an audience.”

I gasped as your fingers got more insistent with my muff. My labia spread and smeared into the fabric, stealing my breath. Any sense of decency evaporated into your touch. Like I cared if folks around town saw us. Who didn’t know we were fucking at this point?

My panties, faded lavender things, quickly became damp from your rubbing. You kissed me again, muzzle tilting to slide your tongue in my maw. That was another thing I liked a lot about your body, Peacock. You had a long, dexterous, deep purple tongue that made any girl wilt. Right now it filled my mouth as I humped into your touch. Your other hand held the back of my head to keep me right up against you. The summer heat bore down on us, but you were what had me hot. I wanted someone to watch us, get so turned on by us we became the thing that made them cum.

Your maw retreated to a delicate kiss, and your fingers continued to tease along my soaked panties. You smirked and said, “Well? Normally we do it first thing. I say you owe me for not being here when I woke up.”

Fuck, Peacock, if you weren’t the hottest thing in this world to me. I nodded, lust-dumb and desperate. “Please mistress.”

“Mmm, good girl, asking nicely.” Your fingers slipped under my panties. “So wet,” you whispered. Your fingers, scaly as the rest of you, had a delicate touch. Long years of practice taught you how to work the tender folds of a cunt. Two digits sunk between the inflamed lips of my mound, dug a little deeper to my entrance. You slid them back up, knuckles dragged along my clit and I whined about the lack of penetration.

“So needy,” you growled.

“Mistress…”

“When I want you, I get you, don’t I?”

“Yes,” I breathed as you continued your torturous teasing. I rolled my hips and whined, but didn’t tell you to fuck me.

“If I want to fuck you in town square what do you do?”

“Mmmph, bend over for my mistress to use me.”

“Good girl.” You giggled and nuzzled my cheek. “You’re drooling down here at the thought, aren’t you?”

“Yes…” I was thinking about it. You bending me over and kneeling under my tail, eating me out for all to see.

“Slut, I ought to do it, just so everyone knows how perverted you are.”

“Peacock,” I whined your name with a pained need. Your laughter just made my claws dig into the mattress. I didn’t even try to touch myself. I long since learned it best to leave you with total control. Total trust in you to please us both.

“I think you’re ready,” you whispered before scooting back between my legs. My panties were sticky when you took them off, and the chocolate brown fur around my sex glistened with arousal. You did this sort of thing to me constantly, Peacock.

You guided my legs over your shoulders and down your back as your muzzle sank between my thighs. You always ate me out. Before, during, even after—I think it might have been your favorite part, having my spiced, sweet musky scent on your snout for hours after. Your tongue split my flower with a single lick, from vent to clit, my labia hugging that muscle before it retreated. It penetrated me next, which got a soft moan from me. Your tongue dug deep as it could right away, and I clenched on the invader, which whipped up and down. My sensitive heat stoked hotter as tongue worked in and out, till pressure built in my gut. Till little shocks of pleasure from my sex made thighs shudder and squeeze your face.

Your still slick fingers pushed to my entrance. So quick that I never once felt empty, your fingers sank into me while your cum soaked tongue slathered my snatch. It closed in on my clitoral hood, purple muscle undulating over pink button. This while your fingers curled up toward my clit and rammed deep. You hit my spot, and I bit my wrist to muffle my moan.

That would not do. You glared up at me, snout dripping with my juices and said, “Let me hear you, baby. Let this whole town hear you.”

Tears welling up in my eyes, I nodded and tried, “Y-yes mistr-ah!—Haaaaa—oh!” I sang for you, Peacock, throat warbling as you jabbed your fingers into my g-spot, tonguing my clit. All that tension building just above my hips thundered through my body. Pleasure rippling in waves from my clenching cunny; you jabbing while my walls clenched and begged you to stop, till you had me squirting across your chin and wrist. I screamed, legs closing tight as if I might shove you away, my body feeling so much it went into revolt. That ecstasy so long for me even if for you it was simple as me shaking, shuddering, and jetting a few times over you.

Dimly, I felt you pull away, sense returning when you threw your dress over my head. You stood on your knees between my thighs, naked before me. Scars covered your toned, athletic hide. Each one a faded, yellowish brown, like an ancient book’s wilted pages. They stood out against the green hide. Gunshot wounds, flesh rent from crashes, gashes from monsters, scars from a life spent relentlessly fighting for others. I was in awe of you, Peacock. You were radiant in the noonday sun. A goddess of love and war walking in this world.

And throbbing in the middle of your hips was your cock. The pink, tapered shaft extended a good length, glistening with precum from our earlier play. I smelled your arousal, a heavy, earthy musk, and my body rose with its need to answer it.

With what strength I had, I grabbed behind my knees and pulled my legs up to my shoulders, spreading myself and offering my cunt to you. This time there were no words or begging. You swept against me like night descending on the Earth. My breasts rubbed your rougher chest, which made me gasp, which turned to a moan when your tip nudged my entrance.

My body embraced yours.

Wet folds parted for that fiery cock. Its warmth always surprised me. I joked you were part dragon because of it. The intensity of heat made my body boil with need as you sank deeper; that taper ballooned to a girthy base, and our crotches met in a sopping smack. You huffed and kissed me. Our maws locked, and you began to thrust, each shove inside me forcing more nectar to flood from my flower. The mattress had a growing and growing wet spot, and the stink of my sex became sharper the more your cock ground inside me. The smooth taper would tease at my cervix, nudging, prodding, jabbing that spongy barrier that sent a sharp, pleasurable ache through me. My walls, meanwhile, clasped your cock, trying to cup it in their soft, wet embrace. You made me a sloppy mess, sparing no time to fuck faster and faster.

I had already cum, but another, smaller orgasm blossomed up inside me. I locked my legs over your tail and broke the kiss to scream your name. Let the whole town know, you said. So I did. “Peacock! Fuck! Yes!” and your hips kept pumping, wet slaps of slit and labia. That surging pleasure becoming an ache in my cunny, a sweet pain that I wouldn’t dream to tell you to stop causing. Then you whimpered, soft and more vulnerable with me. You bit my shoulder and hilted. Your cock flexed inside me, which got a jolt of pleasure from me before you flooded me. Your internal testes boiled over and seed bubbled out around the lizard cock sheathed in my sore pussy. I felt gush after gush force its way against my cervix before flooding out of me.

We never worried about kids. I, sometimes selfishly, hoped you might breed me, that I might make you a mother, but we both knew our bodies were too different.

My legs, trembling, released you and slipped down onto the bed. You released my shoulder and slumped against me, panting till, “Fuck… thank you, Tera.”

“Mmm, thank you,” I said, hugging you close. In the afterglow, the heat didn’t even bother me anymore. “Sometimes I can’t believe I have you.”

You snuggled me back and said, “What is that supposed to mean? You’re great. I’m the lucky one.”

“Mmm, we can both be lucky.”

“Hehe, I can accept that.”

“Really, Peacock, do you ever just think about how amazing it was we were able to meet? It was like, from that first moment we had this connection.”

“Hey now, what is all this sappy stuff?”

“I’m just really happy with you. I feel like if I didn’t have you I’d have to relearn how to even live.”

You kissed my nose and whispered, “I feel the same, hun. Now, quit gushing and let’s just enjoy this a little longer, huh?”

“Haha, yes ‘mistress.’”

“Hehe, that’s my good girl.”

***

I woke lying in the dirt, the soil cool, climate so much different from the one I was used to—then I noticed being underground. In a scourge-ant’s nest. Above me light poured in from the glacial bottom of the amber pod. It doubled in size underground, and its inner lights basked this chamber in a warm orange. You sat beside me against the soft chamber wall, holding my sword in your lap and drooling. Once again, I thought for a moment I might be bonded, but this time I did little more than clench my fist and wiggle my toes in their boots. I seemed intact.

You did not. Your fur had gotten matted with dirt in places from living here. I briefly wondered what you had been eating and drinking all this time. Your narrow chest lifted and fell, and a gentle snore began to pour from your open lips.

I almost smiled and hugged you closer. I’d been set down here, and you curled up beside me. You leaned against me so much I could not possibly move without you falling over.

Earlier, with Grock’s proximity, I noticed the psychic maelstrom hadn’t been that bad—till he did whatever it was that pissed this thing off. Now, in this cave, I watched those lights dance and turn and the back of my head fizzled with feelings not my own. It was… a knot formed in my throat. A little racing in my chest confirmed I felt some kind of love from this creature. Its love of me, or yours, Tera?

I did not want to talk to it, so I turned to you and stroked your cheek. “Hey, hun. Wake up.”

“Mmm? Peacock?” your eyes fluttered open.

I smiled and touched my snout to yours. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I’ve not stopped thinking about you, you know.”

You wrapped your intact arm around my neck to hug me close. “I couldn’t stop thinking of you.”

“Yeah?” I asked. I had so many questions, Tera. Chief among them, I wanted to know what this thing above us did to you, and if it was really you I spoke to. “Tell me what’s happened while I’ve been away.”

“I woke up here. I talked with the Will.”

“The Will?”

“The amber thing above us. It doesn’t really have a name, but it calls itself that.”

“Earlier, it seemed like it possessed you.”

“Yeah,” you released me and offered me my sword. “Thank you for stopping me.”

I took my blade by its handguard and set it beside me. “Why did it want to kill Grock?”

Grock. I hoped he got out of here, and if he did my girls would be headed back to Hypoxia right now.

“They can’t kill it, Peacock.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I can—it’s hard to explain. Your thoughts are like an open book when I’m looking at you.”

I shrugged. “Spending time with Grock is like that. I can get used to it with you. Not like I hid anything before.”

“You don’t trust me now, though.”

I cringed but did not argue. “I love you, Kestrel, but until this thing has its claws out of you—”

“Peacock, stop,” you said. “I… ugh—fuck, let me…” You gasped and grabbed your temples, grimacing as you fought with something internally.

“Kestrel? Kestrel come on and talk to me.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered before your posture went slack. You straightened back up and your eyes opened with that haze over you.

“Give her back right now,” I snarled.

“We must speak with you.”

“Fuck you, let Kestrel speak for you.”

“The one you call Kestrel cannot tell you everything. Her body lacks the scope. We give it scope in this form.”

“Dammit,” I cursed and forced myself up, making sure to grab my sword. God forbid I let you run me through while possessed, Tera.

“We have no intention of harming you.”

“Out of my head,” I snapped.

“We are not in, we overhear. The bond between you and this one is strong.”

“Tsk. Fuck the maelstrom.” I spat in the dirt and surveyed the chamber. Three tunnels equidistant from each other all descended deeper into the dark. This had to be some central chamber to the scourge-ant nest. I noticed traces of green ichor, a spot in the corner where the wispy scraps of eggshells remained. I faced you, Tera, and said, “Alright, why bring me here? You clearly need me for something.”

You got up and approached me, a bit less clumsy on two feet now, but still it was not your stride that approached me. From your mouth the Will said, “There is a Wound in this world, and you must close it.”

“That it, huh? You know, I could send Bloom here. In case you don’t notice this thing,” and I tapped my blade on the dirt, “isn’t made for healing stuff.”

“You jest.”

“Of course I fucking jest,” I snapped up to the ceiling. Even like this I had a hard time directing any ire at your body. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”

“We will, but first we must give you perspective,” it said. Your hand lifted to touch my face and I snatched your wrist.

“What is about to happen?”

“We are going to give you a vision.”

“Not going to try and possess me like Kestrel?”

“Even if we wished to, this one’s love for you is too strong, too much a part of us, to try and tame you,” it said. Your lips moved, but your eyes looked right through me.

Your love for me had infected it somehow, though. I did not understand how that could be possible.

“Each bonding is an exchange,” it said to answer my thoughts.

“So she is bonded now?”

“Yes, and you are her bondmate.”

Bondmates were serious shit. Banyan went on a killing spree when Pine got killed by a gang staying in Hypoxia. It took the Scissor-Tails and some of Frost’s men to put an end to the fighting. That kind of devotion both awed and scared me. I did not feel worthy of it, deep down, Tera. I’m pretty certain no one is worth that much feeling, but our connection…

Thoughts racing, I tried to say, “I’m not bonded.”

“You are scared to be.”

“When I die I want to stay dead.”

Your eyes searched mine long enough to make my scales crawl. Your whiskers twitched. “How odd. The one called Kestrel does not understand this, and neither do I.”

I said, “Sometimes our guts tell us something, and we know it’s true about us. Like when my gut told me I was a woman, or that me and death don’t have anything against each other.” I let go of your wrist and said, “I wasn’t brought here to explain myself. Now show me what you wanted to show me.”

“Very well, Peacock.”

Your fingers rested above my brow. My change in consciousness didn’t snap into being, but came like a slow fall into sleep. I got weary; my anxieties came unknotted and drifting into waves of grass instead of tight, woven bands. A coldness flowed through my skull before, like the distant, roaring detonation of a bomb, I spotted a blossom of pain at the back of my mind before the feeling reached me. I collapsed against you, and you supported my weight as I gasped. I saw stars, flashing in my eyes, then black, then something… a landscape of colors, moving, fighting, struggling. Eventually, one color started to eat all the others, like mold devouring a loaf of bread.

I saw stretches of mountainsides on fire, fish dying across the seas, the pain of thousands in a world bleak and hot and weary. I felt anger, revolt. The life of the world, psychically thinned out, somehow connected by their shared trauma and pain. It reached a critical mass. This new entity, this maelstrom began to devour everything. We thought it the Earth woken to consciousness, but in that moment I knew it was not one being, but the billions banded together. A network of life that ate away the planet. It covered the surface, erased the mold and rot caused by humans, and the few who escaped those plagues and famines and changes to, well, everything became forgotten about. The fire raged then burned out, and we could anger it, but the maelstrom did not rule us. It watched over all life, scrapped and recycled it, changed it, and set it off running in this world. It was like God—everywhere, omnipresent, and judgmental. All it wanted to do was guard life. Renew life. Make it.

The bonded, a name they took for themselves. It did not mean bonded to the Earth, but to the maelstrom. The god we woke on our world after pursuing so much death.

I vomited when I came back to the chamber. Right against your shirt I dry heaved. The heaving surprised me, since my stomach didn’t feel empty, even as it turned and bucked inside me. You still held me close while bile spilled onto your front.

With the riot gear on, I barely felt you stroking my back as you said, “You see? It’s not hostile, so long as we are not hostile to us.”

“Ugh,” I coughed. “Fuck, yeah, sure.” I took my canteen, spilled water into my maw to wash out the taste of bile.

“Peacock.”

“Kestrel?”

You were in your body again, watching me fondly. I cleared my throat and clipped my canteen back to my belt. “What does this thing want?”

“For now, it wants to stop Hypoxia from killing it.”

“They don’t know why it’s here, they feel threatened by it,” I said, almost baring my teeth. I held back and added, “I get it showed me whatever…” I had trouble describing it, “whatever that was.” My feet ached a little, like we had been standing in place for a much longer time than I expected.

“It wishes to work with us.”

“By killing a caravan and holding you captive?”

“The caravan had tried to harvest the nectar of its trees. It almost killed one and the Will reacted defensively.”

“Fuck, you’re on this thing’s side?” I had dropped my sword in all that business and now reached down to grab it.

“Peacock, it has no quarrel with us—”

You seized up again, fighting back its hold. I shouted up to the ceiling, “Release her, dammit!”

Gritting your teeth, you said, “It’s fine… let me—trust me…” you were talking to that thing in your head. I could only watch, afraid if I tried to hold you it might break what concentration you needed to fight back. Finally, you relaxed, still yourself, and said, “They’re coming, Peacock. We need to go out and stop them. If they try to burn this forest down we’re dead.”

Of course they came back. Motmot probably rounded up every able body who could fit in whatever vehicles Hypoxia had and drove out here with every bomb in the Green Sea.

“I’m still not convinced,” I said. “Tell me what this thing wants.”

“To protect the Green Sea,” you said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. “There is an army coming from the east. A group called the Elect.” Not much news had come out of the east, but we had rumors of the Elect. Some nation that started out on the coast and moved inland.

You winced and tugged me towards one of the tunnels. “We don’t have much time.”

“Fine, but I have some conditions,” I said as I let her lead me to one of the tunnels.

“Anything.”

“You come back with me to Hypoxia.”

“Peacock I—”

I stopped at the mouth of the tunnel she just ducked into. “I’m not negotiating with you or this thing right now. My terms are the terms.”

Your eyes flicked from me up to our source of light, as if you had a brief exchange with it. “Alright,” you said, and I followed you into the dark.

***

In Hypoxia, folks rarely got possessive with one another. No one talked about it, but trust, intimacy, love, those sorts of things were in short supply in our world, too. Maelstrom the way it is, all of us grew up with death as just an everyday occurrence. If not the maelstrom then from each other. Life felt too fleeting to restrict oneself to one lover or companion. You took as many as you could. That’s what the Scissor-Tails were to you, right Peacock?

I only ever saw you get protective and possessive once. Before I joined the gang, I took a fancy to this wolf in town. Canaan. Big, aloof fellow. I knew he spent most of his nights with BluRay, Hypoxia’s techy. I had a thing for wolves, and he was a hot one. He only ever wore a pair of tight leather pants that left his sheath and balls outlined in his crotch. He exuded sex, so when he offered to buy me a drink at Za’atar one night while you were on patrol, I said yes embarrassingly fast.

He was nothing but charming and smooth with me. You know how some boys can be with most women? The patronizing “you need a protector in this world” crap. That wasn’t Canaan. We talked guns, traded stories about our exploits and run-ins with danger, hitting it off almost as well as my first night with you. Then, three rounds in, he finally asked me, “What’s your angle with those Scissor-Tails?”

Tarragon’s place was packed that night. Some caravan in town came in and took up most the tables, leaving the locals to the bar, which had filled, too. We had seats at the end, well away from most of the gossips I now recognized were fixtures of Za’atar. Canaan had brought me in on a busy night, sat me away from anyone who might care, and I didn’t think anything wrong with his question.

“What do you mean angle?”

“Come on, Tera. Everyone talks about how often you basically live at the garage. We can’t tell if you’re their mascot, if Peacock adopted you, or if you’re fucking them for a place to stay.”

“Mmm,” I giggled and suggested, “What if I told you it was all three?”

“I’d say it was a good gig, but sleeping with Motmot? I’ll pass on momma bear over there.”

“Motmot’s great!” I said, slapping his bare arm. He laughed, which got me to smile, too. We both took a drink.

“That’s it? I mean, you decide to move here just for all-you-can-eat biker pussy?”

“It’s not all pussy,” I said with a wink. “I’m fond of other equipment, too.”

“Heh, and here I thought all that gun talk was just for show.”

“Trust me,” I said, feeling cocky enough to lean in and grope his crotch. “Nothing I do is for show.”

He leaned close and growled in my ear, “I’ll definitely be testing that tonight. Bet a sweet little limber thing like you can be a lot of fun, huh?”

“Mmm, just so long as you’re not all bark and no bite.”

When I leaned back in my seat, Canaan was licking his chops.

“Tera!”

Your shout made both of us start like we got caught doing something we shouldn’t. You stood in the door, still in your riot gear, sword unsheathed, too.

“Ah, I see our vendetta continues,” Canaan said with a carefree little sigh. “Looks like we’ll have to pick this up another time.” He shoved off the bar, spinning as an actor onto the stage. More eyes had been drawn between the two, and I noticed the wolf’s paw rested on his holstered pistol. Some weapon customized by BluRay to make it deadlier. Canaan had gloated about it, said it shredded most armor and cover like it was paper.

You weren’t intimidated. “She’s a Scissor-Tail.”

“Ah, she took the vow of chastity, then?” Canaan said before giving me a pouting glance. “Such a waste.”

“Fuck off, Canaan.” You stepped inside, and Canaan and you circled each other.

Once he was closer to the door, he waved to me and shouted, “Have fun with your bikers!”

This whole altercation I had been too stunned to react, but now I was pissed. You took his seat, looking tired, and shouted at Tarragon to get you a beer. I didn’t have much in the way of claws, but they dug into and scratched the enamel of my mug as I waited, shaking with fury, for you to say something.

You didn’t even face me when you said, “You should know better than to try getting to know him.”

“And what the fuck gives you the right to say who I see?” I snapped.

You faced me, and I saw only anger in your eyes. You being mad at me just made me feel worse. “I know the people in this town. Canaan is not someone you should let get close to you.”

“You’re not my fucking mother, and I don’t need your fucking protection,” I hissed. I drank the rest of my mug in a single chug and slammed it down, wishing it had shattered. It didn’t, and, feeling impotent, I stormed out of the bar, hating that people watched me leave. It was a late fall night, and I pulled my jacket close even though I wanted to throw it into the river. You gave it to me, something scavenged you meant to put Scissor-Tail patches on.

I went down to the riverbank and sat by Pine. The bonded, sentient tree offered no words for me. It apparently could speak to some folks in town, but all those white pine needles did was rustle in the wind.

I still contemplated throwing the jacket in the river when I heard your footsteps behind me. You tossed your sword on the ground, blade now sheathed, and took a seat in the grass beside me.

For a while, the river just ran right in front of us and nothing happened. I wondered if you expected me to say something first, or waited for me to get up and leave. But, even when mad at you, your presence comforted me when I got upset.

“I was an asshole,” you said.

I rubbed some tears from my eyes. “I’ll fucking say.”

You sighed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of yourself, Tera, but Canaan is one of the few people in town I don’t want to go toe to toe with.”

“Is this supposed to be an apology?”

“He’s deadly, knows it. And he always has an angle. I didn’t want him taking advantage of you.”

“What could I possibly give him?”

“Leverage over me, the girls.”

“You really think—”

“Canaan has taken people out to drinks before, fucked them, then killed them in the morning,” you said.

“What the fuck?”

“He’s a hired gun, and rarely does anything without a reason.”

“But wait,” I faced you and asked, “If he’s done that why is he still here?”

“He has something on Frost, and he covers his tracks well enough,” you said to me before shaking your head. “Still, I came in protective and mad, mad at you for something you didn’t even know. I made a scene when I didn’t need to. Whole thing was fucked. I’m sorry.”

“Peacock…” I touched your gloved hand as it rested in the grass between us. “You were an asshole, and I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Heh, you’re supposed to say, ‘No, it’s okay, you didn’t make an ass of yourself.’”

I giggled. “You did, girl. No getting out of it now.” I touched your chin, turning it and giving you a kiss. “I forgive you, though.”

“Mmm, just like that?”

“I love you, and being mad at someone you love sucks,” I said before kissing you again.

You chuckled and leaned into me, resting against my shoulder. “God, how did I get so lucky with you?”

“Who knows, really?” We just leaned for a moment, exhausted by all our bad feelings and letting them fade into the sound of the running river. Eventually, I broke the silence to ask, “I do have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean what you said, when you called me a Scissor-Tail?”

You tensed up against me. “Did you want to be one?”

“Only if you’ve got a good name for me.”

“Mmm… Kestrel.”

“Kestrel?” I smacked your back with my tail. “That quick, huh? Been thinking about this?”

“Nah, I never think about it. I just pick.”

“So Kestrel is what you came up with?”

“Could go with Titmouse.”

“I’ll take Kestrel.”

***

We ran out of the forest. You didn’t give us a chance to talk about anything with how quickly we sprinted, but I let you lead the way, my eyes drifting back to your new arm. You had a couple days to get used to it by now, so I suppose it must not bother you much. But looking at it, my mind raced with how different everything might be now. Canaan lost his arm and got a prosthetic he could do things with. You couldn’t do shit with that plant replacing your hand.

And it was my fault. I took your arm from you, and you became this “Will’s” puppet. My gut wound itself in knots before we even got outside the forest. About a hundred paces from the trees, a set of vehicles, including our bikes, had been arrayed in a semi-circle. We both saw folk readying mortars, flares, incendiary bombs in slings, all kinds of things to make sure this place would set fire hard and fast.

I said, “Let me do the talking,” and waved with my sword, calling, “Hey! Don’t shoot! We need to talk.”

Stirring along the group. Some folks had noticed us, but now the word went down the line of vehicles. There must have been a posse of fifty rounded up. I wondered how much time I had passed since we first got here. You didn’t round up people, vehicles, and bombs quickly. But the sun sat near the same spot in the sky it was when me and Grock entered the forest. I didn’t feel hungry but…

Had I been at the Welt for a full day and night?

I turned to you, about to ask, when I heard Motmot yell across the field to us. “Get away from the forest!”

Dammit. They planned to blow this place soon as we cleared it. We had gotten here without a moment to spare.

“Take your finger off the trigger. We need to talk before we fuck everything up!” I yelled in my sternest voice. Motmot glanced at the girls, barked orders then went to the jeep from yesterday. I couldn’t hear from where I stood, but I saw she argued with Canaan about something.

“‘Before we fuck everything up?’ Peacock, no,” you said, tugging me around to face you. “You promised me—”

“And I plan to keep my promise, Kestrel,” I said, low and insistent. I stared you in the eyes, knowing you saw through mine and into my thoughts now.

“You never break your promises,” you said quietly, reassured.

“It’s clear to come over,” Motmot called out.

“She is going to be enormously pissed with us,” I mumbled.

“Don’t worry. She’s more relieved than anything.”

“You can tell that all the way from here?” I asked as we walked over to her.

“She’s looking right at us.”

“What about Canaan?” The wolf watched us as well, his pistol drawn but held loosely at his hip.

“He thinks I’m not fuckable anymore.”

“Wow, wolf is dumber than I thought.”

“And, he’s sizing up whether or not you’re going to try to stop this, and if he can tell you to fuck off.”

With a sling of my arm, I rested my sword on the shoulder of my riot gear, just to make sure Canaan knew I had my weapon, too. I said, “That sounds more like the wolf I know.”

Motmot, thank fuck for her, met us twenty paces out. She said, “You two have some fucking explaining to do.”

“We do,” I said, glancing at you, Tera. “We definitely do.” I asked Motmot, “You in charge here?”

“Frost put Canaan in charge of the posse. You’re in charge of us, Peacock.”

Canaan watched us, impassive, but ears up and clearly listening.

“We need to back down from this,” I said.

“Mind telling me why?”

I wasn’t entirely sure why the fuck we needed to protect the Welt, either. I said, “For the time being, this place is Scissor-Tail territory.”

“Our turf? You’re shitting me.” Motmot looked between us. “Did that thing up there do something to you both?”

“No,” I lied. It definitely did something to you, Tera, and I worried it still might have done something to me. “Hypoxia comes first, and if we have to burn this place down to protect Hypoxia then we will. But the Welt’s here to protect us.”

Up and down the line we were being watched by folk. This place had them antsy. We needed to get them out of here and regroup.

Motmot picked up on that, too. The big badger pointed a claw at you, Tera, and asked, “What does Kestrel have to say about all this? Grock said she fucking tried to kill him.”

“I’m—the maelstrom had me out of my mind, Motmot,” you answered. “It’s alright now, trust us.”

“Grock told Frost and the rest of us to burn the whole thing down,” Motmot said with a growl.

If Grock said that… fuck we didn’t have time for me to ask what that fucking bull sensed inside the Will. This came down to a very simple question, and all the other answers could be figured out later.

“Who do you trust more, Motmot, me or Grock?” I asked.

And, with a paw nearly the size of my head, Motmot backhanded me. For her size, the badger was quick, but I’d taken enough hits from her when sparring to keep my footing.

“Of course I trust you, dumbass,” she snarled. “Don’t ever fucking ask that again.”

My lip had split from the blow. I licked away some of the blood, spat, and told her with a grin, “That’s my girl.”

“You ladies good over there?” Canaan asked. “We got business to take care of, if you’re finished.”

“You got no business here,” I snapped back, approaching his jeep with Motmot and you flanking me. Canaan’s whiskers barely twitched. He had nerves of steel and the backing of all these hired guns, while all I had was my bluff and bluster. “Take everyone back to town. Until further notice the Welt is Scissor-Tail turf. We get to decide what to do with it.”

“Frost won’t like that.”

“Then she can take it up with me.”

“Could just take it up with you right here,” Canaan said, flicking the safety off his pistol.

Motmot snarled but had nothing on her but her claws. The last thing I wanted was a fight. For one, we were way too outnumbered and outgunned. Second, I just got you back, Tera, and you had no weapon and one good arm. Maybe you had some trippy maelstrom powers, but in my mind that would just make everything worse.

I said to Motmot, “Get yourself and the girls on your bikes.”

Canaan pointed his pistol at her. “I think you ought to stay where you are.”

Of course Canaan knew better than to let us on our bikes.

None of us noticed Quetzal approaching the jeep. She came up from behind the line of cars while everyone’s attention was on us. She had a machine pistol trained on Canaan’s back. “You shoot her and I blow your brains out.”

“Oh, now this is getting fun!” Canaan yelled with a gleeful little bark. He bared his teeth and said, “How many do you girls think you can kill before you get gunned down, huh?” I looked down the line of cars. Straps and Lark had guns trained on each other. Two other thugs had weapons drawn on Quetzal. And I noticed she had pulled the pin on a fire bomb, ready for it to go off next to Canaan’s jeep soon as she let go of the handle.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Canaan, you’re a fucking coward. We might all die, but one of us will fucking kill you first. I know you don’t give a shit about any us or the Welt, but yourself? Come on, why take the risk when I’m the one Frost will be pissed with.”

Canaan smirked. “You got a point. Didn’t expect Quetzal to pull that stunt with the grenade. Pretty sure I can dodge getting shot, but that? Nah.”

He never so much as glanced at Quetzal. His ability to perceive always impressed, and I didn’t doubt he could slip out of this if we didn’t bring everything at him.

We had brought everything, though.

Canaan holstered his pistol and yelled, “Pack up fellas. This is Scissor-Tail turf. You want to fuck with the Welt, fuck with Peacock first!”

I didn’t spend the last five years of my life building up the reputation of our gang for people not to be scared of me. No one tried to fuck with me. As the posse started to pack up, Quetzal fished the pin of the fire bomb from her vest pocket and put it back in. Then she and the rest of the girls rushed over to embrace us both.

***

“Ease up on the throttle when you take that turn ahead!” you shouted as we rounded a bend, hugged to my back as we flew along a thinly marked trail. You did not call it a test, Peacock, but I knew in some ways you tested me, wanted to see how I flew. So we took your bike out into the maelstrom for an extended trip to the Cauldron, bags strapped to the back of your bike for food, a full tank of biofuel, and the Green Sea blurring around us. All those endless miles of chest high grass turned into water as we rode out to the Cauldron. We got there in the afternoon, stopping only once for a break.

I’d never been before. The Cauldron was a lake with deep currents that could pull people under in a riptide, as if the source of its water came from some underwater jet at the bottom of the lake. It fed the river that cut across both the Green Sea and through Hypoxia. A lake, endlessly pumping water with no source. It was a bizarre wonder, and, aside from a forest growing in around the northwest side and the bonded settlement on the southeast, there was nothing to keep us from riding fast as we dared.

I took the turn you warned me about a little too quickly. Both of us felt the tires nearly lose traction, but we leaned into it and cut around a knobby outgrowth in the lake, skirting its flanks. You yelled in my ear, “If it was just you on this thing you could have crashed. Be careful!”

You meant well, I know you did. But I’d felt invincible the whole day.

By the time we turned back for the bonded settlement, the lilac lakefront caught the light of the setting sun, which cast the surface into this glittering ruby. It almost resembled a sore on the earth: bright and brilliant blood as the waters reflected the sunset in dazzling ways. We slowed to a stop at some point and contented ourselves with just watching, awed by what beauty this hostile, spiteful world might give us.

In that moment, Peacock, as our shadows cast long shapes in the wind-tossed grasses, I believed that, perhaps, this was a world worth living in instead of hiding from.