The witch queens caught up to me and Moonie before we got too far. They spread out to either side so we could cover more ground. I kept my head up, watching out while the girls looked for food.

Slow, cold rain pattered the leaves overhead. Now and then a heavy drop hit me and ran down my back, but it wasn’t a downpour like it had been that morning. You could tell the witch queens didn’t like getting dripped on, but they didn’t run for cover, either.

Moonie grabbed my hand and started swinging it as we walked. That wrung my guts out and whispered Cherie inside my head. I almost yanked away before I realized how sad Moonie would be if I did.

“New god drop!” Hag called, waving us over.

My insides lurched, but I went with them and flapped up in a tree where I could see danger before it got to them.

The girls dug through the pile, kicking aside silent plastic squares and holding up wet clothes to each other to see if they’d fit. The god had dropped coats this time, just like they always did when cold season closed in.

“You should take one,” Hag said, showing me a shiny coat. “Killing cold is coming soon.”

“We still have a little while,” I told her, changing positions so I could better see over a boulder with a bush growing next to it. “I’m going to wait for the next drop.”

Hag frowned. “What if there isn’t another drop before then?”

I shrugged.

“Don’t you like any of these coats?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then I want that one.” Hex snatched the shiny coat away from Hag and pulled it on.

“Oooh.” Moonsinger held up a black and white sneaker. “This would be a good shoe for me.”

I swallowed looked up at the sky. “That’s a guy’s shoe, Moonie.”

She wrinkled up her nose. “How can you tell?”

“I just can.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Well, it’s too big anyway.” She chucked it over her shoulder.

Hex found the coat with the black and white sleeves next and tried it on. Before I said anything, though, she decided she didn’t like how it fit, threw it down, and kept looking.

The other girls had all picked out cold season coats and clothes before Moonie found another shoe she liked. She had to sit down to put it on because this one laced halfway up her leg.

“That’s better.” She stood back up and tested it out, shifting from foot to foot. “The bottom is flat and soft like the shoe I already have, and it won’t fall off when I fly.”

“Do you want the match?” I glided down to where the other lace-up shoe was poking out from under a belt, some plastic squares, and a blue glass bottle.

Moonie thought about it. “Yes. Then neither one will fall off.”

While Moonie laced up her other shoe, I dug around the pile until I found the puffy coat. There was still a long, white hair clinging to the inside of the hood. I shrugged my arms and wings into it.

“I thought you didn’t want a coat yet,” Hag said.

“Changed my mind.” I buttoned it up, then stuck my nose down inside and took a deep breath. It still smelled like her.

Hiss squinted. “That looks like a girl’s coat.”

“It’s not,” I said. “I can tell.”

We stuck around the god drop until Moonie found a warm coat that hung down to her knees. It was too big, but she grabbed a belt and tied it under her little breasts, sitting on top of her growing belly.

Then we left. It was getting late, and the light was slipping away. We needed to find a safe place to sleep. I picked an old tree with lots of sturdy branches and some stinging plants at the base to keep monsters from creeping up on us.

Moonie scooted up next to me. Her new coat was scratchy where it touched the side of my leg, below the ratty bottom of my shorts. Hex perched on the branch across from us, and Hag and Hiss took the branch below her.

“I’m going to nest tomorrow,” Moonie told me.

“Got somewhere good in mind?” I asked. “Somewhere off the ground and hidden?”

“It’s really good. The gods won’t be able to find my stone babies like they found Hex’s.”

“They will,” Hex said, snuggling down into her shiny coat.

The stone crept up over my toes, past my ankles. I thought about Cherie asking me why the gods took care of them and not us, and me saying maybe they liked Cherie’s kind of angel better. About her finally being chosen. About how all the god drops would be full of coats until it got warm again, and how all the girls on the Range always tried to hide their stone babies even though they didn’t know where the coats in the god drop came from.

“Show me where you’re going to nest tomorrow,” I told Moonie while the stone climbed my legs and up my stomach. “If it’s no good, we’ll find you a safer spot. And if we see another god drop, I’ll get you a knife.”

“I still have the one you gave me,” she said, her hand reaching into the neck of her sundress. The stone covered her arm before she could pull out the knife. “I went back and found it after you and Thrasher left, I just didn’t tell anybody. I—”

The stone closed over her face. It was flowing down my wings and up my chest, over my chin and the top of my head, about to shut my mouth for the night, but I said,

“Good job” just before it did. Tomorrow, I would see if I couldn’t find the other girls knives, too.

THE END