I do not have the supplies and tools I'd like to have for cleaning up this much blood, but I suppose I'll just have to make do.

I should probably try to stop producing more blood first, though. Or… well, I mean, I'm going to need to produce blood to make up for all the blood that's falling out of my face, but I need that blood to not fall out of my face, so… god, what am I even thinking about? Am I still having a panic attack?

Hmm.

Yep, chest still hurts, body still feels like it's screaming, breathing is only stable due to effort. Definitely a panic attack. Is this what dissociation feels like? Huh. I don't like it. What was I thinking about? Oh right, the blood. Thankfully I still have a bunch of crap in my backpack all about dealing with blood, so I quickly close my mouth, rinse my hands, and stick a bunch of gauze in my mouth. Awesome. Now what should I do with the thirty-two teeth that I just dropped into a sink?

Something about that thought hits me like a brick to the face, and I'm slammed back into the full terror of my situation all at once. All of my teeth just fell out of my face. I am bleeding from the entirety of my gums at the same time. I am losing a lot of blood and I might need to go to the emergency room, at which point it will be discovered that I am a horrifying freak of nature whose existence probably defies everything we know about how biology works and I don't know, maybe that'll go just fine, but maybe I'll be kidnapped and tested on or outright killed and I have no idea what will happen, I have no way to know what will happen, so I just have to keep it all a secret even though there's no way that's going to last I just… I can't! I can't handle anything else!

So, again: teeth. Do I just flush them down the toilet or something? I mean, that might work if there was just one of them, but I have an entire mouth full of teeth and I'm worried they might get stuck in the pipes. Imagine an irritated old plumber trudging out to the school to fix a clog just to open up a pipe and have thirty-two teeth just tumble onto the floor. He'd think someone was killed and murdered to death! They'd call the police, the police would check the dental records, they'd find my dental records and find out I'm alive and well but they'd definitely want to talk and figure out what all that was about and just… aaaaaaaaah!

So none of that plan is happening! Instead, I reach my hand into the horrible little soup of blood I've collected in the sink and retrieve all my teeth, depositing them on top of five layers of paper towel. I rinse them off, transfer them over to a new set of dry paper towel, then stick them all in a ziplock bag and drop it in my backpack. Good. Now if anyone finds my teeth, they won't think I'm a murder victim. They'll just think I'm a murderer instead.

Which is true.

And speaking of, this entire process has gotten a lot of blood everywhere, so I quickly change out the red-soaked gauze in my mouth, put on a fresh N95, and start compartmentalizing the crap out of all my various forms of panic so I can move my body in automatic mode. I'm not sure why, but I've always liked cleaning. I'm certainly good at cleaning, and it's something that I can do with my hands that's just engaging enough to fully occupy my brain. It's distracting in exactly the way I need right now, or at least in exactly the way I've traditionally used to handle stress which probably isn't actually what I need but is the only thing I know that helps, even temporarily.

I've always considered myself weirdly self-aware for someone who repeatedly runs face-first into the same problems over and over. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, and dang am I really good at that, but all the other steps sure do tend to give me trouble. …Wait, did I just hear the bathroom door open? Oh, crap-and-mustard sandwich someone's coming in! No no no no no!

"O-occupied!?" I squeak desperately, even though that's not how this bathroom works because it has four different stalls in it.

"Uh, Hannah, right?" an oddly familiar voice calls out to me. "Mr. Frank said to check if…"

A freckled girl's face peeks around the corner into the bathroom proper and immediately goes white as a sheet, presumably because of all the blood all over everything, myself included. It's Autumn, of all people, the girl who also saw my bloody-as-a-horror-movie toes back in gym class. She has brown hair, green eyes, and a somewhat thin face with high cheekbones that would probably look sharp and intimidating on someone who didn't look like she was about to scream and/or throw up. Outside of that she looks incredibly plain, wearing the kind of nondescript, almost uniform-like outfit that's so boring I can almost forget what it looks like while staring right at her. Which I am, in fact, doing, because someone just walked in on me cleaning up pools of my own blood with nothing but hand soap and a panic attack. We deer-in-the-headlights each other for an awkward fifteen seconds or so as Autumn's face gets increasingly more panicked, her breathing accelerating and body shaking until she suddenly squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and twists her expression into something more like confused, mildly irritated bewilderment with what seems to be sheer force of will.

"Okay," she manages to say, sighing deeply. "What?"

"What?" I parrot back like an utter fool and complete moron.

"What," she grumbles, fishing into her back pocket for a small notepad and pulling it out, "is going on, exactly?"

"I, uh. Bloody nose," I lie poorly. My voice is a horrid muffled mess because of all the gauze in it, and also because of the lack of teeth in it, but maybe I can just talk quietly and pretend it's the mask getting in the way.

"Do you have a fucking artery in your nose, or something?" Autumn asks incredulously, glancing at her notebook rather than me. Her eyebrows scrunch together as she reads it, but she just puts it back in her pocket afterwards.

"The sphenopalatine artery, yeah," I answer numbly.

She blinks at me. I blink back.

"...Would you like help cleaning that up?" she asks with a sigh.

I mean. I suppose this is a lot of blood for one person.

"Thank you," I mumble. "I have some latex gloves in my backpack, if you want them."

"Of course you do," Autumn sighs. "That's not creepy at all. Is your mask stuffed with gauze or something? You sound like you're talking through a wall."

"Not the whole mask," I assure her. "But I mean, there was a lot of blood, so…"

"A lot of gauze," Autumn agrees as if that's perfectly reasonable and I'm not a crazy person covered in liquid human, which I have to say is rather nice of her. "Get me those gloves, I definitely don't want to catch whatever explosive blood problem you seem to have. Are your feet okay?"

"Uh… well, they're not bleeding anymore," I answer awkwardly, pulling a whole box of latex gloves out of my backpack that I guess I must have stuffed in there during my morning fugue. What else is in here? Bandages, Band-Aids, some other useful stuff I guess I stole from my house's medical supplies. Well hey, good job, me. I'll have to pack some cleaning equipment tomorrow, too. I toss Autumn the box.

"Y'know, once is unfortunate, but twice is suspicious," she points out, catching the box and pulling out a pair of gloves to wear. "You gonna explain any of this?"

I stare at her, trying to figure out the best way to answer.

"No," I ultimately decide. "No I am not."

Autumn gives me a rather nonplussed look, but to her immense credit she grabs some paper towels, squirts some soap on them, and starts cleaning up regardless. Which is exactly the response I needed. Honestly, kind of a girlboss move to see someone who was literally drowning in blood moments ago and be all like 'hey, you need help wiping up all your gross human juice?' Something about that—probably the fact that it's horribly timed and doomed to failure, given my track record—makes my heart flutter in what I've come to recognize as the beginning of a crush. Which, y'know, is the last possible thing I need right now, but my body being a piece of shit and doing whatever it wants with no regard to how it affects me has become somewhat of a theme lately. Ugh. I was just thinking about how Autumn looks plain, but the moment she does something nice for me I'm staring at those adorable freckles and long brown curls in a completely different light, trying to avoid letting my gaze fall below her neckline, and generally just activating all of my gayest neurons. This happens way too often for my liking, I really wish it would stop. But also, I really wish she'd take off that offensively plain shirt and—hmm nope stopping that thought. You know what? I've got blood to clean up. Let's clean up the blood. I peel my eyes away from my uncomfortably attractive classmate and get back to work.

"Thank you," I manage to gurgle out, doing my best to ignore how catastrophically stupid I must sound with my gums stuffed with gauze. "I really appreciate the help."

"It's whatever," Autumn grunts. "At this point I'm just trying to get a good excuse to take the science test some other day. I feel like helping you with all this is probably enough of one."

"Well, you said Mr. Frank told you to come check on me, right?" I ask. "He can't get mad at you for doing what he said to do."

Autumn is silent for a moment, her eyes squinting almost imperceptibly, but she nods slowly.

"Right, yeah," she answers blandly. "Good point."

If there's one advantage to a sudden, intrusive, and entirely unwanted budding crush on a girl I have talked to a grand total of two times, it's that it somehow manages to distract me from the horrid feelings in my frighteningly-empty mouth, the throbbing ache of slowly-closing blood vessels, the painful pang of new teeth growing in, and the general lightheadedness of having lost all of the blood that I'm currently wiping up. The bleeding does, at least, seem to be rapidly slowing down, as my fresh gauze still tastes more like spit than iron. Together, Autumn and I quickly contain and sanitize the mess as best we can, making it look less like a slasher flick. I only need to remind myself that she's probably straight about fourteen times throughout the process. My brain is just annoying like that. I'm very much not able to handle a relationship right now, with everything going on. I mean heck, at this rate I'd probably try to eat her or something! Plus, she's not wearing a mask, and I refuse to date anybody not wearing a mask. I don't care that it's not required indoors anymore! Every little bit helps! My stupid hormones ignore all of this perfectly reasonable logic, of course, but it's no big deal. I get these sorts of crushes all the time, and they are yet another thing I've gotten very good at repressing. Nobody else is gay in this stupid southern-state Christian town, so sixty percent of my crushes end up making cartoon awooga eyes at the beefiest football players, thirty-five percent loudly agree with my pastor when he decries homosexuality as sinful (which I guess doesn't mean they aren't gay, but it certainly means I don't want to deal with their baggage) and of course the last five percent is Brendan, who I assume is there just because the part of my brain who crushes on people that are nice to me went so far into overdrive that it temporarily tossed my gayness out the window, or something. I dunno. I'm probably just unspeakably desperate.

"I guess I owe you double for this," I tell Autumn, my mouth still a muffled mess. "If you need anything, just let me know."

I'm not sure if I'll be of much help with my life rapidly shattering to pieces like this, but I'm certainly going to try.

"I'll be sure to write your favor down," Autumn answers dryly, peeling her soapy gloves off and tossing them in the trash before pulling out her notepad and, apparently, actually doing just that. Unfortunately, she has the notepad angled so that I can't see it. Probably on purpose. Still though, I want to ask.

"Do you collect all your debts into that ledger, or just the particularly bloody ones?" I joke.

"What can I say," she drawls. "It pays to know who'll be willing to spot you some cash. Literally."

I chuckle even though it isn't funny, half because of the budding crush and half because I'm experiencing a major adrenaline crash and my brain is completely shutting off. Though in her defense, Autumn generally seems very… flat. Uh, like in the amazing, dry, witty sort of way, not the chest way, which actually looks rather… y'know, not, um. Flat. Anyway, point is, even if that particular joke didn't particularly land, I liked the delivery of it. For some reason the deadpan really hits me. Also, as previously mentioned, I'm unspeakably desperate.

"Let's see if we can get that test rescheduled for tomorrow," I offer. "And maybe if we can get some janitors in here to properly sanitize the place. I'm not sure I trust the bulk-bought hand soap."

"That's probably wise on all fronts," Autumn agrees. "Hell, if we play our cards right, maybe we can get out of gym tomorrow."

"Hah! I doubt it, but we can dream. Really, thanks again, Autumn. I appreciate the help."

And more than that, I appreciate the fact that she seemed utterly unfazed outside of her initial shock on entry. She didn't press any questions I gave obviously evasive answers to, and she was content to work in silence once we really got going on things. And I definitely liked… no, wait, stop. Bad brain. Stop crushing. You basically just met this girl, you awful collection of hormonal garbage.

"No problem, gauze-face," Autumn answers. "Which is what I'm going to call you until you tell me your name."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Oh! Gosh, did I forget to tell her my name!? Rude, rude, rude, Hannah! How could you be so rude?

"Agh, I'm sorry! It's Hannah. My name is Hannah!"

"Hannah, right. I'll remember it this time."

I nod, and the two of us head back to the science room. We politely ask the teacher to reschedule the test for tomorrow—I could probably finish in the time we have left since I'm a blisteringly fast test taker, but I don't want to make it awkward for Autumn to ask—and he agrees, probably in part because I took the opportunity to strategically change out some of my bloody gauze. With the N95 still on, of course. I gotta say, my favorite thing about facemasks is that they hide your face. Helping prevent the spread of a deadly disease is a close second, though. The bell rings shortly afterwards, Autumn and I parting ways without a word as we head to our next class. Gah, I still can't believe I forgot to give her my name!

Except… wait a second. Didn't Autumn say my name when she walked into the bathroom? That's why I didn't tell her! She already knew it! I guess she was just messing with me? Or something!? Ah, whatever. It doesn't make much difference. I guess I can just ask her next time I see her.

Welp. Only one thing left to do then. I pull out my phone and send off a succinct text to Brendan.

Hey so literally all of my teeth just fell out.

The three dots that mean 'this person is typing' appear, disappear, appear, disappear, and appear again for the entire short break between classes before Brendan finally hits send.

Smoothies for lunch then? he asks. I snort with amusement. Cheeky dork. But also… yeah that's a good idea actually.

I guess I don't have any other options!? I admit. I wasn't really thinking about that.

Is there a more pressing train of thought for losing all your teeth than "how am I supposed to eat now?"

I mean, there apparently is when cute girls are around. But as tempted as I am to simply respond with the word 'titty' (which I'm sure Brendan would understand, considering all the curvy monster girls he draws in his free time) I do actually have a more coherent excuse and I'm going to use it.

The worryingly large amount of blood leaving my face was actually my primary concern, I tell him. That and the fact that someone else saw it. Not the teeth, but the blood.

Who?

Mr. Frank sent a girl named Autumn after me. Same one that saw my bloody feet. She was nonplussed, but she helped me clean it all up so she's cool in my book. You know her?

I know who you're talking about, but no, we've never really talked. Brendan informs me. I kind of expected that answer; Brendan has a couple other friends but otherwise doesn't talk to much of anyone.

Hmm. I'll ask Ida about her at lunch, I guess, I respond, entering my third period classroom and sitting down.

Oh, yeah, we'll need her car if we want smoothies, Brendan agrees.

You okay with that? I ask. I know you two aren't really friends.

I can't say I'm thrilled but I'm not going to leave you at Ida's mercy.

She's not that bad, I protest.

She is and you know it.

I sigh. This particular line of conversation won't go well, so I change it.

I'm surprised you're not bugging me to get more extreme help than a smoothie, considering my situation.

Five minutes later, when class has started and Brendan is still typing his response, I realize that particular diversion may have been a tactical error. A big block of text enters my phone all at once, and I read it with the fear that it will explode inside my heart.

I care about you, and your health, significantly more than I care about anyone else. Myself included. If I could get you the medical attention you need, I would. If I could fix all these problems for you, I would. What's happening to you is interesting and neat in the abstract, but I know that, to live it, it's horrific. And you're handling it the same way you handle all the problems in your life, which is to just pretend it's not there and try to keep everything the same until it gets worse and worse and worse and ultimately blows up in your face. You shut down, close yourself off, put on a big smile and act like you aren't going insane because the worst, most awful, most unthinkable shit in the world is happening to you. Stuff you should NOT put up with, stuff that you NEED to act on, but you refuse. You always do this, and if anyone tries to push you out of your cycle you just push them away, dig your heels in, and make it a contest of stubbornness that I don't have a chance of winning. So yeah. I'll be happy if I can just make sure you eat enough fucking food, Hannah.

I feel my toes curl, my gums masticating a bit on the gauze, the itchy spot on my leg where skin gives way to something terrifyingly firm. I was right. That hurt to read. In the awful, stressful way of something I want to deny, I want to get mad about, but I know that he's right. Brendan is right, but as usual I already knew that. I just can't fix it.

I don't know what else to do, I answer lamely.

I gave you three other things you could do, Brendan reminds me. You're just refusing to try them.

A flash of irritation passes over me and I fail to push it away. I know he gave me other options. I know that. He doesn't have to tell me.

I can't, I insist. There's too many unknowns. None of my options are good, but hiding gives me more time to figure stuff out!

Hannah, you know that's not why you're hiding.

I grit my gums instinctively, which is painful so I immediately have to stop.

I just can't, okay?

Yeah, I know, he answers. I'm used to you by now.

What the strudel does that mean? I scowl, which turns out to also be a terrible idea. Ow, ow, ow. Stupid budding monster teeth. …Wait. Am I getting to the point where I've successfully compartmentalized enough trauma that my response is just 'stupid monster teeth?' Gosh, I mean, that's probably really bad, but it's also incredibly refreshing! Like, finally, geez. Panic attacks are exhausting.

I look up and notice the teacher glaring at me, which I correctly interpret as an order to put away my phone and at least pretend to pay attention. I wonder what my next horrifying mutation will be? I hope nothing happens to my eyes or the upper half of my face, since that'd be a pain to cover up. What wouldn't I mind is another good question. If I'm going to end up being the villain in a horror B-movie I should at least get to be a cool one. Hmm… extra limbs is an obvious answer. It'd be nice to fill the slots I always wake up missing. Ooh, and magic is cool. I like magic, I like having magic, and if I had magic on Earth it might make my life here a little more manageable. …Actually, wait, do I have magic here on Earth? I, uh… haven't tried yet.

It would make sense though, wouldn't it? Going by the theory that my current transformations are due to the aptly-named Transmutation category of magic, because why wouldn't they be, magic exists on Earth and I'm doing it, albeit unwillingly. If I figure out more about magic, maybe I could even control the changes! It's gotta be worth a shot, right? The problem is that I don't actually have any idea how to do magic, since all my powers are passive. The spatial sense is always on, the barren zones are just there, and the ability to move in 4D space likewise just feels normal when I'm in hyperspider mode. I don't have any active… er, no, wait. I do have one. I used a spell to cut that delicious cultist's spine in half, didn't I?

…I mean evil cultist. Not… not the other thing. I shudder. Fuck, okay, not totally compartmentalized there.

A-anyway. Magic. Magic cutting spell. I have one, and I guess it might be a bit of a trauma trigger but it's still magic, it's the only active spell I know I have, and… I just want to see if it works? I guess being in public and surrounded by people is a terrible time to practice supernatural mojo I barely understand, though. I should definitely wait.

I successfully wait five minutes. I'm honestly inclined to consider that pretty good. It's magic, for fritter's sake. My toes have been curling with excitement just thinking about it. How am I going to test a cutting spell, though? I guess I should get like, a piece of paper or something else that has no real consequences for destroying. Easy enough, I have lots of paper. I position a sheet on my lap, drag a fingernail along it, and try to get it to cut. Which, uh, doesn't work. I suppose I should have seen that coming.

I don't exactly like thinking about… the killing I did. I guess I also use the spell to dig but I still associate it with murder, and it hurts to think about. I should just… forget about it. At least for now. It's probably smarter to figure it out over in world tree land anyway. Distractedly, I let class pass me by, doing my best to ignore the increasingly uncomfortable gauze, the urges to drum my claws on something, and all the other constant reminders that after a few weeks of this I probably won't look even remotely human anymore. I'm getting resigned to it, at least. Being human isn't all that great anyway.

When lunch begins, I quickly find Brendan (he is very tall, which makes it very easy) and the two of us approach Ida, who's chattering away with some girl I don't know. I wave her down and she quickly wraps up whatever conversation that was, all but skipping over to us.

"Hannah! Hey!" she greets me cheerfully. "I heard your face exploded!"

"I… I mean, that's not inaccurate," I hedge.

"What?" Ida asks, blinking with confusion. "I can't understand you."

Bah. Stupid gauze mouth. Stupid lack of teeth!

"I'm calling in the second lunch you owe me," I say, enunciating as carefully as I can. "I need a smoothie or a milkshake or a soup or something."

"Ah. Something with your mouth then? I would have guessed your nose."

"If anyone asks, I'd prefer you tell them it was a bloody nose," I grumble at her. "But yeah, it's my mouth."

"Well sure, I'll ferry you out to get something edible for you, I guess. Is tall, dark, and nerdy coming with us?"

"If that's not a problem," Brendan mumbles quietly, not looking Ida in the eyes.

"Sure, no skin off my back," Ida shrugs. "You're paying for your own lunch, though, I only owe Hannah."

Brendan nods, and the three of us exit the school and head for Ida's car.

"Speaking of debts," I mention idly, "I now owe a girl named Autumn, she helped me out today. You know her, Ida?"

"Uhh, vaguely," she hedges, to my immediate surprise. I thought Ida knew everyone, and I tell her as much.

"Hey, I certainly make the social rounds, but Autumn's a bit of a weird one," Ida says defensively. "Girl with the notebook, right? Curly brown hair, freckles, that Autumn? Yeah, she doesn't really talk to anybody. I don't know anyone who hates her or whatever, I don't think she's being bullied. She's just kind of… skittish, I guess?"

Huh. 'Skittish' is not how I would have described Autumn, but the rest of that description seems spot-on.

"Uh… let's see," Ida continues, starting to count things off on her fingers. "I think she's on the swim team, and I think she does martial arts? So she's athletic. I've spotted her hiding in the library with her nose in a book during lunch, too. I dunno, she's nice enough, she could probably fit in with basically any clique, she just… doesn't? So, y'know, fifty-fifty on being an nth-level introvert versus being horribly traumatized. Either way I think you'd probably get along well with her!"

"...Hey," I protest lamely.

"Dunno if she's gay, though, so I can't help you there."

"Hey!" I protest even harder, thanking my mask for hopefully hiding the blush creeping up my cheeks. Ida's snickering makes me less than confident about that, though.

She starts up the car and I cede shotgun to Brendan, who immediately sets the seat back as far as it will go since his absolutely massive legs need all the extra space he can squeeze out. Ida's back seat has all sorts of knick-knacks and items of various usefulness, from the obviously important blankets to the questionably tasteful collection of antennae toppers that I'm just now realizing she probably swaps out every few days. She has a bunch of them, from Mickey Mouse to Rick and Morty to Jason Voorhees, not to mention a collection of various non-copyrighted cute animals. It's all rather adorable, actually.

I want to rip one apart with my claws.

I peel my eyes away from the floppy, cartoony, shreddable things, but it's too late. The need to cut and tear has wormed its way into my brain, my feet tapping with pent-up energy. Gah, why am I like this now!? I cross my legs to try and get them under control, but it doesn't help in the slightest, my eyes constantly flicking back to the pile of novelty antenna toppers. Oh come on, what a stupid friggin' problem to have!

Come on, Hannah, think about something else. Resisting the urge to cut things is a skill you are absolutely going to need to develop, so you'd better start now! Gah, but the only topic that comes to mind as sufficiently distracting is magic, which is also a bad idea! Not the least because it's basically the same idea, since my magic is also just cutting stuff! In a lot of ways, the way I feel about these stupid little rubber figures is comparable to how I felt shortly before opening a man's throat, just… y'know, without the terror, the revulsion, the life-threatening situation, the horrid crashing thunder rumbling through my exoskeleton, and so on. More like… in the sense that my instincts are calling for something. Some part of me, the part that has lived every night of my life digging up through the wood of a world tree, knows this feeling, and how to summon it. Magic is part of me. It has always been part of me, for as long as I can remember. I just never knew it until I finally dug myself free.

I clench and unclench my toes, digging my claws deeper into the grooves they've already carved in my shoes. I know this feeling. All I need to do is reach out a little, and it's mine. Just like in the other world. It's the same, after all. The magic is waiting for me, off in that direction my human self can't quite reach towards yet. But it's still there, if I call for it.

So I do. I can't help myself. I want to feel it, need to feel it, to pull something cool and good out of this nightmare. To my irritation, though, my prior confidence seems to be for naught. The magic is there, itching to fill my toes and imbue them with cutting energy, but the path is… clogged, for lack of a better term. Misdirected? Blocked by something that shouldn't be there? I peel away at the problem in silence, ignoring Ida's singing, Brendan's uncomfortable stares out the window, even the antenna toppers that were, until this moment, the subject of my need to destroy. I need to figure this out. It shouldn't be here, whatever it is. It's my fault and I have to fix it.

When I asked Teboho how magic is cast, he said he couldn't tell me because the process was too personal. He said that my magic will "make itself known to me when I discover it." No one else can teach me my spells, because they're mine, and to cast them proficiently I have to understand what makes them mine. Is my own lack of understanding causing the problem?

Yes. Of course it is. I've been thinking about it wrong. I've considered it a claw augmentation, a cutting spell, but my magic is Space magic, and Space does not cut. To cut something is to apply force to it. Pressure is force over area, and thin, slicing edges work by maximizing the amount of pressure applied with the same quantity of force. That is what allows them to cut, and my spell is not some paltry application of basic physics. I'm a Space mage. I don't cut, I separate. It's not force that gouges holes in my foes, it is simply the creation of space where before, there was none, and the world recognizes the newly-formed break by simple tautology. The two halves are separated, therefore they are separate. That's my magic. It is power. It is pure. It is so batshit broken it may as well be divine.

Again, I call upon it, but I realize now that it needs a name. Deserves a name. Given my proclivities, there's only one name that comes to mind. A pearl of wisdom, you could say. I open my mouth to speak it and my breath is stolen away, inhaled by an amused goddess, invisible and perhaps imagined. For a stolen moment, the world stops, myself included, and I'm left choking motionlessly as some infinite creature decides whether to use my air to speak or simply laugh at me. She caresses my face, tousles my hair, and pinches my cheeks, all without ever being here. How small she must think I am. How cute and helpless. She makes her decision, and when time moves again, so too does my mouth. But I no longer have my breath, so she speaks in my place.

"Spacial Rend," my mouth says on its own, the sound impossibly perfect despite the mask, gauze, and current plane of existence. The world shrieks as I tear deep gouges in the bottom of Ida's car, opening the interior to the roar of the road.

Ida, of course, starts shrieking immediately afterwards.