Kay was expecting it to be chilly outside. And behold: late October, moon in the sky– it was chilly!

Night had fallen upon the fair city of Toronto and the cold breeze stung Kay’s hands. It was times like those that Kay wondered if it was too early to packing around some winter gloves– would it seem wimpy?– but he stuck his hands in his pockets and got marching home.

Maybe I can get some biker gloves and add them to my classic rock look, thought Kay. He drew up some frustration, and pondered how formidable to cold temperatures his water form was.

It was a quiet night, with all the mutterings of the city far off in the distant, echoing over rooftops so that Kay never knew their words. Cars drove by, briefly illuminating Kay in their headlights– a stray soul walking the sidewalks in his lonesome. Light caught his eyes so whenever he passed by the window of a house– inside previewing for passersby– Kay had to look in. Discretely now, he peer at a family watching a movie on TV. It might have been Shrek or something; Kay didn’t know.

Heading back the way he came in, Kay passed by Harris Place, though, and he wasn’t sure if it was shouting he heard coming up to place but once he reached the corner of the building and had a view into the parking lot, he looked into the parking lot to see a few people– maybe young adults or older. They were shouting at each other with Barry, a brash-looking young man, holding something in his hand that Kay could not identify.

But that something in Barry’s hand looked like trouble, anyway.

There was a veranda around the site of the building, an elevated porch over looking the lot. Worried that something was about to go down, Kay crept up the stairs and shifted slowly towards the excitement, hiding behind columns and using the darkness to hide his face. The people in the parking lot didn’t hear him or see him. As he got close– the weapon? Kay saw that the weapon was a knife.

“Oh god,” said Kay, quiet enough to be unheard by the party.

Brit, a woman with shoulder length red hair and wearing a dress, took the front of Richie, a haggard young man with his suit flustered. Richie stared daggers at Barry, and Barry returned a nasty look himself.

“You don’t disrespect me like that!” shouted the brash man, taking a step closer and knife gripped tight.

“Barry, forget about it,” said the woman. “Just go home!”

“You deserve nothing but disrespect,” said Richie. “It’s been that way since you were a kid.”

Barry took a step forward. Brit and Richie retreated backward.

Brit looked over her shoulder at Richie. “Can you shut your mouth, Rich? You’re not helping anything!”

The blade shone in the moonlight. Barry’s pantomime of a stab didn’t come off as a warning when he was holding an actual knife. He was getting into arm’s length of the two others. Tension consumed the parking lot.

Kay’s heart raced, likely as fast as the trio in the midst of the tense situation about to see some bloodshed. Would he have to interfere? He switched forms, taking his liquid shape. A water elemental could take a stab a lot better than human flesh and with Ghost Thing’s tricks, he could disarm Barry effortlessly. Or at least he expected so.

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The liquid lad put his hands on the handrail, ready to pounce over and intervene. At the very least, the shock of seeing a water monster at night could have startled Barry into dropping the weapon.

Brit turned to Barry. “What’s everyone going to say if you hurt someone, Barry?”

Barry chuckled in a twisted sort of way. “That he had it coming!”

Brit glanced at the knife and her voice squealed, “Look at yourself! You are going to stab someone outside of a restaurant!”

Barry went still. He glanced at the knife. Suddenly he felt very insecure, and his face sunk. He backed away a few steps. “It’s... it’s not even a real knife,” he said sheepishly. He took a palm to the end of the blade and the blade receded with a strained squeal. It bounced back into place when Barry took away his hand. He put on a smug smile, saying louder, “It’s not even a real knife!”

“Get out of here!” the woman ordered.

Barry went to a car nearby, a boxy red one. He opened the door and got inside, starting the vehicle. Maybe Barry gave the others a dirty look; Kay couldn’t see into the car very well when its light turned off. Richie and Brit walked away. When Richie tried shouting something at Barry’s car as it left the lot, the woman smacked the haggard man in the stomach, cutting off his jest.

Ghost Thing relaxed. The situation was resolved. It was barely a situation, in the end. A stage knife? Ghost Thing found it insulting but was glad that there was no injuries after all. Without noticing the liquid cryptid spying from the veranda, the couple went back inside the building. Barry’s car echoed off into the distance, and the parking lot went quiet. Ghost Thing was left alone with his simmering nerves.

He looked at himself. That’s how quick it was. One sign of danger and Kay went from human to water lad. A shouting match and Kay transformed. It had been some time since Ghost Thing had brought out his watery form, at least in the public. Were any gang members around to attack Ghost Thing?

Ghost Thing took his hand up into the air and let moonlight strike through his translucent shape. Light glowed on the surface of his hand and danced through the tiny bubbles that floated through his mass, like stars in the sky. In a way, his hand was like a galaxy. A shimmer passed through him and on the other side light danced on the surface on the column, greeting it with ethereal purple light.

And Ghost Thing had to stop and revere in what a marvellous creature he was. It had been some time since he was in that form, and being relaxed he could take a good look at himself and ponder. He wiggled his fingers and cranked his thumb. He let the tips of his finger ride down the column. He could feel the coarseness of the wood underneath the veneer of paint. It was an arm of living water. What sent feeling back to his brain? How did he control such a thing?

It gave him anxiety for a second, worrying about his true nature, but then awe returned to him, and let out a quiet but comfortable chuckle. This was him. He was this living water creature and how beautiful and wonderful it was to be it.

He took a careful look around, then Kay returned to his human form. He walked back out to the sidewalk where he remembered that he had his wallet on him when he transformed. Taking another look around to make sure nobody was watching, he got out his wallet and looked inside. His cards were still there; his money was still there. The transformation didn’t send his items into the void, which was a worry he carried since his powers first awakened? Perhaps his pockets were safe when he transformed, although he wasn’t totally confident that was the case.

Kay went home, reassuring himself he was fine every block of the way. He had flashed his water form out in the open and– what do you know!– a thousand ninjas didn’t spawn in to attack him! Whatever gang was out there, they did not have an Orwellian brand of surveillance across the city. Obvious to most but Kay’s fear had gotten the better of him that last week.

Maybe Kay could still be Ghost Thing after all.

It was late, though, comparatively anyway. That was not the night he would test out how free could still be. His night would end with him in his bedroom, relaxing.

So Kay returned home, and when he popped into his apartment, he declared “Back before nine!” to the living room in which his mom responded with “Oh” and Urban offered, “Well done, Kay”, not entirely sure what the context was. Kay, discouraged that no one was impressed with how quickly he went out to see a movie, went to his room quietly to spend the rest of the night posting on forums on the internet.