mynameiscassie: (serious)
Dated Apr 27, 2017

Things got weird. First there was that whole thing with the hatching demon creatures. Cliff was right, I realized. This city never did anything small or safe. Getting Rachel moved into my apartment was easy, and I was glad to have her here.

Especially now.

Miles was gone. I knew he was gone, because I'd been looking for him, almost frantically, using any morph I could think of that would help me find him: I tracked his scent in dog and wolf morphs. I scouted his bedroom window in osprey and owl morphs. I used my seagull morph to blend into the cityscape to try to find him going to or from Darrow High, or his job, or even some crime scenes.

I even went to the vampires that had kidnapped me and tried to see if they'd somehow gotten him, this time.

He was nowhere. He was gone.

Now I knew how he felt, because I'd disappeared on him before. This was awful. I felt like a part of me had been cut out and hidden somewhere that I couldn't find it. Was that dramatic? In my better moments, it felt dramatic. In my worst, alone in my bed at night, curled up and trying not to cry, it didn't feel dramatic enough.

It was always hard to tell when someone really went missing from this city, I realized as I poured Rachel and me bowls of Auspicious Trinkets — auspiciously delicious! — for breakfast. Jessica had given me Snowflake (given her back, technically), and she and Pangur were watching me from the corner of the counter. I was glad they got along so well, at least. I wondered how long Snowflake had noticed Miles was gone. But it had been three days since he missed our date, and I'd skipped school to try to find him, the way that he'd tried to find me when the vampires took me. So I knew he'd been gone at least three days. But what if it had been longer? How could I be sure? We didn't text every single day.

Was I a bad girlfriend?

I gasped when something cold splashed against my hand, and realized I'd just over-filled one of the cereal bowls and gotten milk everywhere.

Something inside my swelled and bubbled up my throat. At first, for a single heartbeat, I thought I was going to be sick.

Then I screamed "Fuck!" and slammed the milk on the counter, splashing more. Pangur and Snowflake scrabbled off the counter and under the coffee table in the living room, and I backed away from my mess like I could back away from my feelings. I didn't stop until my back hit the fridge, and then I sagged down, curling up on the floor.
mynameiscassie: (morph - wolf (fighting))
March 13, 2017

We waited, and we planned, and we found a good entrance. There were some people in cages waiting to either be infested or for their Yeerk to return from its Kandrona bath. Rachel and Daine were with me, and it felt good, it felt normal — and that was awful, wasn't it? That sneaking into the Yeerk Pool was reassuring, and familiar. But it didn't matter, because it was happening. Rachel was here, and the Yeerks were here, and this was what we were meant to do: fight them off, fight them back. Try to help anyone we could.

The Hork-bajir I'd first seen arrive were slouched in their cages, almost all hope gone from them. I'd seen this before. It still twisted my stomach. And the new people, the ones from Darrow, still railed against the bars, screaming to be let go. The echoes were haunting.

<Okay. If we split up, try to hit them from different angles, we might be able to distract them,> I said. I didn't feel right being the one to give orders. That was Jake's role, and it didn't suit me at all.