It was dark, the moon was not bright, and Shilloh had not even made it halfway home before doubling back to check the forest without the two liars there to gaslight her.

  She needed to find out what was going on. But tripping in the dark, looking at the stars, and wondering if she was far enough away from people to use her abilities, something became crystal clear in her mind. She—wise, ferocious, queen of the woods that she was—could be pretty fucking dumb.

  "As with all true quests," she muttered towards the owl and magical cat following her, "the self-knowledge we picked up along the way ended up being the real treasure."

  Fraulein said nothing.

  "I learned that I'm a dumb ass with anger issues."

  Fraulein continued to say nothing.

  "Ha! True," Shilloh panted as he high stepped up a hill with a high incline. "You also learned that I was a dumb ass? What a crazy, wild coincidence. Maybe we're twins, and that's why we have telepathy that lets us finish each other's…"

  Rather than spontaneously developing speech, the bobcat looked at her, seeming vaguely offended at the idea that they might be twins.

  "…sentences," Shilloh sighed. "Sheesh. Also, it was a joke. I don't think we're twins. And if we were, it would be fraternal. You don't look like me."

  The cat considered this and then judiciously began walking again. Shilloh cursed under her breath about how looking like her shouldn't be an insult.

  Now, if she had said that she and Fraulein shared a brain, then that would have been an insult.

  This bullshit midnight quest had taught her a lot. It had taught her that even among the stupid, she was still pretty damn dumb. Hell, she was not merely a rare kind of dumb, she might be elite among the idiotic.

  This was one of the few situations where it was not nice to be the elite or rare among the rare. In fact, it was times like this she wished her claim to fame was anything other than how goddam stubborn she could be when she got pissed.

  The fact that she kept walking, half-blind, through monster-infested woods at night was proof that her wish would not be coming to fruition.

  They broke into a clearing. The big cat stayed close to her in a way that felt both sweet and condescending, and Shilloh scowled.

  Screw that. They were far enough away from town now.

  She undammed the power inside herself while unlacing her boots. It was less badass and defiant than the moment had been in her head. She needed to pause and flip off Papa when he hooted in a very mocking manner about the awkward way she had to hop to get both shoes off.

  "Fuck you, man! I'm already having a rough week! All I wanted was to covertly buy land and build a secret lair for when the rest of the apocalypse arrives. Is that so much to ask?"

  She kept mumbling and used her shoelaces to lash the boots onto her bag. Then, once she finally had her bare feet on the ground, she let the glittering mercury of her power flow down into the earth.

  Warm prismatic roots spread out from her. Not in a surge of power, nor in a creeping invasion; just a languid, rhythmic spreading. Like the magic was caught in the tides and borrowing the already existing flow of natural power to hitch a ride.

  Shilloh didn't rush. She closed her eyes and unbarred the gates of her soul. It was nice. Relaxing. Like letting herself be whole again.

  Flavors and impressions came to her, borne along the intangible flow of meaning and magic. The Croatan had a sensation that was impossible to describe to humans. Sure, you could compare its similarities and differences to other forests or mountains, saying it was deeper than a park, or more pulsing than a granite cliff face. But the basic experience was beyond words.

  She soaked it all up, greeting the world like an old friend. They spoke, and she learned about aches and successes. Little flags raised themselves to her, showing places where she might observe wonders or offer help to aid the various biomes' balance and growth.

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  Very few of the requests—so it speak—were major. An invasive weed here, a plastic ring there, and a few animals whose diseases were incurable and deserved to sleep.

  It was too much to consciously process, so she just rode the wave of emergent knowledge: understanding without knowing. It made her body tingle, her brain heat, and the invisible firmament of power inside herself pulsed with joy. Still, more than anything, the deeper, foreign part of herself drank it all in. That part fed her instincts and left her falling through the forest more than walking as she continued her journey.

  Each step hit perfectly. Intuition guided her, so she swayed past cobwebs, and her feet never stumbled on a branch. They only ever hit, perfectly angled, with perfect pressure and perfect knowledge of the next place she would stutter, step, spin, or stride.

  She moved at a deceptive speed. For any single stretch, a regular human could keep up with her. But over any amount of distance, she would breeze ahead like a retreating ghost. Even without drawing on extra strength or agility, she still loped through the brush faster than some engine-powered vehicles. That was the manifestation of perfect knowledge and intuition.

  Admittedly, she did stumble, but weirdly perfect stumbles always had her fall forward and avoid a branch to the face. She also occasionally veered off track but would see something beautiful that made the digression worth her time. For instance, a faintly blue blossom that drank in moonlight and exhaled song, or a beautiful rock: which was magic in a way that some people forgot about.

  Confidence swelled, though she was still being pretty dumb. Lots of ill could hit her while alone in the deep forests, and there were threads of magic that, even here, did not welcome her kind.

  But, also, screw it. It was fun and wonderful to be moving freely without any plan or deadline or some artificial number defining her success.

  The clearing where they had fought the limb stealer came into view before very long, and that was a small tragedy: the travel had been fun, and she could have run for days like that.

  That temptation to just keep going was a cue to draw back a bit. She needed to become slightly more Shilloh and slightly less forest. Unfortunately, the Shilloh she had to ground herself in was sweaty as a mother and started feeling cold the second she stopped running.

  With a shiver, the small cartographer wiped sweat off her brow and tried to ground herself. It helped knowing that this wasn't the end of that feeling, just a break. There would be a run back. Until then, it was time to focus.

  The site of the banes' earlier battle didn't tell her anything relevant. Sure, the land was chatty as all get out about the secret world of mycelium networks and the rivalries of insects. It whispered directly into her subconscious about all the grand insectile wars being waged and rhapsodized about how—if she looked correctly—there was more life in a speck of dirt than in some countries.

  Needless to say, it was fascinating but not useful. Sure, each bird was a kaiju if you adjusted the scale. Problem was that Shilloh, despite furrowing her brow and staring really really really hard, was still not a forensic investigator. She had no special power to glean new secrets from an old fight.

  "Well, damn," she muttered, poking at the limb stealer's ferny body with a stick. "I really thought there would be something here."

  On cue, her senses picked up on a presence moving towards her. She calmly stood from the abandoned body and turned to face the approaching thing that she knew was not safe, but also not going to hurt her.

  The creature making its way through the brush was a giant glowing spirit of starlight that looked like the stylized and simplified sketch of an owl. In those lines were threads of familiar sun-yellow, filaments harvested from far-distant silver sources so pure they gleamed white. In its bearing, she could taste the red dust of foreign solar bodies and the blue of supernovas. But, overall, it was night, so most of the light was bouncing off the moon. That meant it presented as a giant elegant cartoon sketch of an owl drawn in (mostly) moonlight.

  "Small one, I see your distress. There is always something new to learn if you just know whom to ask," the creature said in a sonorous tone.

  That voice tickled her mind and carried the impression of a being that was elegant, refined, and wise. Though, strangely, she forgot everything else about how it sounded the second the beak closed. She just knew it seemed wise and elegant.

  Before she could respond to the creature, Papa rocketed down from the sky and landed on a log between them. He proceeded to puff up, hop side-to-side and make unimpressed, cantankerous, owl noises.

  "Yeah, dude," Shilloh said, putting her hands on her hips, unimpressed by the grand entrance and subtle scent of magical compulsion trying to make her think of the creature as something wise and beyond her. She pointed at the old cranky barn owl still cawing offensively, "what he said."

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