I dreamed of a star shining in the woods. Its light was dull, barely parsing through a layer of trees before fragmenting into smaller and smaller rays. The darkness around it was alive and slowly consuming everything in its path, unfurling tendrils of shadow and fighting for dominance in this sacred space. I dreamed I stood where the star once did, emitting a low brilliance that was losing this battle. I dreamed my glow was dying.

I woke up sweating. I wanted to pretend I was comfortable – that I enjoyed the soft bed and plush blankets piled on top of me, but the way my hair stuck to my forehead and neck only reminded me of my frequent fevers. Escaping from this cocoon of heat seemed nearly impossible for my tired limbs, so I settled for opening my eyes slowly.

This wasn't my bedroom. This wasn't even my house. It wasn't my doctor's office, or my tree-house. This was Max's house and it was clean and warm and the smell of food wafted around the open door. It was also unbearably hot, so I gathered my strength and kicked the pile of blankets off the bed. I sat slowly, pushing the dense blankets back and swinging my feet to the floor.

It had been two weeks since everyone found out my secret. Well, not everyone, but a handful of important people that I'd desperately been trying to avoid. Just two weeks since the baby dragon, two weeks since the number of people who knew my secret had more than tripled.

Things had changed drastically in those two weeks, in ways I never could've predicted and could still barely comprehend.

Sam had apologized. Alex and Eden would wave at me and sometimes include me in conversations. Otherwise they were generally the same. They weren't nearly as mean, but they weren't going out of their way to be extra friendly, either. Mostly they ignored me, which was still a huge step up from harassing me.

Freya's dating Max now, though. I wanted to be disappointed at this development, but she makes him smile, and it's not like she treats him like she treats me. Or like she used to treat me. Lately it's been all sunshine and roses from her, and I'm not the type to hold a grudge even when I probably should.

In fact, I think Freya adopted me. I was caught somewhere between her new gay best friend and her distant son in law. It wasn't too bad, but if we were left alone for long enough she'd try fixing my hair or asking me which boys I thought were cute. I never told her my thoughts on Roman, but she's smart. It's only a matter of time before she figures it out, and who knows what she'll think of me then.

Roman talks to me often. He greets me in the hall, joins Max in talking to me under the brown (but healing) pine tree when they're supposed to be doing laps or practicing. He's even started spending a lot of time at Max's house and part of me likes to pretend he's there to see me.

Max has become absolutely impossible to avoid. I guess Tethyria let slip that my health had never been on the good side of the spectrum, and now he frets like mum does. He walks with me to school, checks in on me between classes, tries to convince me to spend as much time at his house as possible. When I glare, or even build up the nerve to complain, he reminds me that he's been an older brother for eleven whole years now, and thus is completely impervious to little siblings making a fuss.

I've never had an older brother before. It's not terrible.

I know you're probably pretty excited for me. I've got friends. They know about my magic, and they're not running away screaming. If anything, they were more interested in sticking around than ever before and now my life must truly be like that golden utopia we discussed so long ago.

Except I have no patience for people in general; no tolerance for people constantly trying to interact with me. My life is now this nonstop parade of conversations and hang outs and sleep-overs and that urge to scream never diminished. If anything, it got significantly stronger.

I'm perpetually exhausted now. I still don't speak but no one seems put off by that, so they just continue talking to me, even without answers. I haven't figured out how they have the energy to talk so much, or even smile so much. My cheeks hurt just thinking about it. My new plan is to use magic to go back in time and murder the inventor of small talk.

So why am I at Max's house, you're probably asking? That whole thing started that day on the mountain.

I wasn't awake for their conversation, but apparently there was a lot of hemming and hawing over what to do with me. Max told me what he could when I finally woke up. Sam was more than content to leave me there with the dragons and cats, assuming the dragons would probably eat me, since Tethyria was so keen on eating humans earlier. He didn't believe her when she'd said it was a joke.

Alex and Eden didn't care one way or the other, mostly because their attention was entirely on the horde of cats that were more than happy to play with them.

Freya suggested bringing me home, but Max shut that idea down quick. When he told me this, his face went a bit pale and he refused to look me in the eye, instead scanning his own room like he'd never been in there before. I found I couldn't look at him either, but no more was said about that. Finally Max decided to just bring me to his own house, knowing his parents wouldn't be too put out by a guest.

I have no idea what he said to his parents to make them not question their son bringing an unconscious teenager into their house. I didn't ask as I'd been too embarrassed to know I was carried all that way, brought up to his room, and put into pajamas. I thought I couldn't get any more red, but Max managed to prove me wrong by telling me Roman carried me most of the way, and fretted constantly when someone else carried me.

I considered never going to school again. Max's mum would never have let me skip, though. She's fantastic. I think she and mum really would've gotten on.

After that Max made it a point to invite me to sleep over almost constantly. I refused at first, not wanting to disrupt his home life with my own drama and unstable magic, but I knew it would be impossible to deny him forever. I just didn't realize that it would happen so soon.

Thursday was bad. When I got to school I had a split lip and a big bruise spreading on my side. Luckily Max had soccer practice in the morning, so I walked to school alone. My plan was to skip second period English, eat my lunch in an unused classroom instead of under the drooping pine, avoid my locker and the hallways as much as I could. I didn't want the attention my injuries would surely bring and hoped that keeping my head down would restore my previous invisibility.

I should've known that plan was never going to work.

Freya cornered me right as I was about to slip into the cafeteria to get lunch. She dragged me through the halls and pulled me into a bathroom; a girl's bathroom, but she didn't seem to care as she passed a paper towel under the faucet and brought it up to gently pad at my split lip. She did this all with one hand, the other typing furiously on her phone. I had always been awed by her ability to multi-task, but what made this truly impressive is that she hardly needed to look at her phone while writing out her mysterious message.

Minutes later both Roman and Max had joined us in the bathroom room and I had to wonder if I'd read the sign on the door wrong.

“Dude, what happened to your face?” Max asked, turning me by my cheek to inspect me closer.

I didn't respond, instead glancing at the door in hopes that someone would burst in and tell us we couldn't be in here. It didn't look like luck was on my side, which shouldn't have been such a surprise.

“Alright, you don't have to tell me. But you're crashing at mine tonight.” His tone suggested I didn't have a choice, “And don't think you can escape and run off like you usually do.”

I continued to marvel at his blatant and uncanny telepathy.

Roman was inspecting my lip now, too, leaning in a little too close. I tried not to focus on his eyes casting slowly over my lips. He frowned deeply, but didn't say anything.

“I can drive if we can make a stop at the kitty commune.” Freya said, tucking her phone back in her pocket. “I have more questions for Tethyria but I wasn't sure how to get there.”

I wasn't surprised. She'd asked after the two dragons every day this week. To spare me more strange looks she'd adopted my habit of calling it the kitty commune, or the den. If there were people nearby she'd ask after my 'cats', and everyone else seemed to think she was just very invested in the relationship between my bitter old cat and my new kitten. It wasn't that far from the truth.

I could only shrug helplessly as plans were formed around me. This time they included me, which was a new trend I couldn't figure out how to feel about, especially since I didn't know how these new participants in my life would feel if I said no.

So things changed. Max has me over whenever things seem bad at home, ignoring any pouting looks or outright refusals I have. I've visited the kitty commune more times in the last two weeks than I had in three years. I almost never see mum as I was out of the house so often that it was nearly impossible to bump into her.

I think she'd be pleased, though.

The hardest part of all of this is the sheer exhaustion. Sleep has never been an easy thing for me. It takes so long to fall asleep, and I wake up so many times that I doubt my rest is actually restful. I've been getting so tired from socializing and being near people that when I finally make it to a bed I assume that sleep will come easy, and am still surprised every night that it doesn't. If I do manage to drift off, I'm haunted by the type of nightmares that linger in my mind for hours after I've woken up.

Last night was the first night I'd actually fallen asleep at Max's since the dragon accident. I'm fairly certain it was because I was so sleep-deprived I could have fallen asleep on a bed of nails surrounded by angry porcupine, but I still didn't feel totally recharged.

Downstairs was relatively quiet in the Myers' household, especially for a Saturday. I could hear a low murmur, possibly the TV or a quiet conversation, but there was no raucous laughter, or Max's siblings running through the halls and screaming.

I liked Max's siblings fine. There were four of them and they were loud but they were children and that's what children tend to be. The middle child, Memphis, was eleven and mostly kept to himself. Then there were the triplets; Cece, Haiden, and Sage. They were a handful, but they were also incredibly polite around me, despite being only nine years old.

Finally, I gathered the strength I'd need for the day and very quietly crept from Max's bedroom, down the soft carpeted stairs, and towards the kitchen.

Max's parents and siblings were gone, but Roman and Freya had claimed seats at the island in the kitchen, while Max cooked up some bacon and eggs. I must've been too quiet, as none of them had noticed me hovering nearby. They continued their conversation in hushed tones and I struggled to listen.

“You really should tell him,” Freya said, writing something in a notebook, “I bet it wasn't on purpose.”

“How, exactly?” Max asked, “I mean, what am I supposed to say? Hey, you know how you slept over last night? Well, I didn't. Sleep, that is.”

I was mortified. Did I make too much noise? Did I move around too much? Maybe Max didn't actually trust me and was hoping that one of these days I'd turn his frequent invitations down for good.

“Yeah, as it turns out, you're basically a floating night-light sometimes!” Max continued, still unaware of my presence. That wasn't what I'd been expecting.

“He was that bright?” Roman asked.

“Yeah. Nearly blinding, really.” Max said sheepishly, “I'd have thought it was cool if it wasn't three in the morning.”

“How'd you get him to stop?” Freya asked.

“I didn't.” He admitted, “I just threw a bunch of blankets over him to weigh him down and he eventually turned back to normal.”

“Tethyria says his,” Freya looked around, then whispered the 'M' word, “Is based on emotions and is pretty sensitive. We should talk to him about this, see what's wrong.”

Max turned around, plates of bacon and eggs in his hands, and caught me watching them. “Fuck, you're quiet.”

The others turned too, each looking a little embarrassed.

“Hey,” Roman said, “Sorry, we didn't want to wake you. You looked exhausted.”

“Also sorry,” Max said, retrieving more plates, “that we were sorta talking about you. It was for a really good reason, I swear. It's just that you were glowing and floating last night and I got concerned but you didn't seem to be in any pain, so I sorta just ignored it, but when I woke up I thought 'well, that was dumb of me,' but you were still sleeping and mum took out the triplets and dad's still away on business, and Memphis went to a friend's house, and I didn't know what to do so I called Freya and she called Roman, and --”

I cut him off by mimicking a deep, exaggerated breath. He copied me with an actual one, then a couple more for good measure.

“Right,” He said finally, “Ranting.”

“Do you know why you might've been glowing?” Roman asked, and all I could do was shrug. I'd definitely floated before, and my hair used to change color pretty often, but I'd gotten the whole gravity thing under control years ago, and the glowing thing was definitely new.

Maybe mum would know. I'd have to talk to her next time I saw her. Who knew when that would be, though, as we were never around at the same time anymore.

I took a seat at the island next to Roman and watched as a plate was filled up with food before being placed in front of me. Max's family was nice. Too nice, really, and every time I came over here I ate so much I thought I'd explode and still got offered more. All of their meals were so intense and I didn't think I'd ever get used to it.

I tried, though, and ate what I could before pushing my plate away from me. Max's mum always looked concerned, but she learned pretty quickly that I wasn't going to eat anymore after I'd pushed it away.

“Do you think Tethyria might know something about it?” Freya asked, finishing off her own plate and fixing me with a look that only narrowly missed motherly concern. I shrugged again. Tethyria had always been cryptic about all things magic. There was a good chance she wasn't going to tell us anything we could actually figure out, or didn't already know.

“I'd say it's worth a shot.” Roman said.

Not long after that, we bundled up in warm clothes and headed towards the kitty commune. Freya led us, having confidently memorized the route after only one more visit, so I was able to tune out the conversation and focus on my dream. I didn't know what any of it meant, but Max had said I'd been glowing and floating, just like the star. It would be foolish to think those two things were unrelated.