Even though I get a better vibe from Soren than I did with Asa's other brother, Rowan, I still refuse to shake his hand. He might have been magnificent as hell with that lion's mane blowing gently in the wind, but I knew that guys like him harbored carefully concealed sharp teeth behind those pouty lips.

Soren drops his hand after like five seconds of awkwardly hovering it there in front of my face. Then he approaches, silently, like a wraith, circling me.

Silence stretches between us.

I hear his footsteps, I catch a whiff of patchouli and earth, then he's suddenly there, hands slamming down on the arms of my wheelchair. "You know how this is," He whispers, and he stares right into my eyes, "If I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window. If I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me."

"Are you fucking crazy?" I question, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Soren drops his head and laughs, "It's a poem by Pablo Neruda."

"Do you usually recite obscure bits of poetry to your victims before you butcher them?" I ask him, and I'm relieved when he lets go of my wheelchair, "Because that's kind of bizarre, dude."

"You're Micha, right?" Soren sidesteps my question, a small smile appearing on his lips, "the boy who my gullible baby brother decided to reveal our secret to, huh?"

"Look," I reply as calmly as I can, and I level him with a stare that could melt ice, "If this is you trying to intimidate me into keeping quiet, save your breath. I'm going back home, you don't have to worry about me telling the world that you guys grow feathers and scarf down rats in your spare time."

Soren cocks a dark eyebrow in question.

"Seriously. Just help me out of the mud and I swear I'll be out of your hair in five minutes," I assure him, and I use both fingers to point to my mud clogged wheels.

"I highly doubt that," Soren replies breezily, but he walks over and jerks my chair out of the mud after some struggling, "We don't usually have strange boys randomly wheeling themselves down the hill in the middle of the night to talk to owls in trees. What prompted this change in heart?"

"I had an argument with my dad," I mutter as we bump along, "He just pisses me the fuck off."

"Parents are supposed to piss their kids off. It's like a biological function," Soren answers, "If they were nice all the time, we would never want to leave the nest." He wheels me down the hill instead of up the hill where my house was, but I just accept it because I figured if he wanted to kidnap me and slit my throat, I didn't really have a chance at escaping anyway. 

"Oh, yeah?" I hold onto my chair to keep from sliding off when the hill begins to slant, "Try living with him for a few days. I swear you'll be pulling out every one of those pretty feathers by the end of it all."

"You'll survive," Soren replies, and I see a familiar, crooked looking house come into view. Tilting like a stack of soggy pancakes with a yard full of assorted toys scattered about, the Moon house looked as warm and inviting as ever. Every window was lit from within, warm light escaping through the curtains along with the sound of someone badly playing a trombone in the distance.

I feel suddenly, a sense of loneliness at the sight of it, and I wondered if I would ever be able to come home to something like that. A house full of people, an oven baking bread of brownies at two in the morning and music playing on an old record player. Maybe the Moons didn't have designer doors and fancy countertops, but at least they had each other.

"Your life is your life," Soren whispers, "don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
Be on the watch, there are ways out. There is a light somewhere. It may not be much light but
it beats the darkness."

A door opens.

"Tim Burton?" I ask Soren, my voice as still as the figure in the doorway, his fluffy blonde hair lit by the light of the kitchen behind him.

"Bukowski," Soren smiles, and then he wheels me towards the house to meet Asa and his family.