Malyn and Tyla had been riding together for a few months now, so Tyla probably could have managed his own motorcycle helmet at this point, but Malyn still did it for him every time. He loved the routine of it, the excuse to be close. His fingers brushed against the copper-bright strands of Tyla’s hair as he gathered them out of the way before sliding the hard shell over his head. He helped him zip up the leather riding jacket, too, which he definitely could have done on his own, but whatever. Tyla had never complained, and Malyn wasn't about to give up the excuse to get in his space.

Tyla had insisted he didn’t need the jacket at first, arguing that he threw shielding spells up practically on reflex whenever anything startled him too bad. Which was true—Malyn had almost suffocated himself laughing one time when Finch had tried tossing Tyla a set of keys and they’d bounced off a shimmering barrier with a pathetic tink. Malyn had still insisted on the jacket, though, just in case. Besides, he’d already bought the damn thing, and it was too small for anyone else who might be riding with him.

Long, solitary rides used to be Malyn’s favourite thing, but he’d discovered that rides with Tyla were even better. The hum of the engine vibrating through the seat and into his bones, the sensation of the wind whipping past him, kept the jittery edges of him that needed constant stimulation satisfied so that his mind could wander without boredom. And the whole time, Tyla had his arms wrapped around him like an extended hug.

Maybe that was a weird way to think about it. They’d never actually hugged. Malyn would have liked to, but he’d tried flirting with Tyla before, and every single time Tyla had just stonewalled him with a placid sort of confusion. He didn’t feel too bad about enjoying the ride, but that was as far as he’d take things.

It was late afternoon by the time they made it to the area Adin had sent to Malyn’s GPS, though the dense trees that crowded the forest and blocked out the light made it feel later. The air was starting to get that damp, evening chill. The first few of these dogs they’d dealt with had been in the city, and if Malyn had to guess, he’d say this loamy, shadowed woodland was closer to their natural habitat.

But in a way, it was his, too. Malyn collected his bow from the saddlebags on his motorcycle, checking the tension on the string, and they headed off into the forest.

“How are we going to find this thing?” Tyla asked as they walked.

“I’m hoping it’ll find us, honestly. They’re aggressive enough. I could try to track it, but…” Malyn made a face. “It’s a lot of forest to comb through, and they’re fast-moving creatures. Tracking something doesn’t get you very far if you’re following slower than it’s moving.”

“That makes sense.”

“Ah-hah! Perfect!” Malyn pointed to a small wooden platform wedged high up in a tree, the timber weathered and grey. “Deer stand. We can sit up there so that it can’t sneak up on us. Good vantage to shoot from, too.”

“Oh, interesting,” Tyla said. “You used to hunt, didn’t you? Is that how you know what that is?”

Malyn let out a bark of laughter as he began to climb the rickety ladder nailed into the trunk. “Nah. I hunted growing up, before I came to this world. We didn’t have these.”

“How old were you? When you came—” Tyla stopped himself and shook his head. “Sorry. The rules. I shouldn’t ask.”

Malyn offered Tyla a hand up as he neared the top of the ladder, easily taking the slender weight of him and helping him onto the platform. The space was a tight fit; their thighs pressed together as they sat side by side on the rough, splintery planks.

“Twelve,” Malyn said. “And don’t worry, it’s fine. The rule about not asking about things that happened before we came here is really just for Finch and Adin. I’m an open book.”

“If you’re sure? After my blunder with Finch…”

Malyn matched Tyla’s wince with one of his own. “Yeah, that was awkward. Though personally I think ripping the bandaid off is the way to go.”

Tyla mouthed bandaid, the word clearly not translating, but he nodded. “Will you tell me about it? What coming here was like for you?”

“It was ten years ago now.” Malyn paused for a moment, pondering where to start. “I think how sudden it was will always mess with me a little. I was just walking along one day and the ground dropped out from under me and I was falling. When I landed, I was in a whole different world. It’s just… the nothingness of it. Sure, the day I had afterwards was plenty dramatic, but the actual event was over in seconds. It just happened. Sometimes I wonder if actually seeing my parents die or something would’ve been easier to process, because that’s something, but probably not. I mean, as far as I know they’re fine, and I’m glad they are. It’s just… rough.”

Tyla’s shoulder brushed Malyn’s as he shifted, a warm point of contact in the cooling air. “Do you miss them?”

Malyn let out a long sigh. “I don’t know? That feels bad to say, like my answer should be an easy yes, but I’m nothing like who they were. I wouldn’t like them and they sure wouldn’t like me. I think it’s easy to miss people who’ve been taken away from you like that, but if there was none of this weird world hopping shit and they’d just always been a part of this world with their backwards values, would I even visit them? I feel like I’d only do it because I felt like I should, and they’d tell me to get married and have some kids or whatever, and I’d go longer and longer between visits over the years. I’m not even saying that I hated them when I was a kid, but I like who I am now and they wouldn’t, so… I don’t know.”

“Maybe they would learn to like you the way you are?”

Malyn let out an incredulous huff. “It’s a nice thought, but we were basically mediaeval peasants. Maybe I, a twelve-year-old who had already had some less than traditional ideas about the life I wanted to live, had been open to changing. My parents… not so much.”

“Traditional? In what way? I don’t know what a, uh… mediaeval peasant is.” The words ‘mediaeval peasant’ came out slightly mispronounced and more heavily accented than Malyn was used to from Tyla. It was easy to forget that he was using magic to communicate. He didn’t actually know the language. If his own language didn’t have a word for something, the spell couldn’t translate it.

“Just… set in their ways. Judgemental of anything different. They’d be suspicious of your copper hair. Unnatural, they’d say. Your eyes? Too green. You’re too short for a man, too slender, too softly spoken. I’m sure they’d have feelings about the magic, too.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t feel that way. But they would have. So… I don’t know. It’s hard to have happy memories of them when I know they’d only have had bad things to say about me and pretty much all of my friends.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Ah, it’s fine,” Malyn said. “You only came here a couple of years ago. What was that like? If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

“Oh, I don’t mind talking about it. An entire city came with me, so… a little different from your experience, I imagine.”

“I’d think so, yeah.”

Tyla ran his fingers over the rough wood along the edge of the platform, scuffing up tiny splinters. “I thought it was an earthquake, though that’s not something that was typical of the area. I was in… I suppose you would call it an apartment? They’re towers of single room housing.”

“Small apartments, but yeah, I’d call those apartments.”

“Well, the tower collapsed.”

“Oh. You were okay?”

“You know me and my reflexive shielding.” Tyla tugged a small shard of wood free and flicked it onto the forest floor beneath them. “I was trapped under the rubble afterwards, but I wasn’t hurt. I just kept thinking that once I got out, so long as nobody else had been hurt, everything would be fine. We don’t pay rent or own land, we just get housing, and it’s all fairly similar, so losing it wasn’t catastrophic. We’re not materialistic by nature, so I didn’t have anything I was too upset about losing. I was just… waiting for it to all be over. Little did I know that it had barely begun.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was like that for you. Coming here on my own was disorientating, but it didn’t hurt me.”

“Well, as I said, I wasn’t actually hurt. But I did have quite a bad day. What was it like for you afterwards? Your first day here?”

“It was… weird,” Malyn said. “What you see and hear… you don’t really think about it, but your senses can trick you. The way you interpret things depends on your own understanding. I remember huge, roaring monsters with glowing eyes. I know they were just cars now, but it’s not cars that are in my memory of that day because that wasn’t how I saw them then. I just remember the noise, the growling, the blinding lights.”

“That’s interesting. I always understood that cars were machines, but you’re right. There are many things that I saw differently when I first encountered them from how I do now. What did you do?”

Malyn found himself smiling as he thought back. It had possibly been the worst day of his life, but at the same time, it wasn’t a painful memory. Not now that he understood what had really been happening and where that sudden deviation in his path through life would take him. “I might have shot a few arrows at cars before I realised that wasn’t going to work. Mostly I ran and tried to hide. I thought maybe I’d fallen into a kind of spirit world, but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to hurt anyone when they might just be people.”

“I believe legally you would have been in the clear under the New Arrivals laws, but yes, always best not to hurt innocent people. How did you figure out that wasn’t the case?”

“Well, figuring out anything was a process,” Malyn said. “But Finch found me that night. He was just a fifteen year old kid with a breach tracker in hand at the time. I didn’t know what he was saying, but he sounded kind, so I trusted him because I had to trust someone.”

“I’m glad you had him. That you weren’t alone, or at least not for long.”

“Yeah, he’s been a good friend. I think he feels a little bad that we used to go out chasing breaches together because it was dumb as fuck, honestly, and he was older and he’s less killable than I am, so I guess he feels responsible for that. But hey, things worked out. We didn’t die. My foster parents never had time for me, so having someone who did… that mattered.”

“I haven’t known him for as long, but he’s been a good friend to me as well. You all have. Thank you for that.”

“Hey, we’re happy to have you. Why did you decide to join us, anyway? Most Talan don’t leave Nuuvatu.”

“Up until age twenty, we have a sort of… general education. I suppose it would be similar to your own education system through to the end of high school. After that, we typically spend the next five to ten years just… figuring things out. Travelling, dabbling in different professions. We live a bit longer than humans, so we’re not expected to be fully adult until at least thirty.”

“Wait, you’re… not considered an adult in your culture?”

Tyla sent Malyn a quick glance, a soft, charming smile overtaking his face. “I don’t mean in that sense. We’re just… not expected to have proper jobs yet. Most other Talan around my age wrote off travel after we came here, stayed in Nuuvatu, but this is the world we’re a part of now and I wanted to learn more about it. When I heard about the opportunity on your team, it seemed like the perfect way to get out into the world and experience new things.”

“I’m glad you applied.”

“Me too.”