Cassy kept looking over her shoulder, apanied by spikes of feeling anxious. I looked without turning my head, and perceived that Greg was following us from two blocks away. But otherwise I didn’t mention it nor alter my behavior.

  I approved of the arra.

  I pnned on disci the entrao my woods, if I even o do that. But the versation would be good for her.

  “Some writers and stists have specuted that if humanity were ever to enter beings that were as plex to them as humans are to an i, that there’d be no way for the two to unicate,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s part of the problem we’re having,” Cassy said.

  “Of course,” I aowledged. Then I eborated, “And even if it seemed like you were unig, you’d never know if the other being was actually uanding what you were saying. You might be using the same words, in the same patterns and sequences, but they might mean very different things. And, even now, many humans have this problem with parrots.”

  “Right. And, like, parrots have small vocaburies.”

  “Around 200 words,” I firmed. “For some of them.”

  She gnced back again, “But, you say you feel the emotions you eat. Are you saying that helps?”

  I slowed my pace down a bit, to make sure lenty of time to discuss this, and s wouldn’t have to work too hard to keep up, and said, “Also, remember. I’m g to be seven-hundred or so million years old. I’ve been socializing with humans since you all started talking. Because you feed me. It’s worth my while.”

  “Oh.”

  “The experiments that you’ve been perf oures like parrots, corvids, and chimpanzees, I’ve been honing with humanity for the twenty-two million years you’ve been evolving on this p,” I expined. “Though, of course, it’s more like you spending a thirtieth of your life learning how to talk to mayflies. Is that a year? A bit less?”

  “See? There,” she poi me.

  “It doesn’t scale like that,” I interrupted her.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sure there are m- emanants who prefer to talk to groups of humans, such as religions, corporations, govers, or fandoms oer,” I specuted. “We are not all the same, and we don’t do teamwork like you do. Not remotely. I befriend mayflies because that’s how I feed. I tickle your brains, which then produce the sustenance I need in excess of what you use for yourselves. And I’ve been learning to do that kind of thing with lifeforms since before the first neuron formed.”

  That was too much for her. After a few words in, she radiated bewilderment and fusion. But her cellphone was rec what we were saying and broadcasting it live t and Ayden.

  I gave her time to formute a rea or her question.

  She decided to push on to the opid blurted, “Why ’t we detect you with our teology?”

  “You have. Some of your stists have. Repeatedly. They just rule us out anyway. Or, the evides unsubstantiated by a ed and careful emanant,” I said gently.

  “Why?”

  “Well, tely, yoing through a phase where your academia prizes skepticism, and us monsters really don’t fit into your hierarchies very well. Most of us have worked hard to avoid that,” I told her. “And, we generally work hard to avoid that in order to keep from drawing the attention of other emanants. It’s all less of a problem than you might think, though. The vast majority of us don’t eve on this phose of us who do are more vulnerable.”

  “And, you told Greg already that you’ve survived tless monster hunts already, and aren’t scared of humans,” Cassy firmed.

  “Yes.”

  “Why are we walking so slow?” she asked.

  I pointed up a block ahead of us and said, “That’s my pce. That lot full of woods. And there’s an important question or two you should ask before we get there.”

  “You have a house in there?”

  “No.”

  “But Greg said you told him –”

  “At the time, I did have a cottage in there. I made it while we were walking toward the pce,” I looked over at her, catg direct sight in the er of my eye. “But I don’t and I don’t use it, so I destructed it afterward.”

  “How?”

  “My domain is aension of my psyche, and I manipute it the same way you could manipute a lucid dream. Maybe eveer,” I exhaled into the cold air, causing it to billow densation.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a lucid dream,” Cassy mumbled.

  I nodded. “But you get the idea I’m trying to vey.”

  “Yeah, like in a movie,” she nodded back, hands in pockets.

  We were now across the street, and I stopped to look around at the traffic moving up and dowreet. Then I reached out and touched the button for the walk signal.

  As I sed the area for other monsters, I said, “Ultimately, there isn’t really anything I say that help you prehend or accept my part of reality. And, it’s unfortunately entirely up to you to decide if you want to treat me like a human being that’s telling you a story, or like a mohat’s been maniputing your species since before it existed. Now, I do a demonstration to try to prove once again that I am that monster. But then what?”

  There it was. The oher monster in my range of senses. Felicity almost poi out to me, but I caught its presence just before she did. It was below me.

  “What do you mean?” Cassy asked.

  The light was taking its time. We were crossing against a small arterial right on the edge of rush hour, after all.

  “How do you decide whether or not to trust me, when I ultimately do not need you to?” I gave her a tight lipped sardonic look of cession. A sort of a lopsided sad expression, from what I’d learned of her culture from movies and years of iing directly with her species.

  She looked directly back at Greg, then at me, then at the light, which turned green. And she stared at the light until it turned red, sidering her options. Then she looked back at Greg, who nodded his head.

  She’d been shaking a bit since we’d started walking this way, but now it was an obvious shiver that wouldn’t stop.

  Eventually, she mao say, almost down at the ground, “I thought we were getting to be good friends.”

  “By human terms, it seems like we have been, to me too,” I firmed, quietly, as gently as I could. “I’d personally like to keep it that way, on your terms, for a lot of the same reasons. But for your safety, I need you to know all this about me. And I o let you decide to termi, on your terms. At any time. Otherwise, then I’m a dao you.”

  “Really?”

  “Cassy,” I said, sighing, because my structed body o sigh. I’d made it well. “If I wao stay in your life regardless of what you thought, I either would have kept this all hidden. Or, I could drop this disguise and e back as someone else, and i myself into your life as a new regur at your store. And you wouldn’t know.”

  “That is the scariest thing anyone has ever said to my face,” she said, fierce determination welling up in her and illuminating her eyes. She was challenging me. Maybe even telling me she o walk away, just before she did.

  I hit the button again, “Yeah. I’m sorry I said it. But, things have ged for me, and I don’t know if I pretend to be human anymore. And another monster has been following us. It’s below us right now. You might want to retreat to a safe distance.”

  She took a step back, and I turo her.

  “Every time you e near me, I will do everything I to make sure you are safe and that you trust me. I’ll also tell you the truth,” I said. “If you out me to the world, it probably won’t blow up in your fao one should e after you. It will put me in danger.” I looked down at the storm drain that was me. “But I think I’m already in danger. Go ahead and record what happe if you want.”

  Cassy ran. She ran straight f, who stood his ground.

  I had been pnning on doing something fshy for her. I’d toyed with the idea of doing it in private, and dismissed that idea, bad forth, since she’d asked to talk. But she’d asked for a demonstration, and here portunity to give her one.

  And, thanks to Croc-face, Gresham was already the site of a couple of motacks, and a lot of weird rumors flying around. Anybody nearby who saw me do this thing would just add to that.

  I was maybe feeling fatalistic about the fallout.

  I was maybe also feeling really full of myself, and seven hundred millions years of excess energy.

  Felicity was not so fident.

  “Don’t,” she thought at me. “I’m busy, and this is too much.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I told her, croug down to the storm drain to peer into it.

  “I don’t want to die because of your stupidity,” she pined.

  “Just leap into its eyes when I lock gazes with it,” I suggested out loud.

  Milk felt gd that it didn’t have eyes when it heard that.

  It also wondered who this Overlord was talking to, and using English to do so.

  Milk uood English fairly well. It was where it had chosen its current name from, after all. It had been skulking around English speaking people for the st couple hundred years, at least. But it had growo speaking to other Overlords in pure thought. Or, at least, that’s how it perceived the process of unication.

  This Overlord wouldn’t be talking to a human, because a human would not be able to leap into its eyes if it had any. And it didn’t sense any other Overlords nearby. There were Lessers and Thralls, of course. But they wouldn’t respond to an Overlord, typically. They’d be too afraid to let ohat close.

  This was too fusing, and a little too unnerving.

  Milk retreated.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” I growled.

  Then I looked up to see if Greg and Cassy were still there, watg, which they were. And so I stood up and stepped onto the grating of the storm drain and waved at them, grinning.

  I put my hands to my mouth and yelled at them, “I’ll be back. I’ll keep you updated.”

  And then I looked down and started transf myself into something resembling a very fast slime mold, from the feet up.

  Greg and Cassy got the rare joy of watg me just sink into the storm drain.

  “I ’t do the eye jumping thing if you don’t have eyes,” Felicity hissed at me in my mind.

  I dismissed the snark, “We’ll worry about that whech up. This one’s fast.”

  It nearly got away, I took so much time falling through the grate. But transf my physical body into something else was still quite a process, even if that something was fairly simple.

  But that gave me time to judge its speed and adapt myself accly.

  And the city drainage isn’t all that plicated. It’s a basic brang pattern, and really only goes one pce if you follow it downhill. There aren’t any loops, and it’s mostly straight lines. My quarry went mostly straight, for several blocks and hadn’t made any sort of tur by the time I was after it.

  For a long ways before and after me, I perceived the tubes of the drainage system almost as if they were rigid extensions of myself, and I could sense some of the branches in the same way, effectively seeing around ers. And at the farthest reaches of that sense, I felt a rushing and fizzing ess that g to the pipe surrounding what water was in it.

  And I gained ground fast, my own substance ging to the pipe in the same way.

  The energy spent to move that fast was minuscule pared to my reserves, which still housed an ever feeding Felicity.

  I hardly gave it a thought.

  My bigger was that I had no idea what I was going to do when I caught up.

  theInmara