I.

One week later

As we charted the book's coordinates onto a map of our location, a problem arose. Our hometown was built on the beach of a small sea in a spot where it jutted out into the land, and while at first we were led away from that sea, it became obvious that the coordinates' grid was largely on its other side, with the sea blocking most of our targets. We could go around it, but it would take a very long time thanks to the sea's shape - it was long and narrow, much longer in one direction than the other, and to go around it we would have to move parallel to its length, all the way north and then all the way back south. That would take way too long. Instead, we'd have to cross it, and there was only one spot where we could do so: an ancient bridge, a marvel for its size, connecting its relatively close east and west shores. This was still a little out of the way, but was much more manageable.

The Dead Sea Bridge was a major hub for trading, and for the first time on our roadtrip we came across an actual road to follow along. More of a dirt path, really - we were still miles away from the bridge itself. The area around the sea was mostly depopulated still, so we'd be going back to driving through fields and woods for a while after this until we reached the more populated places most of our targets were. We made sure to appreciate the minor improvements which came with driving on a road. It was less bumpy, people passed by on horseback occasionally... yeah, we were living it up.

We had been travelling for about a week after meeting Zsuius, and it would probably be another day before we reached the bridge. It was boring, but not bad, everything I expected and less, racing against the doomsday clock as slowly as possible. We were faster than the horses, but not as much as the legends about these sorts of automobiles led us to believe. Maybe we'd just done a crappy job of fixing it up? The atmosphere was tense at first, but the longer we went without any action the more relaxed it got, and by now it was a pretty nice time. We'd talk for hours sometimes, and enjoy the silence just as much, reading through all the books that we (mostly Sefgh) had brought, taking turns driving and sleeping. I'd read a few, and Matt had chosen a real big one right away and still hadn't finished it after the whole week. Right now I was reading one about a group of political activists and artists from the early fourth millenium AD, titled F.C.A.: The Fourth Millenium's Doom Prophets. Apparently they were pretty notable back then, but most people now had never heard of them, and the time period was so different as to be alien. I wasn't very well-versed in history, so it could be a little hard to keep up with, but I always enjoyed reading about some crazies.

The vehicle's windows were typically kept open, and when I wasn't reading I was looking through them, arms perched on the windowsill. I'd been in that town for years, and never had any occasion to leave, so seeing the rural scenery again was nice. It gave me a queasy nostalgia for times I tried not to think about. That unnamed town out in the middle of nowhere, known only to others informally as The Town of the Church of Holy Light, had been suffocating. The sun hardly ever shone through the clouds and the smoke from fireplaces wafting up into the sky, the buildings were faded and gray, and the unpaved dirt roads grew no plants. When a part of town collapsed, it was rarely fixed, and so it seemed to get worse every year. I'd been getting real restless, and thought we couldn't've left at a better moment as I stared through the open window for minutes or hours at a time. The dull greens and browns were comforting to me after so much bleak gray, and with the blue skies and the light of the sun it felt like I could almost breathe again. At times we passed through wooded areas, with large trees and the buzzing of grasshoppers and the sun shining through the leaves in gorgeous patterns during sunset as I looked out and saw reds and oranges and violets that seemed entirely new, but for the most part we went through wide-open grasslands. Most of the forests here were only just around the Sea or on its other end.

Those grasslands were beautiful too, of course. The tall yellow-green grass blowing softly in the wind, the fields of colorful flowers coming in and out of view, the periods in the afternoon where the entire landscape was painted gold, there were moments it felt like an antidote to some poison that had been eating away inside me for so long. I hadn't seen these sights since I was much younger, and despite everything it was some of the best circumstances I'd seen them in. The sounds of passing birds gliding over the faint hum of the engine were incredible, and the nights we spent camping together were warm and intimate. Most days had been perfectly sunny, and while yesterday it rained, this was still something beautiful to me, the rain here in these barely-inhabited rural areas pure and cleansing rather than the dirty smoggy rain we got in the town, and we stopped so Matt and Sef and I could go out and feel it on our skin, and when we stopped for the night we camped inside our vehicle and all slept close together, lulled to sleep by the sounds of gentle rainfall. They were some of the best days I could remember, and yet something felt wrong. I could tell things weren't right, not with us, but with the world.

The colors were different. That was the first thing I noticed. The colors were different from when I was a child. The scents were different, the birds sang different songs. Everything felt off in I way I couldn't quite place, and while the wide open air from the fields and gentle rain from the clouds briefly washed away the surface of grime and smoke that had clung to my fur, the deepest unconscious parts of me twisted even further. Something was wrong, something was missing, something was lost and would never come back. Things would never be the same way again, the way I wanted them to be, the way I longed for so much, the way I secretly prayed they would be when we came out here for all this. Our mission would take us out of this place soon enough, and into an even deeper, darker hell, I knew. We would go far beyond this simple displacement and into a much more awful place of loss, and we all knew it. It shouldn't have bothered me the way it did. But why couldn't I just have this? What had happened? The wind blew across the grass different, the cool air was not refreshing but chilling, and most disturbing of all, the world seemed so empty. Where were all the bugs, for one? When I was younger, they were everywhere, crawling all over everything, comforting me in my loneliest moments, buzzing through the air. I barely saw any, and only when we camped for the night, never in the day coming through our windows or crawling into our vehicle. Where was everyone? Why were we alone?

Inevitably, I would have to look away from the window and bury my nose in a book, or distract myself by talking to the others. These tiny flaws would gnaw at me, and I'd begin to think about all the memories I'd forgotten, why I was here last time, what I was feeling, what I was doing... it made me want to vomit. I don't think anyone else noticed, and if they did, they didn't say anything. Maybe they were just being polite.

As we approached the Dead Sea, the world became enveloped in fog, and I said goodbye to that discolored sun. The other side, the one we were travelling to, was (from what I had heard) just as rich in fog as in forests, and that brief disquieting comfort was over before I'd even processed it. Now the skies were gray again, and everything seemed to be hiding something, hidden just out of sight in the mist, like a dagger behind a back, or a pair of eyes staring through a one-way mirror. I stopped remembering the past even in those faint glimpses that broke through into my consciousness, and put the barrier between me and the rest of the world back up. The grasslands weren't beautiful, or healing, or special. They were brown and messy and ugly. The open air wasn't healing, it was unnerving. Almendra's gray ghost reached her hand through the thick fog, and I turned away.

As we drove along towards the bridge, entering another, more wooded area, a small and slightly ramshackle wood house came into view, a burnt shed besides it, with a person sitting outside on its porch. They wore a white shirt and blue jeans, both somewhat ragged-looking, with orange hair halfway down to their shoulders. They looked young, and had their head in their hands. As we got closer they looked up at us, and as we got close enough for them to look through the driver's window at Sefgh, their face got an angry, disturbed look on it and they motioned for us to stop. Sefgh quickly did, and they banged at our doors, yelling to open up.

"You have a lot to explain to me, showing up here again!" he shouted, "Open up those doors! Come out and face me!"

Sef looked pretty shaken, but he didn't seem dangerous per se, so we stepped out to meet him. If things got out of hand, I could take care of it. As we stepped out into the young man's yard, I smelled the air. It wasn't as poisonous as that back in our town, but the rejuvenating feeling was gone, the foggy gray air leaving a bitter aftertaste. It hit me then that our brief escape was over, and we were right back in it. I avoided looking at the young man's face head-on; normally I was, admittedly, a little cold to other people's emotions, but something about his expression, the clear raw pain that had suddenly came to the surface upon seeing us, unsettled me.

He studied Sefgh's face silently, and as he did he began to calm down a little, though he was still clearly disturbed. He looked around at us.

"What's going on here? Who are you?" He asked.

"Who are you? You're the one who stopped us." M-Bot replied.

"Shut it! I'm asking you! What are your names!?" He snapped.

"Uh, th-this is Maine, M-Bot, and Matt," Sef said nervously, gesturing at each of us in turn, "and I'm Sefgh."

"Sefgh, huh," the young man said, anger creeping back into his face, "tell me, have you been here before?"

"Uh-"

"Within the past week or so, maybe," he continued, interrupting Sefgh as he drew closer to their face, "and did you or did you not stop by, burn my shed, scare my friend, and... and-!"

"No, no, no! I haven't been here, I've never been here, we only just got here," Sefgh pleaded, raising their hands up in surrender, "I don't even know who you are! Please, I've never seen you before, I've never come here before, I don't think any of us have, please believe me! Please, tell me what happened, I don't understand! I promise I'll help any way I can, just tell me what's happening!"

"Sorry," the young man said, calming back down again, "sometimes I get really angry and can't stop it. It doesn't always make sense. I'm looking at your face right now and something really weird is happening." As quickly as it appeared the anger in his expression vanished, leaving behind nothing but an intense discomfort. I still didn't want to look right at it in anything more than a glance.

"Yeah, I'll say. You still haven't told us what's going on. What's your name, even?" M-Bot asked.

"Hey, go easy on him," Matt said, "give'im some time and he'll tell us, you don't gotta kick him while he's down."

"Sorry, sorry, it's... I thought I saw you, and you... Oh, I don't even wanna talk about it. My name's F.P., Friend & Pariah. Or just Friend. Or just F.P.. Sorry I'm not making much sense right now, I've been freaking out all week, and, uh, yeah," he paused to catch his breath and straighten his thoughts out, "Sefgh, someone who looked just like you came by and screwed my whole life up last week."

"Someone who... looked just like me?" Sefgh asked.

"Yeah, but not quite. There was something about them that's not about you. Like, a hollowness, there wasn't any color to their face or eyes or body, they had hollow eyes that stared right into your soul, and, and you seem nice, but they didn't have any kinda moral center, any compass." F.P. said.

"Like a shadow?" I asked.

"Exactly like a shadow." F.P. responded.

Sefgh's face went pale.

"Hey, who was that friend they scared?" Matt asked, "Seems pretty lonely here."

"Oh, just, uh, a goat I'm friends with. You're right, it is lonely here. Sometimes people pass through to get to the bridge but I'm a little too far away to meet anyone, haha. I used to live closer, but, um, not anymore. That goat was living around here before I got here and we became friends but he got hurt and ran away and I haven't seen him since... I really hope he's alright." F.P. ran through multiple emotions as he spoke, clearly still frazzled.

"Hey..." I spoke hesitantly, "You seem pretty freaked out. Do you want to go inside? We're travelling, but we can stop for a bit to talk," The words felt weird coming out of my mouth, but they reached F.P..

"Yeah. Yeah, we can go inside and talk, and, maybe figure out what's going on," He said.

The inside of F.P.'s house was as unassuming as the outside, a couple smallish basic rooms with mostly just simple wooden furniture and not much decorating the walls. A picture here, a bookshelf there. I had questions, but obviously right now wasn't the time.

"So y'said there was a shadow of Sefgh?" Matt asked.

"Yeah. It broke in and messed a bunch of stuff up. It didn't touch much in here, but it took one of my pictures and ripped it up," F.P. responded.

"What picture?"

"One from when I was a kid... like, uh, me with my parents when I was younger, and smiling at the camera, and stuff. We were on the bridge."

"D'y'know why it would've done that?"

"No, no, I... I don't even know what it was doing here, or what it was! I mean, I said it was like a shadow, that's not, like, a normal thing, though! I thought that was you!" He pointed at Sefgh.

"Our Relayer's talked about it a couple times," Sef said, looking down, "That a shadow of yourself can take shape and gain autonomy under certain circumstances. I thought it was just a myth, though, not a real thing."

"Uh, 'relayer'?" F.P. said before shaking his head and asking, "What circumstances...?"

"I don't know. Lots. He went back and forth sometimes. If you were too lonely, or knew too many people. I-I don't know. Even he thought it was more of a myth, like, something that showed up in some stories through history but might not actually be real," Sefgh answered. They both seemed pretty nervous as they spoke.

"What do you think could've caused yours?" I asked. Sefgh went quiet, still looking down. After a few seconds, they spoke back up.

"You mentioned it doing something else, but never said what... what was it?" Sefgh asked F.P.

"It..." The young man whispered something to Sefgh that I couldn't quite hear.

"What the hell?" Matt blurted out, eyes wide.

"What... what do you mean it...? My shadow did what?" Sefgh replied, finally looking back up, with a new intensity in their eyes and voice. They were angry, but not at F.P..

F.P. looked down. "It... yeah. We were in here, so I grabbed a knife and cut its hand and it stopped. I-I don't really know what it was trying to do, I think it was trying to hurt me, or just... freak me out. Well, it didn't seem like it wanted to hurt me, or kill me at least, it almost seemed like... a really mean prankster, or something. But it was scary."

"Goddammit. How could I let this happen? What did I do that this... this thing showed up? Why did I let it came out of me?" Sefgh clenched their fists.

"I'm sorry, it's not your fault, I don't know what you could've done either, I'm-"

"Don't apologize!" Sefgh cut F.P. off, "It's my fault. Matt, I'm not missing something, am I? There's no one reason a shadow can come out?"

"Yeah," Matt answered, "I have no idea why you'd have one, either. That's what's really weirdin' me out about this. You're, like, the nicest person I know!"

Sefgh sighed.

"So wait, back up here. I didn't hear what happened." M-Bot interjected during the break in the conversation.

"Don't worry about it. Let's not make him say it again, whatever it was." I told M-Bot.

"I'm sorry... I thought you were... let's just forget it," F.P. mumbled, still facing down, "Let's just, um, start this whole meeting over. Why... why are you four coming down here, anyways? I've never seen whatever that thing you're riding in is before. What even is it?"

We started to explain what we were doing here to F.P.. It was a little awkward at first with the sudden change in focus, but he was clearly interested, and soon we got in a groove, trading stories back and forth between him and each other. Even at this early stage it was a pretty long story, and it took a minute to lay everything out. He listened to us intently, curious to meet people from so far out of town now that the initial misunderstanding had been cleared. He was someone who used to live on the Dead Sea Bridge, him and his parents staying in one of the small homes built on its sides. When he was around twelve they moved to a more rural location a few hours nearby, a big wooden house with a farm, and a few years later they moved him here so he could begin to live independently, a few more hours away. They checked in on him once every week at first, now every two weeks, dropping off supplies - mainly food and water, but sometimes also furniture, books, clothes, and so on. He was seventeen now, and he'd grown to like it somewhat, but right now the isolation was killing him.

He said wanted to travel with us. He wanted to find out more about the shadow, he wanted to see parts of the region he'd never been to before travelling with us, and he couldn't stand to live alone here right now, especially after what just happened. M-Bot was a bit skeptical at first, pointing out that he'd be using the sets of food and equipment we'd saved as backup, but then he told us about something he'd been developing in secret the last few years, going deep into the fields near his house and communing with the surrounding environment. He brought out a knife, and asked one of us to prick our finger on it. Sef volunteered, and drew blood on their finger. F.P. gently clasped it in his hands, closed his eyes, and focused.

When he drew his hands back, the wound was healed.

Needless to say, we let him join in.