Flying around Deep’s End was strangely nostalgic. Ink-Talon had only stayed here for three days or so, right when his life as a crow was just beginning, but those three days had been so impactful that returning here felt monumental in a way he just couldn’t qualify. But the most important thing was that he was safe here. He had allies here.

  He touched down on the treehouse platform where he and Quiet-Dream had briefly lived, and the rattlesnake emerged from one of the shelters to greet him.

  “Oh, hey!” Ink-Talon waved a wing. “How did you get up here?”

  “Climbed,” she rattled.

  “Fair enough.” Snakes could climb, right?

  “One question.” The snake slithered forward, forming a wide arc in front of the crow. “Who are you?”

  “...What?” Ink-Talon squawked with a confused tilt of his head. “You know who I am!”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes! I’m Ink-Talon! We’ve been traveling together for days! You saved my life!”

  “I don’t know who that is.” The snake looked around, somehow just as confused as he was, before looking back towards the shelter she had emerged from and rattling even louder. “Hey! There’s a crow out here, do you recognize it?”

  “Oh! Is it Ink-Talon?” A squeak sounded from the entrance as Quiet-Dream emerged, flanked by Black-Leap and Gray. The three squirrels stared at him appraisingly. Accusingly. They tilted their heads to the left. Tilted their heads to the right. All three moving in unison. “No. It isn’t him. I don’t know who this is.”

  Ink-Talon opened his beak to protest, but no sound came out. He tried to flare his wings, but they didn’t move.

  “Ink-Talon is kind and curious,” Quiet-Dream chittered.

  “Ink-Talon is cheerful and loyal,” Black-Leap nodded.

  “Ink-Talon is cautious and considerate,” Gray squeaked, looking away.

  His talons were frozen to the floor. There was no escape.

  “Does any of that describe you?” Maggie’s voice announced her arrival before he saw her step out from behind Quiet-Dream.

  Ink-Talon tried to scream that it did. He could not. It would have just been another lie, anyway.

  “The snake doesn't seem to think so,” the myna said, her voice becoming cold and angry. “And they know exactly what needs to be done with people they can never trust.”

  Searing pain erupted from Ink-Talon’s left leg. His eyes darted downward, his paralysis only allowing him to barely glimpse the writhing snake that bit him until she started to wrap herself around him.

  “We need allies we can trust,” she rattled, repeating her reasoning from the day before, her coils pulling tighter as her knife-like teeth cut deeper into his flesh. “Keeping your truth from us destroys that trust.”

  “I never should have given you mine,” said a second crow, appearing in Maggie’s place and speaking in an entirely different voice. “You tried to be me, you tried to be [_______].” Scholar Ink-Talon made an incomprehensible sound. One from his memories. His human name. But it no longer had any meaning. It was no longer his. “You are neither.”

  The snake’s coils squeezed tighter, forcing the air from his lungs as burning venom coursed through his veins.

  I’m sorry. He tried to speak, but he could not. He tried to look at Quiet-Dream, to plead with his eyes, but the squirrel turned away. One by one, the kits and the Scholar followed suit.

  “One question.” The snake repeated herself, squeezing even tighter.

  Darkness overtook him as his body broke and burned.

  “Who are you?”

  The crow awoke with a terrified screech, only to find himself in the Deep’s End infirmary. He was alive, alone, and… almost intact. His injured leg felt strange. Heavy. Tingling. Looking down at it as he lay in bed, he saw it wrapped tightly linen bandages, stained red by his own blood in spots. Any attempt to move it or flex his talons tugged on the bandages and sent rippling jolts of pain down his entire left side. He wasn’t going anywhere under his own power any time soon, not unless his Attunement could shut out pain like it could shut out emotions.

  Not an option. It gives me awareness of my body and dampens other awarenesses to compensate. It doesn’t go in reverse. It can only make me more aware of my body, not less. I’m stuck with this. He sighed, laying his head back down on the cushion beneath him, only for a cold realization to fill him with a new kind of dread.

  His Attunement could barely sense his injured leg. It was functioning fine otherwise, but his perfect awareness of his body stopped just a bit past his left knee. He could tell that the leg was there, that it was attached to him, but that was all just inferred from the point of contact. As far as his Attunement was concerned, that leg wasn’t a part of him.

  Don’t panic, he fruitlessly commanded himself. This is Mindful-Sight’s area of expertise. I just have to wait for it to return.

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  He didn’t even have to wait that long, it turned out. His awareness of his leg slowly returned over the coming minutes, and with it came knowledge of the extent of the damage, though not the reason for that strange blip in the first place.

  Mindful-Sight had managed to cut out most of the dead or dying tissue around his bite wound, resulting in some very noticeable dents in his flesh and some missing scutes. The scars once it healed were going to be absolutely gnarly. The bone was still broken, obviously, and was mainly being held in place by the pressure of the wrappings rather than a proper splint, but it seemed like the injury healing was indeed possible if he didn’t injure himself any further.

  What wouldn’t be healing, however, was the nerve damage from the venom. Entire portions of his leg around the wounds were completely numb, and while he couldn’t test it in this state, he could tell that grasping things with the talons on that leg would prove difficult even once the healing was complete. Thankfully, he tended to favor his right foot for precise tasks, but that did nothing to change the fact that he was probably going to have to live with the consequences of this injury for the rest of his life.

  Serves me right. The bird sighed, laying back down to wait for someone to come by. The words of his nightmare echoed in his mind, refusing to fade like his dreams as a human often would. It was an odd quirk of this existence, some fundamental difference in how dreams were dreamt that committed them to memory as if they were no different from waking experiences. And the source of this one was something he needed to confront.

  He certainly noticed that he’d been acting differently. First his effortless lies to Quiet-Dream, then the ease with which he was able to commit to violence, and now his reliance on his Attunement to suppress his emotions even in casual conversation. It apparently was obvious enough that the snake could notice him doing it when even he wasn’t aware of it himself. And that was the real problem. It wasn’t just that he was capable of using his Attunement like that, it was that it was automatic. It was a harmful habit with real consequences that altered who he was on a fundamental level.

  He refused to allow it to continue. He was going to fix this. No matter what it took.

  “Now, what I would like you both to do is attempt to act independently.” Physician Mindful-Sight tapped out the request on the rattlesnake’s scales before resting its foot on her back. “Try not to consciously coordinate yourselves.”

  “This is tedious,” the snake-mind rattled, steadily growing frustrated by the chameleon's increasingly demanding examination. Taking the opportunity to fulfill its instructions, the human half attempted to coil back on herself without interrupting her other half’s expressions. This immediately ran into problems, as even when moving unrelated parts of their shared body, one of them trying to move disrupted the other, resulting in both of their movements “stuttering.”

  “Next, I would like you to attempt the same exact movement together. Pick up a pebble or twig with your mouth and move it.”

  “Okay,” the snake nodded, turning her head and spotting a suitable piece of a broken branch to her left. Ready? On a count of three. One.

  Two… Her other half concentrated, continuing her countdown.

  Three! Both minds thought in unison, and their shared body moved without issue, snapping up the twig and effortlessly tossing it behind them.

  “Interesting…” Mindful-Sight turned a dark green as it pondered what it was observing.

  “What is?”

  “One more test,” the chameleon tapped, ignoring the question. “I would like you to contest each other’s wills. One of you attempts to move, while the other attempts to remain perfectly still.”

  I will move, the snake-mind declared, not waiting for the human’s input on the topic. Try and stop me. A new, competitive edge colors its thoughts. This test was something that it was eager to attempt.

  Okay. Go for it. I’m not going to be that easy to–

  The snake’s will slammed into her own like a charging bull, causing her whole body to jerk forward with an uneven lunge. But her own will was a steel wall, denting and bending, but never breaking. It couldn’t complete a proper slithering motion, halted each attempt by sudden twitches in the opposite direction. The only proper locomotion the snake could achieve was occasionally managing to roll over. Just like when they attempted to act independently, who was actually in control seemed to rapidly alternate. It was a bizarre sensation, but not an unfamiliar one. They had felt this way when…

  “Stop.” Mindful-Sight gently gave the order by tightening its grip on her scales. The snake did so, giving it a concerned look as she regained her composure. “What is wrong?” The chameleon asked the question cautiously.

  “It’s uncomfortable doing that. And it doesn’t work properly, for obvious reasons.” She attempted to dismiss the Physician’s concerns, but even she could tell that it wasn’t buying it.

  “I have examined enough Physical Minds to recognize the Connections formed by a trauma response. If I did not stop you here, then you would be in a dangerous amount of distress.”

  The snake paused, realizing that they were both missing some very important context. But Mindful-Sight was definitely right about one thing.

  “That was the state we were in when we… took someone’s life. Confused. Frightened. Hungry. Neither of us had any idea what was going on. One of us struggled to figure it out, while the other was desperate to survive. Survival won out just long enough to identify a friend as prey.”

  A friend? The human half caught the expression after she had made it. That identification hadn’t come from her. I thought you didn’t remember anything before that moment?

  I do not, the snake half responded. But thinking back… It is something I know, but do not remember how. It paused, lost in private thoughts for a moment, before making a request. I wish to converse with the chameleon. Privately, without interference. Please. I know that I have not been the most–

  It’s okay. I trust you. The snake-mind had not once asked to be in complete control since it had spoken with Gray, content to let its human headmate act freely and only occasionally nudge their body to assist with actions she lacked the coordination to perform, or to voice an opinion to their companions. It still suggested courses of action, often callous and pragmatic ones, but it no longer suggested eating anything but feral prey. And as disconcerting as its presence had been at first, she’d be lying if she hadn’t come to enjoy the company.

  It was supportive and encouraging, in its own strange way. It wanted them both to live. To be strong. It refused to entertain even the slightest hint of despair or defeatism. Those who give up do not survive.

  I’ll do my best to stop paying attention, but I can’t guarantee I won’t overhear any of it. Just… mentally prod me whenever you’re done.

  Thank you. As the human turned her attention inward and lost focus on the outside world, the snake turned to the Physician, who had been patiently watching the conversation play out in silence, curious, but not intruding. “Mindful-Sight. I need to ask you something. Something only you might have the answers to, given your insights.”

  “I will do my best to answer, but offer no guarantees,” it replied, turning a very serious mauve.

  “That is the best I could hope for,” the snake replied, taking a deep breath. “What am I?”

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