The Badger's Den had had a strict "no fights" policy for longer than anybody could remember, not even the turtle who had never introduced itself, but dropped in on occasion in the summertime, watching generations of voles, foxes, and even badgers pass. The current owner and barkeeper, Bartholomew, had served a lot of different guests. Owls were not that common, but one of them stood out. He had come to the Den with the air of someone who wanted to get drunk. It took little prompting from Bartholomew for him to unload his troubles.

"See, there's this woman," - owl, naturally - "Ignatia." Judging from his sigh, even her name alone was better than a life supply of fresh mice, and Bartholomew suffered through some disjointed, lovestruck praise of her looks, prowess and character. "So, well, I had a chance with her, but of course what was needed was a nest. I'd found a nice hollow, and she was inside inspecting it, when a squirrel started throwing nuts at us. It was so quick I couldn't catch it, completely fearless, and it ruined everything."

"You can't have given up that soon, right?"

"Oh, that monster wasn't the only one. The first day at the second nest, a mouse showed up. It hooted and acted as if it was an owl and our child."

After a pause, Bartholomew asked, "Couldn't you have eaten it?"

"Are you crazy? It clearly was, and we didn't want to catch whatever made it so."

"That makes sense." What the badger did not say was that they sounded like a pair of complete pushovers.

"See. Well, anyway, now Ignatia is looking for someone who doesn't attract lunatics, and I'm all alone."

"Don't worry too much; I'm sure someone will fall for you." It's all part of the job.

There was a thump followed by shuffling noises at the entrance, as a bat awkwardly crawled in. "Yoo-Hoo, Orville," he called.

"Already has. That's the problem." Orville downed the rest of his drink in one go and tried to ignore the newcomer. The evening went downhill from there.

When they came in sight if the water, the sky turned black. There was light just as before on the ground, faint shadows falling behind them, but looking up, there was nothing but darkness beyond their beacon. The bicolour trail the bird had left glowed even brighter.

The shore was steep enough that they needed to walk sideways, but it turned into a softer slope forming a sort of beach. There was a smaller copy of this shape at the water's edge, not the continuing slope you'd find on a beach. There were no waves to form it; the surface of the water was perfectly still. The ground was covered in smooth, dark pebbles.

Sylvie crouched and bent her head until it nearly touched the ground to have a closer look.

"If it is this shallow all through, it should be no problem to cross," Daaren said.

"I don't trust it."

Neither did he, but what good would it do? "Looks like a long way to circle around, if it's possible at all. Any idea how to find out if the hunch has merit?"

Sylvie's sigh did not stir the surface. She took another deep breath, and blew. There was the slightest hint of movement. Sitting down cross-legged, a bit back from the edge, she said, "I wonder if it's water at all."

"It's not water. It's not ground. It's not air," Daaren pointed out. What it was was bloody unnerving.

He dipped the tip of a shoe (which was no shoe, either) into the liquid. It rippled, at first faster than water would. The pebbles below disappeared, leaving blackness that could be formless ground, or an infinite void. As the turbulences died down slowly, the pebbles reappeared.

After a rather too long silence, Sylvie said, "Circling around it is." Daaren did not argue.

After the metahuman emergence of 2012, things did not turn out quite as comicbooky as some people expected. However, there was one guy who managed to pull it off, spandex, cape, secret identity and all.

Of course people were curious, for varying reasons, but the few times people tried to ask about the start of his "career", he refused to answer, refering to the wave of accident-suicides of hopefuls. The trigger for that had been people who had discovered their powers making their "origin stories" public, a good deal of which involved life-threatening experiences - flight first manifested when a parachute wouldn't open, or phasing in an accident that left the car looking like an accordion, you get the idea.

It was a perfectly noble pretext for someone who didn't want to admit to a past of having turned his room into a coccoon, with movies, comics, and games providing escapism that ended up shaping his gift.

For their fifth anniversary of going steady, he wanted to surprise her.

The restaurant was a few notches above their usual price class, and she felt somewhat awkward and underdressed at first. The food was very good, and so was the conversation.

Sometimes, survival was a struggle against nature. Finding shelter from the elements as well as food was essential.

Sometimes, the elements were all on your side, and food was there for the taking.

Nico wondered if it counted as person-against-nature or person-against self when she just could not stomach fruit that called out "Eat me! I'm ripe and juicy!" from its trees.

It was one reason why she disliked places that seemed taken right out of fairy tales.

Tarci and Reena had been as close as sisters, but things had changed. It had started slow, but once it had been known that Tarci was pregnant, Reena started avoiding her. It was hurtful and confusing, but since wondering did not help, Tarci waited for an opportunity when they were alone, and asked.

"Why won't you talk to me anymore?"

Reena averted her eyes. "I'm sorry, I..." She shook her head. Tarci trembled. She was afraid of them domehow drifting apart entirely, but her old friend reached out and held her hands. "I was afraid of telling you something, of hurting you. That's why I avoided you."

"I'm worried now, so you might as well tell."

Reena sighed deeply. "It is not really my place to - yes, I will tell you, let me finish. It's not my place to tell you what to do with your life, but, your love... Oh, how can I say this. When I look at him, the spindliness, the long, narrow face, the bright eyes, the way he moves quickly when he moves, but not at all when he stand still... He's just so weird. Beautiful, but beautiful like a waterbird, not a man." She must have noticed that it gave Tarci a little sting, and went on, "He's nice enough to talk to, mostly, and I'm sure you know your mind, and I wish both, all of you happiness." With a shrug she ended, "I just don't understand how you could bed an elf."

This conversation was weird indeed. As the awkward pause caused by Tarci's attempt to figure out if she was angry grew too long, Reena muttered, "Not my concern, I said."

Tarci smiled crookedly. "At least we're talking again."

Because it was better than thinking of anything else she might complain about regarding being trapped in an abandoned mine with a collapsed entrance, Nico said, "You know what I hate most about this? Not being able to see a thing."

Her companion did not answer, but there was a brittle little crackling noise, and a faintly glowing, angular object between their thumb and forefinger.

"Oh, thanks. What is that?"

"A piece of my soul."

"And it... glows."

"Temporarily. It will last a few hours."

"Um. And that's no problem, ripping a bit off your soul?"

Her companion seemed as confused at the question as she was at the whole thing, but after a moment answered, "It will grow back."

"OK, then."

His first impression was that of being hungover. Headache, nausea, and a marked gap in his memories... He was cold an in an awkward position, so he tried to fix that and discovered the handcuffs. As he tried to orient himself, he found that he lay on uneven ground, rocks and pebbles, slick with moisture. The staticky sound he had thought were part of the headaches actually came from outside his head. He was in a dimly lit half-dome, dark rock in his back, arced, white walls that seemed to be moving slightly in themselves in front, as well as another huddled figure who seemed to be watching him. He got a vague impression of a teenage girl in too big men's clothes, barefoot.

Pushing himself up a little, awkwardly, he croacked, "What... Where?"

"About ten metres downriver from the start of the rapids," came the reply, matter-of-factly.

It took him a few seconds until he fully understood she meant on the ground of the river. When the realisation hit him, it brought with it some shreds of the day before. There had been a metahuman emergence, some elemental cluster, and things had gone terribly wrong when trying to make contact, and --

"I shot you." He remembered her face when she was hit. Should have been dead. Then her body had turned to water and, carried by momentum, splattered all over him.

"Yes." Her cold tone peeled away away some of his shock. He understood an unspoken "you should keep that in mind" in the pause following. "You can make up for that. Tell me where my friends are now."

He did not even know.

A short time after entering the recently abandoned complex, Nico stopped in front of a lever. Whatever mechanism it belonged to must have been under the floor.

When she didn't say anything, only glared at a sign sloppily taped up at the wall next to it as if it offended her, Daaren asked, "What's the matter?"

"Says 'Do not pull lever'."

"Ah." He understood the dilemma, and why it bothered her quite a bit.

"They could at least have mentioned what would happen if it was."

"Would that make deciding if it was a trick easier?" he asked doubtfully.

She snorted. "No, but I could just pretend I believed it." After another moment of consideration, she shook her head. "Oh, it's stupid. Let's just get on with it."

"Right."

After they had left it behind, she still couldn't let it go. "I bet it does nothing, and they put it there just to mess with my head."

Now, that idea would have been easy to test. So... "It seems to work."

The gentle mocking tone apparently got through to her, pulling the tension out of her along with the irritation. "I'd better pay attention, eh?"

"Right."