The Magical Journey Home from School

[Feral]

Feral leaned into Jamie's hand as she gave him a scratch behind his ear. He laughed. The house was maybe two blocks away. He decided to sprint it home. Feral reached behind him to better seat the little girl on his back.

"Hold on tight!"

Feral's 10 minute mile became an 8 minute one as he tore down the sidewalk. No one was coming down the side street, luckily and he was able to get all the way to the front door without incident. He set her down on the front stoop--after all, dinosaurs can't open doors--and shook his legs out.

"That was fun," he said. "Am I still a dinosaur?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie looked at the front door - oh, right, it was a round knob, and dinosaurs could only open doors with handles. She took one last look at the Apollonychus and then turned him back to plain ol' Apollo. But she'd be sure to remember that one. Maybe she could be a velociraptor next time and they could run together.

"Not anymore," she said. "C'mon!"

She threw open the door and hopped inside, and she immediately caught sight of her face in the hallway mirror. Jamie sobered immediately and disappeared upstairs to unload her school things.

[Feral]

Feral walked in behind her, pleased to see himself back to normal in the hallway mirror. Jamie, however, bolted to her room with a dark look on her face.

Apollos sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. What would Anna do? The little girl often liked to spend time alone in her room and Anna would inevitably knock on the door with her mixture of Spanish and English and chat the little wonder out of her bad mood.

But he couldn't be like that. Greek was far more complex than Spanish and he was pretty sure that Anna's tactics wouldn't work for him. It was obvious though that she needed someone to talk to.

There was only one thing left to do. Apollos went to the kitchen and found the Chips Ahoy cookies that were kept hidden away. They were the chewy kind--his favorite. Apollos didn't like cookies that crunched. Then he poured two glasses of milk and went upstairs to Jamie's room.

"Jamie, I have a snack for us. Can I come in?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

There was a brief pause. And then Jamie said, "Okay."

She was sitting on her bed with a dinosaur book in her lap when Apollos opened the door. There was no sign of any bruise on her face.

[Feral]

Feral set the cookies on the small table next ot the bed along with the milk and again, crouched down to look his small charge in the eye. "More dinosaurs, huh? Would you mind scooting over and letting me look too?"

Feral decided not to press Jamie like he had her teacher and guidance counselor. He reached over and opened the package of cookies. He took one and handed it to her and then took one for himself.

[Jamie Morrigan]

"Thanks."

Jamie shifted to make room for Feral and then propped the glass of milk in the middle of her crossed legs so it wouldn't tip over. She broke off a piece of cookie, dipped it into the milk, and popped it into her mouth.

It was easy to see where she'd taken the inspiration for the brightly-colored feathers. The artist for this book had a flair for color, even if the resulting dinosaurs looked a bit conspicuous in their mesozoic habitats.

"This one's you," she said, pointing at the Deinonychus. Then she pointed to the sickle claw on its foot. "You could probably really make a claw like that, couldn't you?"

[Feral]

Feral kicked off his shoes and socks with his toes. "Let's see what I can do."

The older mutant flexed his toe and tried to get a feel for how that might work. It would have to start out of the top of his foot and arc around. Plus his toenail was in the way.

"Usually when I make the claws and spikes appear, they just pop straight out at particular angles. Most of it I figure is natural, but I have only managed to actually make a certain number of bones in my body shift and change the way I want."

He focused on his big toe and slowly the bone appeared. It started at the knuckle as a tiny point, then rose up and arced forward until he could tap the point on the bedpost.

"Well what do you know."

Feral clicked the blade on the bed while he spoke to Jamie. "You know, I've had to use my powers to protect myself from time to time."

He took a sip of the milk in his glass and put his arm around the girl's tiny shoulders.

"These blades are always sharp," he said. "No matter how much I use them I can still cut through nearly anything."

He pulled the blade back into his toe. "I never ever take them out unless I'm intent on using them for some purpose. Whether it's tearing something apart, cutting something into pieces." He set the glass down on the table and ate the whole cookie in one go. "And if I ever have to use my powers to defend myself, I know that I have to accept the fact that I might kill someone with them if things get out of hand."

Feral helped Jamie turn the page in her book. "When I fight, Jamie, I fight for my life. Or sometimes I fight for other people's lives. Like yours. Like Anna's."

He idly twirled a few strands of Jamie's hair around his finger without twisting it up. "You were scared for your life today, weren't you?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Some people might have found the display gross. Jamie was fascinated.

But it didn't take her long to figure out where he was going once he started talking. She simply stared forward through the opposite wall.

"My powers can't actually hurt anybody, you know," she said in a small voice. "It's all just fake."

[Feral]

Apollos shrugged. "Sometimes the things that are fake can seem more real than what is actually there."

He chuckled. "Sometimes people want something to be a certain way so badly that they can't accept what's plain in front of them. And sometimes things are so scary and so big that even though we really know they're not real, we act like they are anyway because we can't resist our instincts. Even when they're wrong."

He pressed her nose like a button with his finger. "Jamie, that's what's so amazing about your powers. You can make the window on the wall move down five inches towards us and when someone walked in, they would wonder to themselves if the window was always there."

He chuckled a little. "You can turn a snake into a garden hose and a garden hose into a snake. You can even turn a big ol' softie like me into a large, fearsome dinosaur. And people notice and are amazed."

He took a look at her cheek. "I know that injury is still there, but your face looks fine. If I hadn't seen it earlier today, I would have never believed you were hurt."

He sighed and reached for the glass of milk again. "So tell me all about this fight you had at school."

[Jamie Morrigan]

She dipped the other half of her cookie in her milk and finished it off. Then she took a slow, steady drink before she said anything.

"I had to go to the bathroom," she said. "So Miss Suarez gave me a hall pass, and I went. When I got out, there were four boys carrying trash cans out of the cafeteria. One of them said they should put me in a trash can, too, because I was 'mutie trash.'"

Her account started out detached and unemotional, as if she were describing something that had happened to someone else, or on TV. But now that she was safe and at home and away from the danger, some of the fear crept back into her throat and tightened it up and made her voice higher and shaky.

"They backed me against a wall, so I made snakes come out of the wall. Two of them ran away, but the other two weren't afraid of the snakes. They just cursed and told me to stop, an' one of 'em hit me."

[Feral]

Feral nodded and handed her another cookie. "So what happened after that? What did you do about the other two?"

He chose to hold back his opinions and comments. They wouldn't do the little girl any good anyway. Right now she just needed to tell him about what happened.

He squeezed her tighter to him as her voice started to get shaky. He picked her up and set her in his lap and gave her a big hug.He felt bad for her, but he couldn't go out and crush those children like he might others.

He could only practice his newest skill: listening and being there for the child he was trying to care for.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie leaned into him and took a small bite of her cookie.

"I spun the school around," she said. "Tried to make them dizzy. And I made them see me run away, down hallways that weren't really there. One of them ran into a wall. The other ran over a staircase. I think he got hurt bad. There were paramedics in the school."

She started trembling, and she put her cookie in her glass of milk so she wouldn't drop it. "I'm not sorry at all," she said bitterly. "They deserved it."

Then she realized she'd crossed a point she'd been trying to avoid ever since the fight. But there was no holding it back now. The room in front of her turned into a big blur, and she started to cry.

[Feral]

Feral held her tightly and patted her back. "Just cry. It's ok to cry."

Jamie's tears were wetting his shirt. He took the glass of milk from her and set it on the table so they wouldn't have to worry about it later. With nothing at all coming to mind to comfort the girl he did what he could: He let her cry.

[Jamie Morrigan]

She buried her face in his shirt, which muffled the sound of her sobbing somewhat. The tension that had been building up all afternoon was pouring out now at once. But Feral was solid and warm and steady, which was all she needed him to be right now.

It didn't last very long. A minute at the most. When she was finished, she stayed in his lap with her head pressed tightly against his chest, feeling his heartbeat and the slow, even rhythm of his lungs.

"I thought of other things I could've done," she said at last. "I could've made 'em all look like me. Then they would've been fighting each other."

She laughed a little and sniffled.

[Feral]

Feral chuckled. "That's true. You could have also made yourself look like something else. Or make them look like something else."

He dried her eyes with the hem of his shirt. "There we go. That's much better."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie was still at that awkward stage where she was finished crying, but everything was still all puffy and wet. She sniffed again, wiped her nose, and laughed. "I think I need to go clean up," she said. "I'll be right back."

She slid off of Feral's lap and disappeared into the bathroom next door. The sink ran for a bit, and then she blew her nose and came back into her room.

Her glass of milk was on the end table with a soggy cookie iceberg wedged inside. It came apart as she tried to fish it out, but she ate the milky, spongy mess anyway.

"Thanks for the cookies," she said, smiling at last.

[Feral]

Feral laughed and expertly scooped her up without upsetting her glass. "You're welcome. Old Apollos knows something about what makes bad days better. And cookies are some of the best remedies."

Now that Jamie was feeling better, he stood up with the girl and spun her about then blew a fuzzy raspberry on her neck. "Now that we have all that out of the way, do you have any homework? We need to get that done. Then we can start dinner."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie squealed at the sneak attack and escaped giggling onto the bed. After that, she had to settle down and comb through her backpack for the day's homework - a history reading with comprehension questions and a small battery of math problems. The thing with history was that the book was so dry she couldn't help filling in some juicy details of her own, and when it was time for a quiz, she always had to work to remember what she'd read and what she'd just made up. That wasn't a problem with math. There was just no way you could make fractions exciting.

When she was finished, she showed her work to Apollos, and he helped her catch a few fractions she'd forgotten to reduce. It wasn't the most stimulating thing to do, but at least it was a problem Jamie could solve. Finally she packed it all up and bounced down the stairs to join Apollos in the kitchen.

The older mutant already seemed to be at work laying out ingredients on the center island. Jamie leaned her elbows on the counter for a better look. "What are you making?"

[Feral]

"Well," he said. "We're going to make a pizza. I've been watching the Food Network at night and I thought I'd see if I could make a pizza like they do at all those fancy restaurants. I have my dough all set. I've got the sauce for the pizza. There's three cheeses here that need to be grated. I also got some pepperoni we'll have to slice ourselves and I'm about to sautee the oninos and the green peppers."

He jerked his thumb at the sink. "If you wash your hands I'll let you shred cheese and slice the pepperoni."

[Jamie Morrigan]

"Sure! It'll just take a second!"

Jamie rushed to the sink, turned on the hot water, and very studiously rubbed the hand soap all over her hands, between her fingers, and under her fingernails. Then she rinsed them and rubbed them together until they were red from the hot water.

Once she was finished, she found a footstool so the counter was at her waist level, and Apollos showed her the cheese grater and how to be sure not to cut her fingers on the blades. She went at it with a will, reveling in the soft, squishy texture of the mozzarella, which was different from the firm provolone and the hard Asiago. Some of the cheese flakes crumbled over the rim of the bowl and landed on the countertop, but she quickly scooped them back inside. Her hands were clean, and the counter was clean, so it was all okay.