Siren was the most intimidating person Hemlock had ever met. She had a habit of sitting or standing across from him or directly behind him and glaring at him like she hated him. Exactly why was entirely beyond him, but she sure did quite a bit of it. His steps falling slowly into a rhythm behind Julian, Hemlock really wished he could ignore the soul-piercing gaze of the girl striding behind him. It was like she expected to be able to laser through to his brain any minute now, circling like a vulture to inevitably pick apart his inner workings. Josephine said that was normal coming from her, though Hemlock suspected otherwise. It wasn’t that he felt threatened, per se, more extremely and scrutinizingly judged. Siren really tipped him off as someone who had bled recently. Someone whose wounds still hadn’t scabbed over. Someone just a little bit like him, his aunts said.

He wasn’t bitter, and he never wanted to be, but he was hollow. So was she. She was grieving – that much was obvious – she’d lost something, ripped away by the merciless currents of life, forever searched for but never found again. They were both missing a piece. They were both looking for something they’d never be able to replace. Something long gone.

‘Life turns us all into Swiss cheese,’ Aunt Ficus had said one night over hotdogs and Mediterranean salad. Hemlock got the point immediately.

How many holes were in Siren’s cheese already? How many were in his?

He’d have to ponder that later. Pawsteps wandered over the rocks and sand next to him, a brown head with eyes like glowing submarine lights in the deep swung into his view. Siren was postured like she was telling him some kind of secret when she spoke to him.

“Hey, heads up; Josephine’s gotten us lost,” she remarked in a tone like calm seawater. “Don’t panic, Rosie brought a compass, this is just a thing our group does for fun. If you wanna roll with us, you’re gonna need to get used to it.”

Hemlock nearly tripped over his own paws in shock, stifling his tone down to a shocked whisper. “She what?! What part of getting lost is supposed to be fun? My aunts are gonna kill me!” he exclaimed in instant confusion and something a little like fright, perhaps a little too loudly.

Siren gave him the most bombastic side-eye of his life, but waved her paw in a gesture that indicated calming down and answered his questions in a cool, level voice. “She got us lost. We do this for fun because it’s like a puzzle to get back, and we always find interesting stuff along the way. Rosie has a compass and map, so we’re not really lost, and we’re only allowed to go as far as two and a half miles from camp unless we have adult supervision,” the dark umber feline informed him, almost as though she thought of Hemlock as stupid. When that clearly didn’t help, she sighed like a disappointed parent and amended, “This happens every time the caravan makes camp, so I promise you we’ve done this a ton and turned out just fine.”

Hemlock had never been more bewildered before in his entire life, save for the physics period where the teacher seemed to have something against explaining anything to anyone. He opened his mouth to say something (he wasn’t sure what), but closed it again when she narrowed her eyes at him and bopped him gently on the top of the head.

“Quit freaking out. It’s way less of an adventure if you just stand there looking like a deer in the headlights. The whole point of this is to enjoy nature and have fun. Hell, maybe even go swimming.”

“I’m not just standing here! I’m genuinely worried about our well-being!” Hemlock protested, but it seemed his pleas fell on deaf ears. Siren just shook her head and grimaced slightly.

“Look, either you sit back and try to enjoy nature or I steal your hat and use it as bait to make you follow the rest of us. You look like you might bolt any second now, which isn’t going to benefit anyone.”

Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong. Begrudgingly, Hemlock relented. Siren had a personality like sandpaper, but it was hard to refute the statements she built on her own scrutinizing, careful observations.

“Guys! Guys, look!”

Josephine’s loud and joyous exclamation nearly scared Hemlock out of his fur. In the corner of his vision, Siren rolled her eyes, muttering something like “It’s gonna be a bug again,” under her breath.

What Josephine emerged with from the brush was not, in fact, a bug. Instead, she carried in her jaws a stick that was about as long as most of the adults in the caravan; somewhere between five and six feet. Her eyes glinted with a sense of overexcited pride as she held her prize victoriously in the air, a goofy smile on her face. Rosie looked almost mortified, but Julian elbowed her gently and gave her a look Hemlock knew in his bones meant ‘Let her have her moment.’

Before Hemlock really realized what was happening, Siren cracked a smile. “We should build a fort,” she suggested in the most excited tone Hemlock had ever heard from her, which was still deadpan and dry. Nonetheless, Josephine bubbled over in joy at the idea.

“That’s a great idea!” Josephine exclaimed immediately at a volume that would’ve made bats cringe, dropping her stick and moving quickly to find an appropriate tree as a base. With a few sighs and smiles, the rest of the gang followed suit.

---

It took them all afternoon to build that lean-to. By the end of it, Hemlock was sitting on a rock a few feet from the shelter while Josephine chatted with Julian inside. Siren, who was resting in the leaf litter a little ways behind Hemlock on his left side, sighed and did her best to soothe her sore paws. The leaves on the trees above them dappled them in a haze of shadow and sunset light, golden like flaming honey.

“I guess it was pretty fun,” Hemlock remarked aloud to no one in particular, earning himself a small snort from Siren. The sunlight glinted off his glasses when he turned to face her.

“Told you so,” she said. Something like a smile crept briefly across her face, but scurried back into her usual shadowy frown like a frightened crab the second he caught it in his vision. She returned to her usual half-scowl like rough water finally settling.

Still, it warmed something in him.

Soft padding sounded across the leaf litter off somewhere to Hemlock’s right, followed by the sound of a body carefully shifting to lay down on the somewhat uneven ground. Tan fur and pink accents flashed in Hemlock’s peripheral vision, followed up by the soothing scent of roses.

“So,” Rosie began with a gentle smile on her face, “How was your first day, Hemlock?”

“Well, it was certainly…” oh Christ, how was it? He was going to look like an idiot at this rate. Since when did he ever forget the words for something?! He thought about them constantly!

Fortunately, Rosie came to his rescue. “Interesting?” she asked with a slight laugh, offering him a smile that was probably supposed to be more warm than it was awkward. All he could really do was nod and half-chuckle, half-sigh back. “Don’t worry,” she told him in an almost motherly tone, “It’s okay to still be adjusting. We’ll welcome you in any way we can.”

His reply came with a small, definitely shaky grin. “… Thanks.”

At this point, Siren had closed her eyes and rested her head on her paws, breathing steadily as though in meditation. The light illuminated her deep brown fur in a warm shade of gold, and something in it struck Hemlock straight in the chest. It was like he could see right through her for just a few heartbeats. She looked exhausted and fragile on the inside, like a lightbulb slowly going dark.

And she still took the time to talk to me today… to support me today.

Definitely an improvement, at least. Hemlock felt like he might’ve made his first real, new friend. One paw carefully plucked away one of the flowers that grew from his back and swung it gently down to offer to her.

One dark eye cracked open at the gesture. One paw gingerly took the gift from him and tucked it into the fur behind its owner’s ear. One side of Siren’s mouth quirked up in a teeny, tiny, barely noticeable smile.

“Thanks,” she mouthed, “And welcome home.”