Ryder wasn’t a huge fan of going outside, but the streets this morning had been nice and quiet, and they’d felt a certain motivation to go and stretch their legs today. They’d been walking for about an hour now, wandering the beach and then the forest, drifting like a dandelion seed in the wind. Where were they going? Hell if they knew, it wasn’t like they remembered all the interesting destinations Avery liked to bring them to. They were just walking. Walking and thinking.

The pine needles shifted in a soft carpet underneath their feet, barely making a sound as they trod across them at a relaxed pace. They could hear the soft burbling of the stream beside them, the path of which they’d been following for a mile or so.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been somewhere so calming. I should do this more often. It’s nice.

Ryder paused, tilting their head back to gaze up at the towering trees above them, the branches of the redwoods filtering the light of the rising sun down to dapple the ferns and glint across the water. It looked like the stream was coming alive with tiny shooting stars, zipping along with the current and out of sight. Brushing their beloved blue-grey cloak back over their shoulders so they didn’t get it wet, they crouched down and reached out to dip their fingers in the water, just to check the temperature. 

“RYDER!”

Ryder nearly fell face first into the water with a startled cry halfway between a grunt and a “Jesus Christ!” as the sound of a familiar voice tore through the otherwise peaceful air. A shape in a yellow-striped shirt was coming up the little hill behind them and scrambling to their side. Ryder recognized the figure instantly.

“Cecelia?”

They didn’t know the kid well, but they remembered her name, and spoke it with immediate concern. Was something wrong? She had to be around 14, maybe 15 years old. Why was she shouting their name? A kid would only do that to a near-stranger if something was seriously wrong. Where were her legal guardians?

Cecelia fell to her knees in the pine needles next to them, gesturing frantically with her hands. “What the heck is going on in this town? I was trying to find you and Avery yesterday but instead I saw a weird guy with a triangle head and he looked at me and it gave me a headache and-”

“Slow down. Slow down,” Ryder placated instinctually, lowering their voice to the same soothing tone they used whenever Avery was having a particularly rough day. They gestured with their hands like they were trying to calm a scared horse. “What’s going on? One detail at a time.”

It looked like it physically pained Cecelia to pause and slow down her stream of words, but she did. Sitting back and forcing herself to wave her hands around less, she tried again. “I was looking for you and Avery up here after school yesterday, since I had questions about the town. Except you weren’t there – which I guess I should’ve expected – and instead there were these two people.”

“Okay. And who were these people?”

“I don’t know. One of them was, like, a talking lizard lady and the other had a triangle for a head. Kind of like the Illuminati symbol? They were saying something about giants, and then I accidentally made eye contact with the triangle guy and got the worst headache of my life.”

Oh. Those guys. Shit, okay, how do I explain this?

Ryder had to think fast, mind whirring with options while they tried to find the best one. Okay. Make sure she knows she’s not in danger. What’s a thing I can relate them to that she’ll understand? I could say the MIB, but maybe that’s too dated for her to get. She looks like she’d like those movies, though.

Well, as their parent always said, you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs – and you can’t explain something to a kid without making a few references they might not get. Puzzles didn’t get solved without trial and error.

Ryder sighed, shifting to actually sit on the stream’s bank while they spoke. “Those are Isosceles and Amanda,” they began, trying to figure out how to explain what they knew. “They’re not dangerous, don’t worry. Have you ever watched any of the Men in Black movies? The one where they make people forget about seeing aliens?”

“Uhh… Yeah? I think so?”

“Great. Isosceles and Amanda are kind of like the Men in Black or the FBI.”

Cecelia raised an eyebrow. “… You’re saying they find aliens?”

Man, this kid was taking this new information surprisingly well for someone who had been ranting about how confused she was only a minute or so ago. Ryder found it pretty impressive – most newcomers to Oakwood had a much rougher time comprehending the town’s open bizarreness. “Kind of. They work for the government and look into things like aliens and ghosts.”

Cecelia nodded, moving to sit criss-cross-applesauce and looking at Ryder with intent, curious brown eyes. “Okay. So they’re…”

“Researchers. Like people who track whales to learn about them.”

Something flickered across the young lady’s features, closely related to disappointment, though Ryder couldn’t really fathom why. “Do they know anything ab-”

“Cecelia?” a young male voice called, and the girl jolted and whipped her head around to look behind her. “Come on, we have to leave for school in like 30 minutes. Less than, actually.”

“Coming!” she called, scrambling to her feet, but she was a second too late. The head of a young man with soft but analytical green eyes and curly ginger hair crested the same hill she’d come up when she approached Ryder. He was focused mostly on her at first, asking something about their father wanting to know if she had all her stuff ready, but Ryder knew the inevitable was coming.

The inevitable, the reaction to which they figured was about to be much less manageable than Cecelia’s had been.

It was way too early in everyone’s morning for this.

Roving green eyes locked onto their pale, pearly ones before widening in shock and a hint of fear. “HOLY SHIT!” The boy squawked, almost falling over backwards before Cecelia grabbed him and held him steady. “What the fuck is that?! Cecelia, what the fuck is that?!?!”

“Calm down! It’s fine!” Cecelia hissed indignantly, reaching up a hand in an attempt to shut him up. “You’re gonna scare the living daylights out of Dad!”

To their credit, Ryder scrambled to their feet and brushed themself off. They did not want to be around for whatever conversation was about to occur, and they’d be lying if they said they weren’t a bit freaked out themself – albeit for different reasons.

What kind of question is so big that a teenager wants to ask a government agent about it? What was she going to say?

Ryder was missing a piece to a puzzle their gut told them was a very, very important puzzle, and that disturbed them more than they liked to admit. Weird things were commonplace in Oakwood, but some anomalies were worse than others, and some entities were known to pose a threat. Ryder sifted through the catalogue they kept in their mind while the two siblings had some kind of flurried back-and-forth in the background. She’d said something about giants – huge elementals different from the legendary creature of the same name – but something in their intuition told Ryder that wasn’t it. Maybe she’d stumbled across someone with a frightening visage, but no real threat factor. Trevor, maybe? Or perhaps Georgio, or maybe one of the gods… they’d have to ask around later. With luck, they’d be correct in their assumption, because the other option meant she’d encountered something potentially much less amicable with humans. Something like a Hidebehind or Not-Deer.

“YOU’RE TELLING ME WE MOVED TO A HAUNTED TOWN FULL OF CREATURE-PEOPLE?!” came the alarmed cry from behind Ryder, jolting them from their frantic reverie. The boy was throwing his hands in the air and looking like he’d forgotten to bring home the mayonnaise from the grocery list in a comedy show – in other words; a mixture of alarmed and incredulous. “I THOUGHT- CECELIA, THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!”

“I know! I know it doesn’t, Leroy! Just- Just calm down, okay?! Calm down!”

“HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CALM DOWN?!”

“BREATHE, NUMBNUTS!”

The brunette grabbed her brother by the shoulders, holding him firmly and looking into his eyes. “It’s fine. It’s okay. It’s fine,” she soothed, sounding like she meant to reassure both him and herself. “I know it’s weird, I know it’s scary, but we’re not in danger. We’re not in danger, Leroy. We’re okay.”

After a moment, the redhead – Leroy, based on Ryder’s observations – slumped a little, breathing growing slower. “You owe me so much explanation later.”

“Okay, okay, just promise not to tell Dad yet.”

Leroy looked at Cecelia with all the disgruntlement of someone who had been told to find a lost item at the bottom of a lake by drinking the whole thing, but conceded nonetheless. “Okay. Fine. I won’t tell Dad.”

“Pinkie promise? On your honor?”

“Pinkie promise, on my honor.”

The two children linked pinkie fingers for a moment, then separated and took a deep breath. Cecelia glanced over to Ryder, and looked pleasantly surprised to see them still there. Taking a deep breath like she was about to begin an important presentation at a business meeting, she stepped forward.

“Leroy, this is Ryder,” she said, looking her brother in the eyes and indicating Ryder with one hand. “I bumped into them back here the other day. They’re nice. Ryder, this is Leroy,” now her hands switched to indicate the redhead as she looked into Ryder’s eyes. “He’s my brother. I met him when I was born.”

‘I met him when I was born’ was an oddly specific detail to add, but Ryder found a certain charm in the attempt at humor behind it. They hardly knew her, but Cecelia already struck Ryder as very clever. They dipped their head in acknowledgement. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Leroy blinked at them a couple times, like he couldn’t believe they were talking, but then quickly reciprocated the gesture with an awkward, sweetly sheepish smile. “You too.”

Silence.

… This is why I don’t like talking to people.

As it turns out, when two introverts talk to each other, there is a very high chance that they will simply stop talking and feel too awkward to try breaking the silence. This was why Ryder kept to themself, and why they usually went out with Avery if they knew they were going to be socializing a lot. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been prepared today, and Avery was unavailable, which meant that they had fallen into the age-old trap and it was up to them to rescue themself.

As Ryder tried to put together a sentence that would excuse them from the situation without sounding rude, their salvation came in the form of a third voice. 

“KIDS! TIME TO GO!”

The sound of an adult man calling for the two children – presumably his – acted as a starter pistol to Cecelia and Leroy. “COMING!” Cecelia called back. She glanced over her shoulder at Ryder and waved goodbye, then rocketed back down the hill with all the agility of a gazelle. Leroy glanced between her and Ryder, then cautiously descended the hill by sliding on his butt.

Huh. They act like me and Avery did as kids, Ryder thought, watching them go. A soft laugh bubbled up from their chest, and they let a smile creep across their face. They adjusted their hood, snuggling back into the fabric, and turned away to continue further into the woods.

I hope they have a good day at school.