"Ophelia!"

Aster burst through the darkness brandishing a stick. They were thirteen at the time, converging on twelve. By some metrics, metrics they'd never believed in, that was too young to be out. The others were asleep in their beds.

Most of the others.

"Ophelia!"

Two gleaming eyes cut the dark. Snarling vines fell despondently on either side as Aster continued hacking away. The stick at this point had taken its fair share of hits, the seawood brittle and fracturing, and Aster was beginning to receive a similarly concerning amount of damage. Beneath almost formless feet, spiked leaves crunched and writhed, tearing up any tender flesh they could dig their teeth into. Aster's face twitched slightly, the freckle-like spores on their face crumpling, but their eyes remained emotionless, fixed with desperation on the path ahead.

At Aster's side, a small creature darted forwards, half her already unthreatening height. It was made taller only by a rack of horns, which complemented a wiry frame only offset by thick back legs. Its long ears angled about as it scanned the surroundings with the same intensity Aster did, but, like its master, it found nothing in the dark.

"Gota?"

The Owai was not particularly well trained, but it seemed to recognize, behind its watery eyes and its twitching nose, a sense of urgency. It raised its head to get the scent.

"Gota?" Aster repeated, bending down, curved as to approach the beast without spooking it.

The Owai sniffed the air twice. The rumbling of distant animals stilled to a placid silence, the air like the surface of an unstirred lake. There was even that rank, almost sweet scent Aster associated with water, with Ophelia. They both smelled it. Aster's eyes darted to the Owai, but instead of returning their gaze, the Owai dashed forwards, and Aster's small heart rose with the sudden thrill of the chase. They had played games like this, before, but then they were games. There was a difference between chases that felt real and chases that were real, and Aster learned it now, in their heart.

Vines snuck themselves against their skin as they abandoned all caution, their rush becoming fueled not by any conscious input from their own body but a reckless, fearful and joyful inertia. It seemed with every moment that the scent grew stronger, that Ophelia's hair might be caught in the branches, that they were close, against all odds, and then they hit the edge of the lake. Water-scent overwhelmed Aster, who stared out across the still waters, and the Owai padded back to Aster. As they were still young, they thought they recognized in the animal a kindred distress. They knelt down again, but this time, relinquishing any attempt to hold with what they had been taught, they grabbed the tawny animal as hard as they could. A soft, shuddering sob rose out of their throat, and the Owai began to keen.

Aster almost jolted back. The Owai were known only to make noise when one of their pack had died. The lake scent turned from sweet to pungent, like spoiled fruit, and Aster's eyes widened with realization. They rose, legs trembling, and stumbled forth into the lake, which gleamed silver beneath the watchful eye of thousands of stars and dozens of small moons. There was no body to be found in the shallows, and looking out across the expanse, towards the waters that seemed infinite to someone so young, they thought for a moment of pure denial that they might have to search all of them, and then, rushing in behind that, was the realization that there was no way they could. Still, numbly, they waded, their ragged clothing filling with murk and mutable pockets of air.

On the shore, the Owai was still keening, loudly, pacing at the edge. Aster looked back at it, numb with gratitude as they were with distress, and slowly, they lifted their own voice to join it.

Oh, why... oh, why...

It was morning when they found them, bleeding, the large beast wrapped around the small one, imitator and Owai, both of them with jaded eyes and a fierce snarl. Aster was drenched through, sticky with the silver sediment of the lake. Cyspel, Keeper Covena of the local Siida Cove and by extension the guardian of anyone with more than ten years remaining, dragged Aster up to their feet. Cyspel, who was down to two years remaining, bore precious little semblance to the blank slate that Aster's body was. They were adorned in scales and bore on their head a pair of large, dawn-pink fins, which now caught the light of the rising sun. They smelled, like the lake, sweet to a fault, but there was a more nurturing scent in the mix, like the milk the Covena harvested from the nursing Owai, when they could. Somewhat sullenly, Aster went limp in Cyspel's arms, although their expression remained intent.

"Ophelia's somewhere out there," Aster insisted. They picked their stick up with their feet and brandished it again, threateningly, skywards. "We have to go find them. They could be lost. They could be hurt."

Cyspel stared out over the lake. "We aren't supposed to go after them if they leave, Aster."

Aster scowled. "And why not?"

"Everyone deserves a chance to decide their destiny for themselves."

Aster scowled harder.

Cyspel, who could only see Aster's expression out of the corner of their downcast gaze, shrouded as it was by their tangled, matted hair, rubbed a mutated hand against Aster's head. Aster made a soft hissing noise, more like the local fauna than their own kind, and Cyspel, used to this, hoisted her upwards.

"Don't," Aster said. They slammed a leg against Cyspel's chest. "Don't you dare! I have to wait for Ophelia! I have to be there when they come home--"

Cyspel kept walking. Only the leaves offered up a response, as they were flustered again by Cyspel and the Owai bounding along at their feet. It was a shorter walk than Aster remembered, shorter by far than it had seemed by night, back to the Cove, which was a ramshackle cabin which had been built halfway into an abandoned coral structure and patched over and expanded so many times it was impossible to tell what the original shape had been. Aster kicked Cyspel again, half-heartedly. Cyspel did not release them until they arrived in the medic's den, where Raja, the medic, was already pacing. They had their dark hair back in a long braid, and their eyes, all four of them, glared darkly out of their stone-smooth complexion. They pulled soft webbing out of a compartment in their holed body, which was stocked with many such small indentations, and knelt down besides Aster, who snarled on the floor.

Raja stared up at Cyspel. "Must they do that?"

Cyspel sighed. "They went after Ophelia."

"Ophelia's coming back. They wouldn't leave without me," Aster said. Stubbornly, upon receiving no response from either of their elders, they reiterated, "They wouldn't!"

Raja pressed several fingers against their forehead, then moved to hold Aster down with a gentle but insistent hold at the shoulder, applying webbing single-handedly to several nasty gashes.

"They're not healing," Aster informed Raja, proudly.

Raja, applying webbing to the wound, cast Aster an incredulous glare. "Is that so?"

Aster offered only a swift kick in response, which Raja managed to dodge only by heartbeats. "I don't want them to heal," Aster promised. "So they won't. I'll keep them until Ophelia comes back, and then they'll see my scars, and they'll know-- they'll know I'd do anything to find them again. They'll know I was always waiting for them." Aster's voice shook with the last few words, but out of young, defiant eyes, they stared as if challenging not Raja but the situation itself, the whole universe, to dispute the claim. A slight smile graced their face, their chin rising with a dignity unbefitting of a child caked in pond scum, silt, and blood. "Do whatever you want. You'll see."

Most of the wounds healed.

But not all.

Raja would claim, for almost a lunar traversal and the cluster of days that accompanied it, that the cut to Aster's ankle was only slightly infected, that, no matter how Aster boasted to the other dependents in the Cove, the wound would be gone soon. Cyspel was similarly adamant, but they couldn't keep their eyes off the ankle wound, couldn't help noticing that not only was it deepening, but that it was darkening, growing almost pitchlike. For a while the whole Covena feared amputation, but for all the wound grew, it did not seem to bother Aster at all.

At last, on their birthday, the Covena were forced to get out the celebratory ornamentation for the first mutation. Aster bounced back and forwards, seemingly undeterred by the large, dark cut on the back of their ankle, which as promised, never healed. Their unmutated companions watched on in awe, as almost everyone approaching thirteen or younger had not yet received a single distinguishing marking on their bodies, set apart only by a change in eye, hair, or skin color, and even then, only slightly. Amongst them, spore-ridden, gash-footed Aster, who had taken it upon themself to bandage their leg in a way that emphasized the scar instead of hid it, was a singularity, and they revelled in it. Uneasy Covena prepared the usual coral brittles, brought out the usual furs, and let Aster enjoy the celebrations, but there was none of the usual somewhat condescending praise when some young member of their number might grow the first nubs of horns, unveil some strange patch of fur or scales, or eagerly show off the appendages that might become wings. There was only the dark, spore-stained wound on the back of Aster's leg, unhealing, and Aster, gleam-eyed, enthralled with it.

As Aster crunched through their fifth serving of coral brittle, they thought of the lake, of the scent of Ophelia commingling with the waters they had loved enough to join, and Aster sensed something on the edge of their vision, a stranger who should have been invited. As the ghostly after-image escaped their mind, the scar on the back of their leg glowed blue.