One big A/N, and you'll pretty much never hear from me again:
I'm 35, married with a kid, and work in construction (hence, a terrible pottymouth). Why am I writing this?
Short answer: Because idgaf.
Long(er) answer: Because I've got a thing for Korean dudes, an obsession with reverse harems, a yen to fight the Power, and, damnit, girls are great.
A few notes about the story: It is already complete with new chapters released every Friday. Chapters are generally at least 5,000 words a piece, so settle in and enjoy.
This is an alternate timeline (of an alternate timeline—ooh, trippy). It takes place one month after Thomas' arrival. Alby has already survived the Changing (which does not return memories in my story), and Thomas is already elected a Runner. I have taken a few liberties with the orientation of things in the Glade, kind of an amalgamation of the book and the movie, and it's no longer underground (I like the drama real elements impart).
And I have also removed the mind-control element from WICKED because it always felt counterintuitive to me that a scientist would want to limit the abilities of her subjects. I could expound on this forever and wax scientific, but you don't care. Whatever, I do what I want!
On a less dramatic note, there be swearing and smut in these thar pages. These are teenagers we're talking about, and I'm a grown-ass woman—damnit! Earmuffs and blindfolds are available at the beginning of any extra naughty chapters if you feel compelled to skip (aka, I'll let you know).
Oh, and each chapter lists a song that inspired at least one moment in that chapter (lyrics often have nothing to do with it, be forewarned), so if you're feeling inclined, go listen (though most of the songs are in Korean because, after a decade, it borders on an obsession for me). Finally, thanks for reading!
(x-posted under the same screenname on Wattpad because of Fanfiction's anti-smut rules. I will let you know when you can find the naughtiest chapters there.)
Chapter One
B.A.P. – Wake Me Up
She awoke to the persistent hiss of wind and to a papery rustling she couldn't quite place, like the edge of a memory of a memory. There was a buzz, too, or rather a hum, a murmur, closer but still unfamiliar. She pinched her eyes tighter shut and, with a long inhale, stretched from fingertip to toe, enjoying the tingles that traveled up and down her body as they awakened long-dormant limbs.
More murmuring, louder now and closer, too.
"Slim it, you slintheads," growled a deep voice staked with unquestionable authority, and the hum subsided.
Was that even English? Wait, was she thinking in English? Things were fuzzy, like trying to listen to a conversation underwater or opening her eyes in a pool full of chlorine, and not just the nonsense spewing from the ring leader's mouth. Everything was muddled, from the scratchy fabric chafing the small of her back to the humid air that pressed like a weight onto her chest.
She opened her eyes. A ring of masculine faces, dirty and rugged, hovered over her like she was a specimen on an examination table. Eyes of every hue and shape peered down at her, with each emotion on the spectrum represented: fear, curiosity, annoyance, lust, hope. Suspicion. So much suspicion in the eyes of the chocolate-skinned man whose face took precedence over them all.
Above them, a thatched ceiling tapered upward, the weave so tight she couldn't see what might lay beyond it, but light filtered in from somewhere as muted orange warmed each smudged visage. It softened hard jaw lines but intensified cautious glares, lighting little fires of concern in their whites.
Where was she?
Who was she?
The realization, or rather the lack of, came as swiftly as her response to it. She had forgotten her identity, but she had not forgotten how to run.
A heartbeat. Two. By the third, she was thundering through the crowd, and by the fourth, she burst forth into a world of light and color. Color, so much color. Green overwhelmed her. She was engulfed by it, a thousand different shades of it—pear, mint, moss, pine, lime, olive—each more bewildering than the last. It was foreign and familiar all at the same time. The only things she had of her past life were yellows and browns and grays and blacks on the perimeter of her memory. Green made her feet stutter and her heart skip. Her battered sneakers slipped on grass already harvesting dew for an evening cocktail of its own, and she pitched forward. Her fingertips grazed the unkempt emerald mop in a runner's stance, and with the ensemble of voices behind her louder than any pistol, she launched forward, a loosed arrow barreling toward a murky target.
Escape was her only option. She wasn't safe here; how could she be safe here? She needed to get there, a swelling doorway in the distance, the black bastion directly ahead of her. She didn't know green, but she knew black. She had just awoken from it. If she could get back to it, maybe she would reemerge on the other side of this nightmare.
At first, she'd been so spellbound by all the green that she hadn't noticed the great walls beyond it, but now all she could she were walls. Looming, soaring, around her body and in her head without break. They were as much a character here as the urgent voices echoing off them. There was only one fracture she could focus on, and she was closing in on it.
The voices behind her grew more distant with every footfall, but their tenor became more desperate. Over the roar of blood in her ears, she couldn't make out much, but there was no mistaking the chants of "Stop! Stop!"
Like an escaped rabbit, she alighted across the perfect expanse of verdure. Her knees pumped high and her arms jackhammered. Her breath came in firm gusts like a pneumatic gun. It wasn't just fear that propelled her forward, but her quest for an identity. She felt certain that somewhere beneath those gathering shadows she would find who she was. She wasn't going to stop.
Ahead of her, two silhouettes materialized from the blackness. They were warmer grays now, and they shimmered along her horizon as split egg yolk orange oozed over the perimeter of the wall.
As if waiting for that flamboyant cue, a guttural clatter echoed from the abyss beyond the wall, like the grinding of mammoth clock innards chugging to life. Stone grumbled and metal wheezed as the doorway to her destiny began to shutter.
She was close, but was she close enough?
White hot fuel pulsated through every limb, saturated every muscle, until she was nothing but single-minded combustion that could only be extinguished by the darkness.
Those faraway silhouettes were people now, more young men with perplexed faces trotting habitually back to the greenery. She blew by them with only one glance to spare.
Almond eyes as toasted as the man's skin stared back at her. Coal black hair as rich as an animal's hide ruffled as he ran. A flare of something—surprise, maybe recollection—twitched at the corner of his full lips. His broad chest and shoulders stretched against his filthy shirt, and his biceps flexed under tattered sleeves. Though their connection was brief, somehow it lasted an eternity, long enough for her to assess the inherent danger the man posed. There was a panther under that tanned skin, and she was still a rabbit.
"Minho! Stop her!" the leader's voice boomed behind her, a cannon shot in the evening air.
Out of the corners of her eyes, she watched the Asian man skate sideways at his quick direction change, his feet shuffling under him as dew greased his wheels.
Ahead of her, the clanking heightened to a crescendo as the great stone doors prepared their conclusive clap, fingers of corded metal ready to interlace and seal them shut. She could make it—would make it.
Someone tackled her from the side, sending them both sliding across the field. Dampness permeated the back of her shirt while heat encircled her waist. She lifted her head and saw those almond eyes staring into her. There was mirth in them, triumphant joy punctuated with an incredulous laugh.
"I caught her, boys!" he whooped. His laughter was wild. "I caught my Shadow!"
Biting his lower lip, he smiled down at her, his fingertips brushing under her jawline as his hand curled around the base of her head. "I caught you. You're mine."
The doors sputtered beside her, only fifty feet away. One last gasp from them, one from her, and she could still end this the way she had hoped.
She looked back to her captor, to his crowing grin, and without another thought, she hefted her knee into the soft cavity below his rib cage. He crumpled on his side, curled up in a wheezing ball with his eyes scrunched shut, unable to bear witness to the escape of his prey.
She crawled forward for a moment until she found her legs again and rose proudly upward. But her momentum was gone, knocked out of her with her breath. She had unknowingly taken her last gasp on the ground while that arrogant man had celebrated above her. Her feet dove forward in a last-ditch hope for safety, managing a wild hobble for a few moments until her body could no longer support her, and she folded down, pathetic limb by pathetic limb, leaving her a gasping creature plucked from a deep, dark sea and tossed into a verdant meadow.
How long had it been since she'd run this fast? Had she ever? It felt like death. Every capillary constricted and her temples throbbed. Each breath roiled through her lungs like magma and spewed between her papery lips.
Her fingers grazed the cool stone of the doors as they issued their thunderous final assertion. So close, not close enough.
Footsteps behind her. Dozens of them. She didn't have the strength—or the heart—to face them. So she laid there resentfully, ass half-cocked in the air for them to kiss it.
"Son of a bitch," one of them managed—not the leader nor the panther—between huffs of strangled breath, "she's fast."
"What should we do with her, Alby?" asked another voice.
There was an agonizing stint of silence as her ribs flared and her lips sucked in dew. She couldn't will her body to move, but her newly keen ears detected the scratch of a thumb over late-day chin stubble. The dominant baritone she already recognized sucked his teeth once and said, "She's a Greenie, same as we all were. Bring the she bean back, Minho, provided you can pick yourself up."
Chuckles rumbled around her, followed by a growl tinged with the lingering bitterness of burned coffee. The footsteps receded, and the iron chains that constricted her chest eased back a few links at a time until she unleashed her own defeated groan. It was the first time she had heard her own voice, well, that she could remember, softly feminine with the slightest hint of a warm rasp curling up at the end, and it sounded just as foreign as everything else.
"Shuck," came the grumble now more familiar to her than her own voice. "You're a Greenie now, huh? Figures with my shuck luck. Bastard Creators."
Her stomach lurched. The panther. He was getting up, expletives spilling from his lips as each vertebra straightened. She heard the crick of his shoulder rolling back into place and the squeal of leather straps pulling taut over his chest.
Her body's response to him was immediate. Though she had little left in her adrenaline reserves, her toes curled under as her legs buckled and straightened, buckled and straightened, a newborn foal standing for the first time.
"Don't even think about it," he stated flatly. She had yet to turn around, but she could tell from the tone of his voice that his arms were folded across his chest.
She limped around to face her captor. His gaze was unflinching, surprise no longer creasing the otherwise smooth planes of his round cheeks; there was more annoyance there than anything else.
She glanced down at herself for the first time, spying only a grass-stained tank top now yanked scandalously low over her breasts and a pair of sodden cargo pants that weighed her down almost as much as her loss of her identity.
She returned her attention to the panther, who had not moved a millimeter. Her hands trembled at her side as her body betrayed her show of defiance. She clenched her fists.
"I'm not afraid of you, you know," she said at last, shocked that she even remembered how to speak when nothing else of her seemed to remain.
"I know," he replied matter-of-factly. "The shaking will go away once you finish your adrenaline withdrawals."
She made no response.
"Let's go," he ordered as he unsnapped the hooks that secured a small backpack to him and looped it over his left shoulder.
She took a wobbly step forward, but without preamble, he turned, backed into her, and folded her over his empty shoulder as effortlessly as a sack of potatoes.
"I can walk," she barked into his ear and thrashed, but his arm coiled around her ass and siphoned away her final burst of energy.
"If I wanted to get back by midnight, I'd let you. As it is, you've lost your walking privileges. And no more kicking today, or I'll drag you back by your hair."
She sagged over his shoulder. There was no more point arguing because he was right. By itself, standing had been a challenge, but when she looked up, she saw how far she had run in the first place. Wherever she was, it was huge. Sweeping tracts of open meadow fanned out into a crescent of trees that eventually hugged back against those soaring walls. The only thing to soften their gray faces were the crocodile green veins of tenacious vines, lending eerie life to stone giants. Far ahead of them strode a group of about ten men, her former pursuers. Even with their sizeable lead back to their encampment, they were little more than halfway there themselves. No way she would have made it back before dark, let alone by the middle of the night, especially when she was struggling to even hold her head alert.
From her aerial perch, she smelled sweat and salt and a pungent tang of a hard day of labor. When the breeze kicked up again, notes of moist earth and encroaching night darkened her nostrils. This world—her new world—was primal and grounded.
By the time they had reached the point where she had originally spotted the other men, her trembling had subsided, but now her abdomen ached from the grind of the panther's sinewy shoulder. He, too, grunted more frequently and consistently readjusted her over him.
"I can walk now," she reasserted.
"I'm sure you can," was his only reply.
Night arrived on gradual wings of azure, navy, and raven. The deeper they plunged into the curtain of darkness, the sharper the pinpoints of starlight pricked through until chandeliers of faint blue flickered above them. A fleshy rainbow of galaxy unfurled overhead, emitting a ghostly pallor to her human taxi's profile. He didn't spare the natural wonder a single glance.
She endured the last stretch to the huts through winces and grunts, both her own and his, as each step he took had noticeably more bouncing and jerking, though whether it was on purpose or from fatigue, she couldn't be certain. She hadn't expected to be happy to return to the handmade wooden shack where, for all intents and purposes, she had effectively been reborn, but she was so sore and infuriated that she reveled in its knotty silhouette.
Dozens of men emerged from the shadows surrounding a central bonfire nearly as tall as the surrounding buildings. The boisterous bragging and playful hollering subsided the minute the unusual pair of travelers punctured the warm circle. Someone wolf-whistled.
"Prettiest you've looked in years, Minho," someone yelled from the crowd.
"Aw, you thought I was pretty? I'm flattered, Gally, but with a nose like yours, you've got no chance."
When she finally managed to catch sight of the stranger, she noticed that indeed Gally's nose was, to say the least, unusual with its wide, bulbous shape and lumpy texture. The dark-haired young man scowled, firelight dancing in his irises.
Another boy with tousled brown hair and tiny craters dappling his cheeks snorted. "Caveman Minho return with conquest."
She felt the muscles beneath her tender stomach undulate as she was slowly lowered down her chauffeur's back. She staggered and rubbed the expanse of her belly, noting its soft swells and the dimple of her bellybutton.
Minho stepped aside and let the relentless blaze wash her in crimson and gold. Another snake of gossip rippled around the circle as her features became clear to everyone but herself. Her skin instantly warmed both from the fire and from a flush, driving out the chill the dew and the evening had instilled.
The leader of her original pursuit, the one they called Alby, emerged from the fold with his arms neatly tucked across his chest, both hands massaging his impressive biceps. His dark skin melted with the fire, but his expression did not soften and the light only reignited that spark of suspicion already in his eyes. "This is your Shadow, huh?"
"Was," Minho amended. He did not favor her with one more glance.
Alby snorted briefly. "You know your name, she bean?"
Though her adrenaline had been consumed for the day, something within her straightened her spine despite the protestations of her ab muscles. "No."
One word from her was evidently as potent as an atomic bomb. Previously quiet murmurs erupted into a raucous frenzy as her voice played off the twisting fingers of the flames. Boys jostled against each other, hopping over each other's shoulders and shoving lanky frames out of the way. Faces of all shapes and colors leered forth like a zoetrope of souls that wasn't so much threatening as it was unnerving. There was not a woman's face to be plucked from the crowd. She felt that sideshow vibe again, like she was a unicorn being peddled by some carnival barker.
"Enough!" Alby roared, his teeth yellow with fire, and the group once again fell into a restless silence. "If you shucking shanks can't get a hold of yourselves, you'll find this entire camp without food tomorrow, you hear me?"
The crowd grumbled in assent.
Alby turned to a bearded fellow, more bush than man. "Good that, Frypan?"
The hairy man nodded. "Good that."
Satisfied, Alby returned that peerless gaze back to her and jutted his chin forward. "I'm sorry 'bout this, but we gonna have to cut this night short because these slintheads can't behave. Try not to hold it against them. Things are different this time."
She nodded once, afraid another word would set off more firecrackers.
"You come with me," he insisted, striding toward her with the same demeanor of a warden. "I'll see ya safely through the night. You can worry 'bout your name and everything else tomorrow." He pushed through the crowd and, halfway through, turned back to her. "I ain't askin', Greenie."
Relieved to see she was no longer going to be hoisted overhead like produce, she took a few cautious steps forward. She brushed by Minho, her elbow prodding the same tender flesh her knee had found earlier, and the corners of her eyes added a matching sharp look. She was rewarded with a soft grunt, but if he noticed her look, he didn't show it.
The wave of gossip closed rank behind her, sloshing overhead of the troop of young men and drowning out the crackle of logs.
Ahead of her, Alby held a torch to light their way through a thickening canopy of trees. Shadows danced across murky green boughs as the amber hues illuminated freshly crocheted dreamcatchers of spider webs. In the darkness, beyond the protective umbrella of the torch, she caught a flash of something small and red, like the eyes of some animal. She blinked, and the lights were gone, but their memory stayed crisp on the other side of her corneas like a lingering camera flash.
After some distance, and noticeably out of earshot of the others, Alby broke the strained silence between them. "It gets easier."
She said nothing.
"We have rules here, Greenie, and they help with the transition. It'll be hard being, well, what you are, but don't take nobody's klunk, and the days will get…" He paused. "More manageable."
More manageable. Like this place was a disease to be coped with, not cured.
"I know what it seemed like today, but we really do look out for each other in the Glade. We have to."
Alby said nothing more, and at last, they broke through the stand of trees and came to a single hut in the center of a small patch of grass. Overhead, the fissure of the galaxy oozed, black veins leaking ruddy luminesce like a hemorrhaging wound. Beside their feet, a few peeling stumps bucked up from the ground as rotted teeth, likely the trees that had been sacrificed for this very hut. The door to the place was ajar, waxy candlelight inside shaking its tiny fist at that willful darkness that would not relent.
Only after taking in her dismal surroundings did she notice him. Below a smaller torch, squatting on one low stump with one ankle propped on his other knee, a man with a cascade of fair blonde hair waited with a welcoming grin on his face. He didn't look as surprised to see her as his other cohorts had, and his eyes didn't widen in the same wonder. His skin was paler than most of the other men she had seen today, lending an air of fragility to him that was swiftly contradicted by the sinew that adorned his wiry frame. He was no less filthy than anyone else she had come across, yet somehow he seemed outside of this place all together. When he finally stood and strode forward, he limped heavily to one side, but his smile didn't falter.
"Oy, oy," the stranger said with an accent that she couldn't yet place. He stuck out a hand, the first sign of friendship she had received all day. "Name's Newt."
She smiled tightly without a proper response but shook his hand. She could feel chalky dirt on his fingertips and thick pads of calluses on his palm.
"No name yet, huh? S'all right. Some of us are luckier than others with that. Me, I came up with mine, though I wished I hadn't. Newt doesn't feel so proud a name as Alby or Minho."
Alby shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be Zart the Fart."
"Good that," the blonde responded, his tongue poking the corner of his mouth as he assessed her.
"Thanks," she said as she glanced between the two very different men. "For trying to make me feel better."
With raised brows, Newt said, "You caught that, huh? Enjoy it while it lasts. Alby doesn't extend such generosity for long." In response, their leader reached out one thick paw and grasped Newt by the shoulder, squeezing it just tight enough to crease the corners of the blonde's eyes. "See what I mean?"
She offered an appreciative half-smile and glanced once again at her surroundings.
"Being that it's your first night here, we figured it might be good for ya to have some company, to help ya settle in," Alby said.
"You mean keep me here?" she translated.
"Might be tough to do that. We already know you have wheels for legs, and just about the only one here who could outrun you is Minho—" Alby paused to allow her to pucker her lips in distaste. "—but seeing as you keep making that face when someone mentions his name, we'll try a different tactic—the honor system."
Newt sniggered. "Take pity on the poor limping fella, would ya?"
Their tactic was already paying off. The itch in her legs eased as if just their kindness were a medicinal balm. With brains like this, she could see why everyone looked to Alby to direct them.
"Remember when I said we have rules?" Alby added. "Trusting each other is implicit in 'em. You make it peaceably through tonight, and you start earning that trust. Then tomorrow you can start earning your keep."
"Another rule?" she asked.
"Quick learner," Newt observed.
"How many of them are there?"
Alby ticked them off on his free hand in perfect recitation: "One: Everyone does their part. No slackers. Two: Never hurt another Glader. Three: Never go outside the Glade, unless you're a Runner."
She blinked. "You can go outside?"
But Alby shook his head firmly. "No, you can't. That's the point. Now, look, we can talk more about this tomorrow," he said with finality. He shifted his torch to his other hand, and she could tell he was eager to get back to the men who had already proven difficult to corral that night. "You can relax with Newt here. He's one of the best of us."
"Us?" she asked.
"Us Gladers," Newt replied with a quirked brow. "This is the Glade, our home—for now. Bloody hell, Alby, haven't you taught this Greenie anything yet?"
The dark-skinned man swept his head from side to side in one rhythmic motion, his brow furrowing deeply. "You didn't see her. She took off faster than those shuck pigs when Winston let 'em out. Damn near as wily, too."
Newt's eyes danced at the vision of her jet to freedom, and he leaned a bit closer. "So, how'd they get ya?"
She ground her teeth audibly at the memory of her humiliating ride back to their camp, and unconsciously, she rubbed her stomach, though the sharp pains had faded to a dull ache by this point. She couldn't see herself, didn't even know what she looked like, but she knew she radiated fury.
Newt pulled back and squinted at Alby. "What'd you do to her?"
Alby balked. "We saved her from a night in the Maze. Come tomorrow, she'll thank us. Well, most of us. Prolly not Minho."
The pucker on her face at the mention of that name again was all the confirmation Newt needed. He laughed. "He'll grow on you."
"What? Like a tumor?"
Both men smiled.
Alby bid them goodnight, saving one last look for her, though it was hard to tell in the shadows what it meant. There was still suspicion there, sure enough, but it had tempered some in favor of another emotion—worry, maybe.
As the forest snuffed out the gold of Alby's torch, the world shrank to the much smaller circle of Newt's own light. "It's a little dark," he said after a moment, "but I'll do my best to give you the grand tour."
He gestured with his hand for her to move forward, and she entered a hut that looked nearly the same as the one from which she had awoken only a few hours earlier, though, admittedly, in her haste, she hadn't gotten a great look at that one. This hut was one roughly square room, with large gaps in between each branch that composed its walls, though it was enough to break the wind that still shook the canopy around them. There was one small window on either end of the hut, only large enough to afford a reasonable panorama of their surroundings. The floor was dirt, and even in the wan candlelight, she could see it billow up from her shoes.
"We're a bit south of the Homestead, where everybody else sleeps. This one was never really meant to house anyone, but then we've never had a girl here either. Sorry for the sparse supplies."
Newt wasn't kidding. A hammock made of stained canvas and frayed rope sagged between two stocky support posts. There was a rustic table with enough room for the candlestick, a jug of water, and a pack of some sort of hard tack cracker. No chairs, no shelves, no stocks of any kind.
Newt nodded toward the crackers. "That was the best Frypan could rustle up at this late hour, so I'm sorry to say you'll have to wait until breakfast for something better."
She didn't care. She lunged for the crackers and began shoving them into her face with total disregard for any assumed manners or custom. Newt didn't seem to mind, but he did seem to be waiting for something—that twitch of an oncoming grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. A moment later, it hit her.
She choked on the powdery explosion that detonated in her mouth as her teeth pulverized the crackers. They were drier than desert air and just about as sandy. The jug of water made a lot more sense now. She dove for it and tilted her head back, pouring the liquid directly onto the tumbleweed gathered in the corner of her mouth. It changed the texture of the ball to something more like a paste, no more appetizing but at least capable of being swallowed.
He laughed at the boys' little hazing ritual. "They'll fill you up all right, if you can ever get them down."
"What was that Alby just said about trust?" she wheezed, beating her fist between her collar bones.
Newt gave her a minute to recover herself, and when he saw she'd make no more attempts at a bedtime snack, he bowed his head. "You'll want to snuff out the candle as soon as you're ready. We're always short on resources here, so save what you can."
"Thanks, Mom," she quipped, feeling more herself—wait, was her self usually this snarky?—than she had since she'd awoken.
"We'll make a Glader out of you yet, I think," Newt said. "I'll be right outside should you need anything. Just promise me you won't leave."
His last words hung heavy, almost as if they were a dreary decoration nailed to the wall. There was caution in them and, this time, unmistakable worry. His eyes held hers, as good as a contract written in blood between them, and she said, "Good that."
His teeth flashed with his surprise. "You do catch on quick, she bean. I wonder what this place will make of you."
Newt turned toward the door and headed out, one footfall distinctly heavier than the other. He paused in the frame and said over his shoulder, "Goodnight, Greenie." He dragged the door shut, and its base swept the floor with the soft whisk of a broom.
Greenie. Evidently, she was green now, too, a part of this bold new world and no longer a part of her muted old one, wherever it had been. Her body thrummed with anxiety but also anticipation.
She blew out the candle and eased into the hammock, testing its sturdiness slowly before allowing her body to collapse into it. Where mere hours ago she had welcomed the blackness beyond the walls, thinking it would bring her to some clarifying light on the other side, now that blackness surrounded her, it felt more oppressive than comforting. There was nothing welcoming about a sea without break or a sky without horizon. It was lonely and isolating, and she was thankful to hear the shuffle of Newt's boots on the other side of the hut.
Her cradle swayed lightly with the cadence of her natural rhythms, but any memories of a mother's love had been robbed from her, and so the motion felt more dizzying than anything. The wings of the hammock were too wide for her small frame, and they cupped her until she could only see a small sliver of the thatched roof. The canvas molded to her as a caterpillar in its chrysalis.
Transformation. Hours ago she had been a rabbit, then a fish, a foal, and finally a unicorn. Who would she be by morning?
I wonder what this place will make of you.