Author's note: This story shares many plot elements with "The Hunt", by Sinister Shadow. However, we conceived our ideas independently and this is not meant to be a plagiarism of her work. For more information, please visit her forum.

Chapter 1

My name is Cassie.

Such a simple sentence, with no way of conveying the complexity behind all the other times I'd written it. Yet in retrospect, maybe the war was simpler.

Not for me, of course. I had to deal with the reality of killing long before it sunk into the others. While they shrouded their last names in the pride of fighting an undercover war, I remained acutely aware of everything I'd done.

They were gone. I doubted they could reclaim their idealism. Or, for that matter, that I had any chance at mine. I barely remembered it.

I did what I could, though, trying to forgive Jake for excluding me. This involved throwing myself into work. And kneeling in mud, tape recorder in one hand, notebook and pen in the other, I was at work. In a job where spelling counted.

"Hamee," Toby patiently explained to Ronnie and I. "Ham is a human food, yes? And you have the letter Y to make the ee sound, like in my first name. H-A-M-Y."

"No," Ronnie argued. "My name is R-O-N-N-I-E. The I-E makes the ee sound. Just like in Cassie's name. English has many ways to make the same sound."

"And why are we spelling in English?" she challenged.

"Do you have an alternate idea?"

"Were my people ever consulted as to how to construct this memorial? Did we specify how we wanted it to be set up? Who asked-"

"Quiet, Toby." Her mother, Ket Halpak, strolled over, holding a messy bundle in her hands. "Give friend Ronnie barkgrass."

"Mommy!"

"Yes?"

"I don't want to give Ronnie barkgrass!"

They began arguing, sliding between languages. Ronnie was somewhat amused as he jotted down the details of the conversation.

"What's barkgrass?" I whispered. From a bad angle, I craned to see what was nothing more or less than bark. Wrapped in grass.

"I have no idea. Toby, what do you want?"

"You ask now?" she taunted disdainfully. Really seemed to taunt: with her heightened intelligence came dangerous capacities, ones she rarely used.

"I'm sorry. I'm just doing my best."

"Take barkgrass," Ket urged again.

"No!" Toby turned on her gently. "Ronnie, don't take it."

"Could you explain what it means to you?"

Toby wilted visibly.

"You don't have to use English. Any language you want."

"It means that we're not going to establish the original question. Why does the spelling of names matter when my people are being "honored" with a memorial they cannot appreciate?"

"I'm trying to help you, if you would only tell me what you want."

"I'm trying to tell you something." Half an echo, half an eerie distortion, Toby shot Ronnie's pleading back at him.

"Share!" Ket pressed the barkgrass towards them.

"It cannot help us, Mama." Toby strode off as Ket watched helplessly.

"Teenage rebellion?" Ronnie hypothesized coolly.

"I don't think so: I don't really know how old she is, by her people's standards." Conscious of the attention, I waved Ronnie towards a rocky outcrop.

"It might have been delayed by the pressures put on her: she's not normal, by their standards or ours."

"It's not like everyone has a "stage", though."

"I don't know," he laughed. "When I was twelve, I announced that I was running away and becoming a hippie."

I laughed. "And how long did that last?"

"Less than three days." I twitched. "I realized that I'd forgotten my dog. My parents had been taking care of him the whole time."

With nothing to say, I gazed out over the valley.

He nudged me. "So? I don't get to hear about your revolt?"

"Ronnie," I reminded him, more icily than I intended, "I didn't exactly have a normal adolescence either."

"Eh? Oh…yeah, that's right." Sometimes I couldn't tell if he was really as stupid as he could come across as, or if he was trying to distract me from what had scarred my teenage years.

"That being said," I reminisced slowly, "I did run away…"

"Ha!" he exulted.

"From the war. Less than three days, though I was gone a lot longer."

"Huh?"

"Haven't I ever told you about Aftran?"

"Aftran?" He forced the unfamiliar name out uncomfortably, without even adding "no".

"I guess not." My sentence was humorous, but I didn't laugh. Aftran was too serious for that.

He laughed, though, a simple boyish chortle. "Do I get to hear?"

Get to…He was so easygoing and kind, not harsh or pushy. "Sure: it's not like it's a big secret or anything."

He smiled. "Bring it on."

"Well, I saved this girl from a leopard, but she caught me in wolf morph. It turned out she was the host of Aftran 942-"

"A Yeerk saw you in morph?" he interrupted. "Why didn't you ever tell me this?"

I tried to recall whether I had talked about Aftran in my book. I hadn't had much to say about morphing caterpillar, though I mentioned "natural morphing" in the appendix. With Karen still a minor, her privacy was important. Not interested in "you didn't ask" or some other humorous reply, I tried to regain my thread of thought exactly where I'd left off. "who would found the Yeerk Peace Movement."

Ronnie stared blankly at me. "The what?"

Very good idea I hadn't brought up my time as a nothlit. "A movement of Yeerks who opposed taking involuntary hosts. You remember meeting Illim?" I prodded.

"Oh…yeah," he said vaguely, as if he had no such recollection but didn't want me to press him.

"She helped-save Ax's life." My voice cracked a little as I remembered what good it had done in the long run.

Ronnie was by now totally confused. I didn't bother to explain: I didn't think he'd have been able to understand.

We stood in silence until he asked, "Ready to leave?"

"Oh? Yeah, I guess so."

"You should give me the morphing power: it would be a lot faster."

I knew Ronnie a lot better than I knew most people, but still couldn't quite tell whether he was making a joke. "Now that we have photon engines in our cars, they don't pollute." This had been another trade from the Andalites, with the human contribution being the cacao plant.

Ronnie knew better than to argue with me on environmental issues. We walked down the mountain to where our car was stowed and left silently, tire tracks spraying the barkless grass with mud.