Right as the moon was overhead, Dylan woke me up. I attempted to bat his hand away sleepily, but he simply pushed it away and said quietly, "It's your watch."

I pushed myself up, yawning. Blinking, I settled against the cave wall so I could look outside and watch the moon.

It was really, really boring actually. No animals came in the direction of the cave, so there was no one to talk to. I sighed with boredom and faced Dylan.

He was curled into a ball, like the way I slept. His wings were semi-wrapped around him, like a blanket. He wasn't using the backpacks as pillows like I had.

I watched him sleep for a few minutes, feeling a bit stalker-ish while I did so… Watching people sleep is quite a stalking move.

Turning back towards the cave front, I had a thought. Maybe, just maybe… if I can transform fully into an animal, could I do partial transformations too?

Concentrating on my hand, I fixed in my mind the image of a wolf paw. I got the glow, like normal, on my fingertips, where the ripples of light kept spreading over my body seeing as I wasn't transforming. Yet.

Thinking hard, I started the transformation, slowed to a crawl this time. My energy didn't get depleted. Hmm… I was focusing enough that only my hand that I was holding up started to change.

Fur grew on it, dark and coarse. My claws were forced out, shortened, and dulled. My fingers became shorter too. Then it was a wolf's paw. I smiled, only to realized with shock that the change continued to creep up my arm.

I gritted my teeth, and with an enormous effort stopped it in its tracks. Holding the transformation there made me tired, so I reverted my hand to human form. Turning my now human hand around, I clenched my fingers, watching the way they moved.

A hiss of frustration escaped my lips. I can't do partial transformations, I thought, not yet.

When the first bits of color flooded the sky, I shook Dylan gently awake. "Dylan," I murmured, "We gotta go, like, now."

Dylan muttered something incomprehensible and waved a hand at me. I rolled my eyes and shook his shoulder. He still didn't respond.

I went to one of the backpacks and foraged inside, eventually finding what I was looking for: one of our many bottles of water.

Unscrewing the lid, I padded over to Dylan and slowly but deliberately poured a stream of the clear liquid onto his forehead.

Dylan sat up so fast that his now-wet hair flung droplets very far. His eyes flew open, wide and blue.

As for me? Well, I cracked up. Setting the water bottle back down carefully, I sat down and laughed. Dylan glared at me while my shoulders shook. "That wasn't funny," he said icily.

Recovering a little sanity, I snickered before replying with, "You should've seen your face though." Then, remembering the face, I started giggling again.

Dylan shot me a nasty glare, and picked up the water bottle from where I had left it. He then dumped the remainder of the water on me. I gasped in surprise and shoved him.

Dylan stumbled. He caught himself and asked, "What was that for?!"

I, busy trying to get as much water off me as possible, responded with, "Well, I don't like water at all."

His face softened. "Sorry, but that was unnecessary to get me awake."

I giggled again, remembering the look on his face… Dylan rolled his eyes.

I stuck my tongue out at him, and he smiled. Opening some of our food, I announced that it was time for breakfast.

After a meal of random items that were generally not breakfast food (I assure you that it was all supposed to be eaten), we took off. I had checked the GPS while eating, so I knew where we were headed.

We flew until noon. Around then, Dylan started looking tired again. I, having the GPS, knew that if we didn't fly constantly today, we wouldn't make it to Hollywood in five- no, four days.

Fortunately, I had a back-up plan.

"Yo, Dylan!" I called over the wind. He glanced at me and flew closer. "Okay, can you get into my backpack and get some peanut butter?"

"…What for!?"

"Just do it."

Dylan flew until he was just above me. After a minute of trial and error We managed to synchronize our wing strokes perfectly. With this position, Dylan unzipped my bag and pulled out a jar of peanut butter. I took it from him carefully before swooping away.

I unscrewed the lid and ate a bunch. Then, handing the jar back to Dylan, I somehow shrugged off my backpack. Don't ask how I managed to do this while flying, let's just say it involved me wriggling, nearly falling out of the sky a few times, and a lot of quick wing flaps.

"Okay, Dylan, take this," I said, handing my backpack off to him.

The poor boy looked very confused. "Why?" he asked wearily.

"Just do it."

"…Fine…"

I took a deep breath and soared so that I was a little ways away from Dylan. Then I concentrated and shape-shifted into something big and powerful.

Well, I've never shifted on the fly before now, so again, I nearly fell out of the sky while doing that. However, I managed to stay alive while turning into a Utahraptor.

With a couple of quick wingbeats, I flew back up to Dylan, who was watching me with amazed eyes. I yowled to him, "Get on my back! And watch the wings!"

Realizing my plan, Dylan swiftly dropped so that he landed squarely in front of my shoulders, in the same place Nudge had sat in Africa. His suddenly added weight made me drop a few feet down before I regained control and flew high enough that I wouldn't be mistaken for anything but a bird.

We actually flew this way until after sunset, with Dylan dozing and occasionally feeding me Poptarts from my back. By the time we finally found a good cave to sleep in by the power of Dylan's farsight, I was more tired than I had been in a while.

I barely had the energy to drag myself into the cave, transform back to normal, and curl up before collapsing. Dylan kept watch the entire night.

Crim: I'm still stuck here, aren't I?

Me: Yup. Now to my dear readers… haven't you ever wanted to pour water on a sleeping person? It looks fun, doesn't it?

Crim: Unless you're the person getting the water poured on…

Me: True, True… Well, anyway, join us here, same time (maybe), same channel, for a new chapter of Spark where the journey continues and so does Spark's odd love of peanut butter!