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He was beautiful: Voxis. He began my story.

Oh, my, a specimen to rise above all others. A gorgeous male of type Homo lupens, he thrilled my heart whenever he came near. Reader, know that I love beauty and perfection beyond what I can accurately describe. A perfect act is... divine. A perfect body is... sacrosanct. And Voxis had a perfect body, and very possibly a perfect soul and mind.

Women cooed, fluttered and fainted when he walked into the room, muscles bulging like an artillery squad's armory, the thick slabs of liquid steel that were his thighs rippling with every step he took... He never weight-trained at school, but I wished he did because I wanted to see if any females would be left standing after a glimpse at the veins which would assuredly have pumped from his arms. More than sheer muscle mass, though, I knew he shampooed his fur and conditioned it - you could smell the stuff on him a mile away and the result felt like angels' wings.

I remember the first time he held me... it was like a taste of heaven. I'm getting ahead of myself, I know, but I loved him. Just like I loved all the others.

There's a philosophy I've had to live by because of who I am, and there are people we see all around us who are more and more and more than any human being could ever aspire to be. Beautiful, perfect people, walking like angels on earth. No one actually sees them, you understand. Except me. Other people look through them, around them, onto their exterior. There are those who seem to be them but are not - I have made mistakes; seen people wrong, before.

Sometimes even I don't know. Sometimes, I'll look around and see someone - male or female, it doesn't matter. Muscular, well-formed, confidant. He seems intelligent; she asks questions; they play sports. Then, I get to know them, and they change. The person I had thought was amazing and flawless becomes this... twisted thing. No aspirations; nothing they can ever hope to achieve, anyway. Or maybe aspirations they know they can achieve. What kind of life is that? To say, "I will take no chances. I will live and die, doing what I can do, forcing myself to believe it's what I want to do and accomplishing nothing, and I will be content." How do they even survive? Beautiful, twisted, struggling people...

I wish I could find the real ones consistently. There have been some few, mostly in fiction. Sepulchrally delicate; unblemishedly infallible. Those are mostly afraid, like me, though. What they have to be afraid of, I can't imagine. I'm not one of them. I cannot understand fully their fear of having to watch others fear them for their own perfection. I would never fear them, though; not for that, directly. I want to be near them, to hold them, to have them hold me, to be with them forever. I don't want to lose them.

But... there is a fear, that I have.

Time after time, they walk into my life and hardly even know I'm there. I watch them from a distance, waiting for them to say something, do something, into which I can insert my plea that they love me the same way I love them. Some have psychological flaws, but that's okay; it doesn't mean they can't reach perfection. I can teach them; I love to teach people like that, people who can be perfect. I've done a lot of teaching; sometimes without the pupil knowing, granted, but I've done lots of teaching. I try to make everyone perfect. They resist, naturally, because they're stupid, but that is a human thing.

I, myself, am twisted as well. Gyrating on axes with putty around me, in me, and everyone I touch molds me, influences me. I think I ceased being myself in public in high school; I became everyone I knew. I stole from them. But, I could never steal enough to become perfect, because the perfect people were too rare, and the perfect qualities too hard to find and assimilate into my own being; my spiritual contortion retorted every tortuous application of another person, to try not to be me. So every time I see one of them, my heart feels as though it must implode, but I can't do anything about it, because they can't see me.

These perfect people I see, though I want to call them angels, are known to my mind as ghosts, why? Because angels are unavoidably visible. Ghosts are not what we have all previously thought of them. You can't see ghosts, but they can't see each other, either. All they can see is you, and they have to pretend they're one of you, project an image into your realm, and hope you catch some glimmer of what's really there. I, the medium, lead a perplexing life; a strange one, indeed. I can see the ghosts, and in fact see silhouettes of spectres in people who are not truly ghosts, but whose properties well enough resemble them that on the immediate outside, there is no difference.

These silhouettes, you see, are as gossamer shadows as are pushed through from the realm of the true ghosts, so it is difficult to tell one from the other, no matter how I try. I, as a medium, am invisible even to the ghosts. No one sees me; not the me that truly exists. I can project as much and as many silhouettes as I want into this realm: no one will see them until I cut someone with one's fragments when what I thought was an appealing image of myself shatters upon forcing it to be visible. The ghosts are oblivious to me.

So I guess I'm not really a medium, since neither of the two realms I connect recognizes my existence for what I think it is. I'm more of a parapsychotic mishap. I cannot make use of my ambiguous, spiritually amphibious, paralyzed existence; I can only suffer from what I see and cannot have. But it's true that I do see the beautiful people: the ghosts, the angels, the demons, the dryads, naiads, and sylphs, and I do my best to help them be seen. Or I try to do my best - my position is so frightening to me and so hard to play correctly; it is difficult to properly describe the intense and gripping fear I feel any time I try to touch the intangible host. I want to brush society, to be near it, but not only am I a ghost to ghosts, but a ghost to human beings.

So, then, I have these tenuous, fragile threads interlocking dozens of people. All I have to do is tap them a little too hard or at the wrong frequency to the tapper at the other end, and the signals will interfere, collapse, and amplify one another, breaking the thread down and forcing me to fashion a new one from the fragments. I haven't done much medium work, honestly. I've been too afraid, too cowardly, because it hurts to cut those threads, and pains me to retie them.

I keep hoping I can find another medium and talk to them, but I imagine they experience my problem: we can't see each other, hidden as well as we are among the living. In fact, it's possible that we talk quite frequently, but have no idea each who the other really is. It remains ever a mystery, and I think occasionally, our darker silhouettes will shine through, but as uncertain an image as it is, we can't ever grasp hold or even cut one another, because we shy from it - does it belong to someone whose perfection we may be terrified to tarnish?

It's frightening. It's humiliating. I want to help them finally be visible to the world, but how do I tell a ghost how to be seen when I can't even do it myself and when they don't even know what they are? I need an experienced medium, one who has actually accomplished something. I need a tutor, a guide, as much as I detest the notion. Maybe I need Christ, in whom I believe, but to whom I don't think I ought turn for something like this; in spite of that, maybe religion will guide me. I can't know. All I know is that the pleasure I derive from a single touch from a single ghost sends shivers down my spine, massages my neurons, and touches my own soul in ways that make me truly believe that heaven for me is with the angels here on earth.

What a charming fantasy.

Voxis, somehow, saw me. Maybe my acting was getting better; maybe my role as a dark, yet superiorly intelligent networking spider actually came through and made someone take notice. Maybe karma felt bad for me; who knows? Maybe he is a more experienced medium than I, but I severely doubt that. To be a medium, you must have unfixable flaws so that you can have a reason to associate with those without them, and he had none.

"Sibra?"

I started at my name being called, especially in so euphonic a voice, then schooled my body and looked up slowly, from beneath my thick, dark eyelashes and eyebrows. "Yes?"

In truth, my heart was beating like a dragonfly's wings. Voxis was standing there, his shirt off not to show off his pectoral and abdominal musculature to any girls in the school gym, but instead because he knew that on a purely objective basis, he was more visually appealing without it. That's what I like to believe, anyway; he was a highschooler, so it made far more sense for him to have realized exactly how many girls would be tugging at the waistband of his gym shorts if he was a just a bit removed from the public eye.

He was looking down at me out of eyes opposite in hue to my own. Whereas his were more of a sky blue, mine, in my midnight blue suit of fur, were a deeper, more intense lapis lazuli. He crouched across from me on his toes. I was sitting down to be forgotten, my knees drawn up against my chest. I hadn't changed into my gym clothes yet, so I was still in the black athletic shorts my shy nature bade me wear on gym days to avoid changing in the locker room and a white tee shirt with a dragon printed on it to contrast my fur. It provided a very nice theatrical contribution to my chosen role. We were both seventeen and both wolves; not much in a high school of fifteen hundred, but enough that I can spend an independent clause to describe us in parallels.

"Wanna be on our volleyball team today?" he asked with a grin. "Not to be rude, but the team you were playing with yesterday wasn't doing too great, and you looked a little frustrated."

My jaw almost dropped to the floor. Someone had... a ghost had noticed me? Not possible; I wasn't bad by any means, but I was certainly not good at the game. My teammates were unskilled, of course, because the only people with whom I really got along shared aspects of my disposition, but not of my physique. Even in reality, I am trapped in a sort of limbo. My mind begs to stay young, but also dark, brilliant, and highly attuned to what is normally left to fantasy. However, it also realizes how much more fun it can have if its vessel is in shape. So I am a moderately athletic person. My arms are not large; my legs are not large; my abs are invisible. My shoulders are really my only redeeming muscular features.

Basically, being made of lean meat and having the disposition I have, all the people who would normally encourage my participation in their social groups had I affected a different personality, did not deem me of aesthetically pleasing enough physique to join them, while all those who are after my "dark and mysterious" nature and apparent confinement to mental exercise alone are adamant about my company, demanding I have a place in their socially perverse circles. I'd rather avoid both, personally, but I know my chosen unofficial profession cannot flourish without social connections.

Due to years of training myself, I hardly even showed an expression besides letting a small, almost seductive smile curl my lips. "That would be fantastic." I pushed myself to my feet and looked at the other five. "I'm not kicking anyone out, am I?"

There was a tiger about Voxis's size who had the intellect of a six-year-old; a panther who, while academically gifted, also thought one of the greatest jokes in the world was to stuff his underwear and wear gym shorts all the time and ‘accidentally' push people with the mass; a lithe and petrously built vixen by the name of Suli whose six pack, displayed now due to her sports bra and low-cut shorts, had dozens of boys flocking to her every day, simply because they couldn't believe a girl could look as... stunningly gorgeous, pristine, unspeakably ravishing... as she did and also be stronger than they; a picturesque girl ocelot who cursed like the devil and smoked enough to asphyxiate horses; and an otter who wore ridiculously tight, short shorts that couldn't help but outline his impressive endowments. He was, shall we say, flambouyant.

"No, no; we're gonna rotate people out. And back in, naturally."

"Heh. I would hope so." I gave an honest grin, then.

"Lez go get changed; we want to get in as much playing time as possible."

"Fuck yeah we do!" shouted the ocelot. My other team would have to either improve or find someone else. I doubted either would happen.

I went in with the others to change because my gym shirt was left in my locker and, because the ocelot had no shame and Voxis didn't mind being seen in just his skivvies (to which immunity he certainly had the right), got the benefit both of seeing her beautiful body clothed only in tight undergarments, outlining her fine, fine thighs and breasts, and the bulge of Voxis's package beneath his chiseled abs and above thin-furred, thick-muscled legs. I had to exercise a fair amount of control not to expose my interest in the both of them beneath my loose gym shorts. I only wished that Suli had come in like Ptera, the ocelot; she was as perfect as Voxis.

We went out onto the courts, warmed up with the rest of them, and began to play. The gym teacher was not cruel enough to pit us against my former team. It would have been a slaughter. Instead, we faced a team with a kangaroo on it, which was pretty darn intimidating. The guy could jump four feet in the air from standing and was ripped like Jesus. The others weren't so bad - a rat, an otter, and the like. The ball was served.

I immediately fell into the rhythm of the game; I slid back and forth in position, constantly adjusting to anticipate the incoming ball. I let it drop more often than my teammates, mostly because I didn't know well enough when it was mine to get. I was by no means a great player. However, the most memorable moment of the match was by far something even I didn't expect.

Though my eyes had been dark, foreboding, and watchful the entire time while we lost to the kangaroo's ridiculously powerful spikes, I saw an opportunity arise at one point I couldn't ignore and opened them wide, grunting out the word "kneel!" to Voxis. My draconic wings beat forward to magically solidify the command and he dropped immediately down, looking surprised. I ran to his back and leapt off it.

The kangaroo had received yet another set for a crazy spike, but I wasn't about to let it through this time. He had played that game long enough. When he went to blast it into our court, he found my hand directly in front of it, and the ball slammed against the floor of his court with a resonating and triumphant smack. That, however, was only a precursor to the memory.

When I fell, I was a little off balance, falling back even though I had intended to land safely on my feet. Voxis had gotten back up the instant I jumped from his shoulders, though. He saw my predicament, stepped forward, and caught me in his arms.

Time stopped. My shoulders contacted his right arm and I felt him swing down with my weight to cushion the fall while his satin fur brushed the back of my neck. Then, the backs of my knees caught in the crook of his left elbow and I nearly cursed when I noticed my shorts were between me and him on that end. Every touch was a moment of bliss. I couldn't restrain a gasp and a widening of my eyes, or a look up into his face, but I think I covered the mistake well enough.

My eyes closed for a brief moment while I revelled in the position and breathed in, sucking up the moment as quickly as I could. Had I been given any more time, I would have nuzzled into his chest, shattering anything I had built with him. I would have wrapped my arms around his broad frame and lost myself in that beautiful fur, in his protective embrace, even though I know that's not the adjective he would have used for it. However, I rolled out and landed lightly, to the general compliments of my team. I accepted them humbly, if awkwardly. I thanked Voxis, fighting down a blush, and we went back to playing.

We lost in the end, but it didn't really matter. In the locker room, which by some miracle had no public showers, I got more than one pat on the back for my acrobatics, and even the kangaroo came over, laughing and telling me I wished I could be him. I returned the laugh and said, "Yeah, but how weird would it be: a wolf with kangaroo hops? And those feet would be messed up." I grinned, but his return grin seemed strained, even if I got a genuine chuckle from some others nearby. It's not so much that my humor is too intellectual, as much as I wish that were the case; it's more that my delivery is so uncertain that even a solid joke falls flat most of the time.

"Sibra!" My name was being called for the second time that day and by the same person. Voxis walked over, pulling his shirt over his gigantic shoulders. "Hey, I know this has nothing to do with gym, but can you come over today? I need your help in chemistry before that test tomorrow."

I froze. That was something else no one was supposed to know, or at least care about - how academically talented I was. I had turned that into a hidden property. No one should have reason to know about it. I simply did my homework, asked a few clarifying questions, and aced the tests. True, some of those clarifying questions did demonstrate more knowledge of the subject than most people would have gathered had we spent days on the material at hand, but they were infreqent and I kept to myself before class and afterwards. I mean, I guess I had gained a fan base of some sort because the people sitting next to me saw my grades every day and apparently, my unintrusively tame, bushy, mane-like head fur was popular among several ladies, but that had never led anywhere I wanted to go. None were perfect as far as I could tell, so I just left them alone, unless one directly addressed me.

Slowly, I thawed. "Sure, I'd be glad to." Gladder than he knew. "What time?"

"I dunno... six, maybe? I've got track practice until four, and rugby ‘til five today. My mom'll feed you. I already told her I'd probably have someone over."

Normally, I wouldn't have done it. I would have come up with an excuse not to. But he wasn't depending on me so much as asking me to augment his skill. The boy wasn't stupid; he just wasn't as talented in chemistry as he'd have liked to be. Plus, how could I turn down an angel? "Well, I'll have to double-check I'm not doing anything around that time, but I'll be there if I can." A lie. I would have been absolutly preposterous to my parents, done anything to gaurantee I didn't miss this opportunity. We exchanged cell phone numbers, ad libbed farewells and went our separate ways as the bell rang for the end of school.

I had... finally spoken with a ghost... It felt like heaven. It felt like home.

Someone had noticed me. A ghost, specifically, had noticed that I existed. He didn't know who I was, really, but he had noticed me, and that was a first step. As I walked home that day, it occurred to me that if he would speak with me, then I could guide him. It was clear to me, from watching him as much as I did, that he absolutely had to be a ghost, and blind like the rest of them. That was the only explanation for the way he acted. Perfect he may have been, but able to deal with it? He was not. When the aforementioned girls cooed, fluttered, and fainted, he stood nervously, not really knowing what to do unless one honestly seemed in danger of falling over. It was because they couldn't see him. I imagine it is very disconcerting to have a crowd of blind people chattering about you, to you. He had half-seen Suli, and that was a wonderful start; she had half-seen him, as well. They talked alone, occasionally, but they were both very nervous about it. There was, as there always is, no way for either to know if the other was perfect.

It was time for me to repay Voxis's accidental favor.

I found his house that night at about the right time and my jaw promptly dropped to the ground. Six thousand square feet of house. It was a freaking mansion. Roman columns flanked the front steps, which rose in concentric arcs like a dais. The first set was made of regular concrete, but the second was real marble. Morning glories spiraled perfectly up the columns and potted plants dotted the area. You'll notice I've not mentioned the yard. I want to describe it properly, but I know far too little of herbology to do it any iota of justice. The ivory vaulting arches greeting visitors in the foyer (read: atrium) also only get a passing mention because the intricacies of the carvings on them defied conventional language.

Voxis answered the (white oak) door (with bass-relief Greco-Roman art) and led me to the kitchen, where I met his mother: a kindly, middle-aged she-wolf who was only too happy to have me over. Apparently, Voxis had very few friends visit. Combining his handsomeness, the house's masterful architecture and design, and his discomfort around many of his peers, it did not surprise me. We ate the dinner his mother made for us (something I didn't expecting; I was kind of looking around for waiters, chefs, and a butler with an outrageous mustache and accent at that point). It was good anyway, I assure you. Should've been there.

Then, up we went to his room to study. It was a massive space because while his family was well-off, he was one of only two children; therefore, he and his little sister had tremendous living areas. I swear to you a game of basketball would not have been out of place, and I'm not exaggerating; the place had a TV, a fireplace, and a sitting area.

The whole time, I was stoically keeping myself from laughing out loud at the sheer awesemnity of the place. The majesty of it all pleased me to no end and I know I grinned widely in enjoyment. In this case, I didn't want to seem cold, and I was more than content to let my wonder shine through. Voxis caught me wide-eyed and grinning once and patted me heavily on the shoulder with a grin of his own. "You're embarrassing me, dude. My dad's a diplomat, okay? Come on, let's his the books."

Though no effort of will could let me maintain total emotional darkness, I had at the very least worn black pants, even if I had put on a paler shirt so I didn't freak out Voxis's mother. Adults generally don't like too much darkness, I have learned. I think it reminds them that they are going blind. It probably wouldn't have mattered, anyway; adults also love to see the young smile, and I did plenty of that. Extravagance simply exhilirates me.

We lay down on the soft, carpeted floor and I got out the notebook and pencils I always carried with me. He brought over a chemistry book and laid out paper, and we got to it without preamble. Given how little we had in common, preamble would have been pretty limited, anyway. The subject was geometric molecular modeling. You know. Bipyramidal, octahedral; all that jazz. Even I had trouble with it sometimes, what with the free electron pairs screwing up all the bond angles...

But I digress. He caught on fairly well and not to brag, but I'm not a bad teacher. At least, not when I'm teaching someone who doesn't mind tremendously cynical comments, random tangent conversations, and an initial assumption that he can comprehend everything I'm saying as I say it. It took an hour, but we covered much more than he had originally intended, in part due to those tangent conversations:

"So water has to be bent linear because...?"

"The free electron pairs repel the hydrogen molecules."

"Which also explains?"

"Cohesion."

"Right, good." And we'd talk about chemical and physical properties for a while. I was so excited to speak with a pupil who didn't get angry with me for insisting they learn different ways to do things than what the teacher told them or insisting they know things upon which the professor anti-insisted that I could have kept talking for much longer than that, but even though I missed his first unintentional hint that he was done and wanted me to shut up, I caught the second one and silenced myself. It didn't help that chemistry was one of my favorite subjects... ever.

Not only that, but I wanted him to keep talking for as long as possible. His voice was like... liquid gold. One of the benefits of being around perfect people is hearing their spectrally pristine voices. He vocalized sapphire oceans, spoke in silver fountains, mumbled in crystal springs. His laughter made the world seem softer and cooler, like a morning breeze. It could have pulled me back from the brink of death.

My feelings during all this were not restricted, however, to exuberance. My gut had disconcerted butterflies in it gnawing nervously at my heart the whole time. It would take a single noticably wrong move to ensure this never happened again; one which could easily be made if I tried too hard to ensure that it in fact did happen again. I had trained myself by then to make every conversation a tactical maneuver - to coax, coddle, chastise, combat, and comply, how to feint, fiddle, fabricate, and forbid, without letting the other know what was happening.

Appropriate gestures and vocalizations both had their part. For instance, because I wanted him to like me, I would make sure to laugh appropriately (I have studied laughs) if he told a particularly funny joke. Or, if I wanted to coach his actions, I would drop eye contact and grin weakly to show it was inappropriate to the situation or only partially made sense. Little things like that, done with perhaps something significantly less than expertise but with enough knowledge to remedy any significant mistakes had him hoping for my future return by the end of it.

That's not to say he wasn't doing the same thing; he just didn't know he was doing it, and didn't have a defined goal in mind. Also, in the same way that his physique and formidable supposed perfection, about which I had yet to be proven wrong, made me feel small and inferior, so did my subtle techniques make him feel inferior. I could tell from the way he met my eyes calulatingly when I made a particularly potent maneuver; for example, off-handedly mentioning how sexy he was and then letting him wonder whether or not I was serious for a moment before laughing, and then "accidentally" waiting just a fraction of a second too long to get back into the lesson, just long enough to throw him into confusion again.

Of course, it may have been cheating when I used the sort of sorcery I once used around children (almost accidentally, because it certainly never responded when I wanted it to) to lower the temperature of the room almost imperceptibly. It tended to calm kids down once they got too hyper, but for him, it was just enough that he unconsciously pushed himself slightly closer to me once or twice, so our shoulders were touching. Contact with a ghost: For me, a self-proclaimed and often impotent medium, that was more of a balm than that in Gilead.

We wrapped up the discussion and as I walked out of his room, giving adolescent goodbyes, he did something I never expected. "Sibra," he said from across the massive chamber. To my surprise, he had remained where he was when I got up, which the back of my mind thought was a little bit discourteous considering I had been told more than once that one always walks a guest to the door during my upbringing, laying on the floor and half-watching me, half watching nothing. He had propped his chin on his fist and inadvertently adopted an almost sexual pose, lying on his side like that with one leg drawn up, no shirt, and blue jean shorts. As soon as he realized what it looked like, he gave a small start and spun around to sit cross-legged. I chuckled. Self-consciousness in others always loosens my own tension.

"What..." He paused, uncertain, then steeled himself. I waited with an eyebrow raised, my head lowered as it looked over my shoulder. Half of my anticipation was just to hear his voice again, addressing me. "What exactly are you?"

Immediately, I made a noise to stall. "Hmm..." What a question. There was so much weight in it. First, it meant he had noticed even more than I thought he had, which was... an honor. For a perfect person to finally notice me was greater than I had ever dared to believe might really happen. Certainly, I had dreamed of it. Certainly, my mind was very frequently full of wishes and delusions that it might one day come true. Certainly, though, I had held in my head the belief that I would always have to work behind the scenes; not actually touching one of them, but just making other people do it. Because as I've said before, the strands that tie me to humanity are tenuous; imagine, then, how delicate are the ties to ghosts. They are ethereal, gossamer, and usually temporal.

So he wanted to see me. He wanted me to say to him what I was, to let him know that which he may have already concluded, or at least upon which he may have speculated. Should I tell him? That always carried with it the possibility that he didn't know what he was. He might express the same feelings and know the same truths as the others of his kind, but he had a relatively small chance of knowing what he was. "How pretentious, then," sneered a corner of my mind, "that he ask what you are." I slapped that corner viciously with an invisible hand.

There were so many, many options. I could tell him the truth: that I was a medium; that I could identify the ghosts behind perfect people; that as a medium, I could speak to the living, but I was as much a ghost to them as to ghosts. My other choices were to say something sarcastic, like, "A thinker," or to not answer at all and leave him wondering, or to say something enigmatic and ultimately useless, like, "One who knows your kind, blind as you are," or to verify what he wanted to know by feigning innocence. However, the latter held the risk of disappointing his own hopes, those presumably being that I would be sure of what he meant and therefore fit his image of the dark and mysterious giver of comfort I had always hoped to be able to don.

All of this passed through my mind in roughly the space of three seconds. I decided to take a chance. "What do you mean? I'm a lot of things." Damn it, I could have been a little more eupohonic than that.

Apparently, that answer and the three seconds prior to it were enough to confirm his beliefs, because he was watching me very closely the whole time and he grinned in a way similar to my own sepulchral expressions. It was uncertain, though. He was still afraid of the situation. So was I, honestly, but I had come to the realization so long ago that all things are dictated by fear that it wasn't too terribly distracting.

His words came out in a stacatto rush, stopping eclectically so he could gather quick thoughts and move on. "I mean, what is it... what are you doing? What are you trying to do? Because I see you in class, not saying a word to anyone, in the back of the room, and yet every test when some teacher or another decides to tell everyone who's better than they are - heh - it's always you. And you make that little nervous smile and shy away from everyone who asks you about it, and so no one really knows you. But you watch everyone, and... like, Todd, the other day. When he was picking on that girl. Who's kind of the same, really. You just, kind of... You know what you did. You walked up to him and accused him of being insecure because... you know. I think that about six people at that school even know that happened, and that's just because his mom remarried. And then you just walked off. You know he almost cried?

"And the next day, everyone saw what you did. I actually - wow, you scared me, man. You scared everyone, by a lot. It was masterful, if that was your goal. I don't know why they haven't tried to figure you out like I have for the past four months." It was December. He had been after me since... August? Since school started? I hadn't humiliated Todd until just four or five days ago, you understand, but to find out I had been watched for that long... that was new.

What had happened on that day was that the girl, a silly little Wiccan who had fallen into the religion by accident and personal issues and was at that particular moment a more rational gnostic, had worn her pentacle necklace to school... again. I actually knew her fairly well, though she didn't know it, and suspected, absurdly, impragmatically, stupidly, that she might actually be one like me. She frequently wore a very dark expression on her face, one that was neither angry nor sad, but serious beyond what even someone negotiating multi-million dollar contracts might need. She had very few friends; like me, she instead had a strange circle of emo and goth kids, most of them the same that followed me around, whom she very obviously used. I didn't know what her purpose was because I had never seen her approach one of the perfects in the school, so I kept tabs on her, using only the people I was sure would not let her know.

In that way, I kept her safe, because I had begun to admire her almost as I did perfect people, even though she was not herself perfect (she had gotten sucked into what in my experience was a bogus religion). She was, therefore, not a ghost. But it was due to my contacts that I knew she was making herself a target with that necklace, and therefore due to them that I came to her aid that day.

The necklace was her own mistake. I was prepared to let her suffer for it, but then Todd had begun mocking her more mercilessly than was called for. He was a big fox, a guy who really shouldn't need the power rush that mockery and rape usually give inferiority-complex-afflicted people like that. Much like the other people who acted like him. He called her a devil whore, and asked how she liked it when Satan fucked her. That was when I got pissed. I believe I said, "What was that about you not having a biological father anymore?" Not as aesthetically pleasing as it could have been, but certainly provocative.

He blinked as his fur flushed to the color of furious. "What?" he growled dangerously.

I was nonplussed by his threatening manner. "I said I think the reason you're mocking this relatively innocent though extremely silly and slightly thoughtless girl is because your father left you and your mother to the mercy of a minimum wage job and your step-dad has a hard time accepting you, a body-builder with a penchant for ass-grabbing and hugging your wrestling teammates in more-than-ironic ways as a son when he's a member of the intelligentia and also a religious nut. So you turn your insecurity over both your sexuality and your religion and your unfortunate familial past on silly girls who forget how recently they were just associated with ‘witches' to make you feel better when you go home and get a poorly concealed Bible lesson from your fake dad."

I was very cruel (which felt awesome), and had a small crowd gathered by the time I was done. It didn't matter to me that my own concerns over sexuality and religion were also the most prominent in my life and also had at one point caused me to make incredibly insensitive remarks, but that was a year ago and in addition, I didn't believe in that whole, "What if it had been you?" ideology. I think I remember that after he huffed and puffed for a while and saw the school police officer down the hall, he did disappear for a while and return for seventh period with red eyes. I was extremely satisfied with myself.

I snapped back to reality. Voxis had stopped talking, which was in itself slightly disappointing. I had enjoyed having warm honey poured into my ears while I thought back to what I had done. Hopefully, I had not started grinning at the memory. It was one of my better ones. Especially the part when, the next day, Todd attacked me after school as I was walking home, almost but not quite out of range of the institution. The first punch came from behind, and I had been preoccupied with some music I wanted to write. It knocked the wind out of me and landed me in the dirty snow with my instrument case bouncing dangerously beside me. His first mistake, really, had been posing a threat my instrument.

Slipping out of my backpack, I stood up to face him on slightly wobbling legs. With a bored sigh, I said, "What do you want, Todd?"

He was panting and growling as he stood there with his fists up, ready to fight me. It apparently didn't matter to him what the scene looked like: he, a wrestler weighing about a two hundred pounds from sheer muscle mass (I have to hand it to him; he was a remarkably good-looking and strong fellow whose body attracted most people), against me, a practically friendless enigma with no social skills and no readily apparent muscle mass at all. Much as I wanted to, I did not drop into a fighting stance.

"Take back what you said!"

"What? The truth?" It came out before I could think, and he swung at me again. I quickly dodged beneath the blow. It would have knocked my teeth out.

"You made a fool out of me! You humiliated me!" He swung once more and missed me again.

"I'm about to do it again, if you don't pack yourself up now and accept that little lesson from yesterday." In truth, I didn't know if I could beat him in a fight. Obviously, I didn't have the physical capacity, but in this world, there had always been more than that. I had never fought anyone besides my older brother before, and that didn't really count because we were both so young when we used to. I had taken some martial arts, though (as ludicrous as thinking that would help was), and had put a lot of thought into the uses of spiritual energy. My wings, somehow, provided me with great capacity for concentrating just that, even though magical potential, for variously described biological reasons, never blossomed until college age.

One of his friends came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Todd, come on. You can't beat this guy up - he doesn't have a chance!"

"That's the point!" He pushed the kid away violently.

"You get one hit before I go Neo on your ass." The gathered crowd laughed from the shock of me speaking like that and said "OOoohhhhh!" It felt great.

Until he took it, and to my own surprise, I didn't have a chance to move even had I wanted to. He punched me square in my gut and I went to my knees holding my belly and wheezing despite my training. He stepped toward me and I reacted in the direction of my instrument to protect it. I pushed it away weakly so I wouldn't fall on it, but that was a mistake. Todd grinned, hefted my case, and hurled it through the air.

"Someone catch that!" I shrieked, standing despite my pain. No one did. It hit a wall of the school, broke open, and sent the instrument falling into some bushes.

"Damn you all," I muttered under my breath, and completely masked my face so I wouldn't let the sense of betrayal show. I guess, though, that the only people who knew me besides the goth and emo circle were the band kids, and they were all usually mad at me because I was better than many of them and didn't socialize. They thought it was arrogance when it was really just another masquerade. Anyone else who knew me was too far away to be realistically expected to save it.

Then, though, I took my mechanical pencils and notebook out of my pockets, ever on my person for exactly this purpose, and wrote Todd's name in it with the black pencil to indicate disapproval. Very calmly, I put the notebook away, then raised my voice and finally got into a fighting stance. Upon reflection, I imagine it was not nearly as impressive to the crowds as I wanted it to be. It probably looked a little silly, actually. "All right, bitch-Todd. That was supposed to be the interlude during which you had a chance to leave, but then you made a pretty fatal move concerning my instrument. So come at me, you freak of a fatherless pup."

That hit a nerve. He swung at me again, but I switched both pencils to one hand, thrust my palm out to intercept the strike, and fluttered my wings at the same time; his fist opened and he gave a gasp of pain, which amplified into a screaming howl when I drove the pencils half an inch into his palm and ripped them back out as ruthlessly as possible. The answering punch he aimed at my chin knocked me back down to the dirt and split my lip, but the point was made.

He, however, was an idiot. He jumped me while I was down, I suppose intending to damage me rather severely with wrestling moves, but I got a pencil in each hand and held them pointed towards his eyes as I snarled. He gave a whimper and twisted in mid-air, landing beside me. I struggled to my feet and he met me there, looking down at me with a wild, fearful gaze while I met it as frigidly as possible, trying vainly to ignore the muscle spasms that told me how badly he had hurt me.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?" he panted, holding his bleeding hand.

I locked his gaze and wouldn't let go. "Next time, don't mess with people who are weaker than you are. I don't care what anyone else's principles are, but I'll find you, and I think you've seen enough to know that I will fight dirty. I don't care what my reputation is; I will get my revenge. Is that clear?"

He, for some reason appearing to be smaller than I for that moment, nodded his head quickly. That was good, because I was nearly exhausted. The fight had been hard on me, even as much as I told myself that I could go forever, if I wanted to. This was not going how I had wanted it to. I had assumed my victory would be flawless and I would stand, the champion, over this hulking beast. Instead, I was almost panting and my voice shook.

"Now, here's your page. Now that you're dead, I doubt I'll need it anymore." I pulled out my tiny notebook again, ripped out the page on which I had written his name and every fact I knew about him in the past four months, wrote "complete" on it, and put it on his hand. In reality, his records were also on my computer, so the paper really wasn't anything but a stage prop. I staggered off towards where my instrument should have been, nursing my jaw, while he expostulated about what he read on the page. Not many people knew he masterbated in the locker room after school.

"Where's my instrument?" I asked, not finding it or the case. "Where is my damn instrument?" I repeated ferociously. No one met my eyes, and they certainly didn't talk to me. Except for one. The girl I had stood up for walked to me with it from wherever she had been. She really was pretty, when you looked at her. At that particular moment, I couldn't remember whether or not I had designated her as perfect; I knew I had labeled her as at least having a silhouette of perfection. She may as well have been perfect, though: she was a sleek lynx, with purplish eyes and a pleasant smile. I don't think she was really a ghost, though, and thought that maybe she might be the second-best for which I settled, since I knew getting a ghost to date me was completely out of the question.

"I think it's okay," she said. "None of the keys came off, and it's only a little scratched. You'll have to make sure one is aligned right- I bent it back into shape, but I think it's loose, too. And there's a nasty dent in the side and the octave key is bent, but it... still works." She trailed off nervously and proffered me the case with a smile. It was dirty, but locked properly.

No one had been expected to smile at me. I wasn't really prepared for it; Voxis, even, standing in the background, didn't know what to do with me. Seeing a person wipe blood off pencils and put them back in his pockets will do that, but not to her. She smiled at me; after I had avoided human contact for years of schooling, after I had stabbed an unarmed man, after I had suddenly and slightly crazily revealed how angry I could be, she still smiled at me. I had rarely felt the warmth in my heart that I did in that moment.

I stood stupidly for a few seconds, unable to believe my good fortune to have helped this person and fighting off the lumps in my throat her goodness and the adrenaline leaving my body had cooperated to create. "You just made my day," I said, wiping sweat off my face and trying to smile. The unfamiliar tremolo in my voice told me it may soon be joined by a different form of saltwater. I took the case, inwardly cursing my sensitivity. It was the same that made me gasp when Voxis held me.

"I do try," she grinned. She leaned in close by my ear and whispered, "Thank you for yesterday. I don't know what I would have done without you. I hadn't even thought to research him." She paused, breathing shallowly. The next words came out in a rush. "You were amazing today." Then, she kissed my cheek and walked away very quickly. I was left standing there, pleasantly bewildered and blushing, as people turned their gazes from me, shuddering at what I had done and shocked by Teva's reaction. Research?

Happily, I had apparently scared away the emo and goth crowd by actually enacting one of their bloodier fantasies. Reality often bothers people like that. Even the next day, no one spoke to me. Fewer than usual, in fact, because Todd's pride had kept him from pursuing legal action. For several days, I was privately high on the fact that parts of me, like the writing, like the ruthless vengeance, had finally been made public. Finally, I was a real and memorable character, the one I had been trying to create for years. To celebrate, I vowed to keep a close eye on Teva and perhaps gather some more pleasant things to know about her besides that she spied as much as I did.

I didn't actually review all of this in my head as I stood there with Voxis watching me. But it did happen, and I thought you should know.

"I'm a spider," I answered finally. For the moment, I felt like I had a kind of power over him. It took as much willpower to maintain that strength for Voxis as it had for Todd. It felt strangely exhilirating, but also... wrong. Tense. "It's hard for me to actually... interact with people, since I'm so socially inept, so I spin... webs. Of information. I learned all that stuff about Todd from a guy just by asking why he was being so moody one day. I chose someone with very little discretion and a situation in which that person wasn't really paying attention to who was talking to him." When he didn't immediately respond, I added, "That's... what I am."

"Uh-huh." He fixed me with his beautiful eyes. "So does that mean that you prefer solitude? Is being here actually... hard for you?" He was not being sympathetic. He was verifying a fact. It was simultaneously a relief and an ice bath.

I hedged a little at that. "Kind of," I answered. "You're different from other people, and that's really all I can safely say on the subject. But I guess you could say... yeah. I feel more comfortable when I'm alone because things are... balanced. Being around others isn't exactly easy for me." I felt like I would probably feel better around Teva, but she and I hadn't been able to find a date both of us could make. And she was really my only direct tie to humanity, save my contacts, who didn't know what they were doing for me, so they didn't count. Those silly people thought just because they were my friends that they knew things about me.

Anyway, my position was failing. I was toying with my keys in my pocket and swaying back forth on my heels. He had a kind of half-smirk on his face as he watched my confidence shrink with every word I said. He pushed on for a moment more, though, draining the focus of the conversation back to his end. It's a human thing; it's something we do. For me, it's a very tangible draw, from each person to the other. Like those gossamer webs, being tapped and danced on. "Well, when you almost stab a guy's eyes out with pencils, what can you expect?"

I returned his smirk, albeit somewhat less confidently. "I expect exactly what I received." I remembered Teva and my smile became genuine. "Mostly."

His grinned broadened. "You didn't expect the damsel in distress to thank you?"

"Well..." I answered, looking down. He laughed.

He laughed... and it was beautiful. I let out a half-laugh, too, glad he wasn't making fun of me. I was laughing with a ghost. "Well, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, dude." He flowed to his feet with unconscious grace. "Would you be willing to come back sometime, though? You know a freaking ton, and my mom could probably pay you."

He wanted me to return! He had enjoyed my being there! My heart fluttered. No, I thought. Control. "Oh! No, no, don't worry about payment. Just... yeah, whenever you want help." Under my breath, I added, "I get enough payment just from being here."

"What was that last?"

"Nothing." My breath was slowly quickening, and he didn't make it easier by stepping closer to me. The more time I spent with him, being close to him, the less real I felt. It was already dreamlike. What if I just drifted away?

"Well... we'll figure something out. Thanks, though. So... hey, do you have a page on me?" he asked hesitantly, able but unwilling to accept that he already knew my answer. I wanted to jump into his eyes and take a swim. If conversing so with a male ghost was this invigorating, how would I react in conversation with a female? Always test, experiment; I would be recording my thoughts later that night.

I could see the logical progression from that question, though. I would have to reveal what I thought of him, because I couldn't lie. It was like seeing yourself lose a rook in the next two moves on a chess board. "Yes," I answered through almost-shut jaws.

"What does it say?"

I seized control of myself and looked at him from intense eyes I had to mold onto my face in that instant for my next question to matter. "Do you want the truth, some modicum of the truth, or a lie? I've done one, two, or all three in the past." He could tell I was still uncomfortable, but I fixed him with my eyes, letting him know that I really wasn't kidding. I knew what he'd answer, but I thought I'd give him the option, all the same.

He hesitated, but pressed onward. "The truth. Duh." He shrugged a grin at me, trying to be unperturbed. The room would have been cold if not for the warm boon of his presence.

I shrugged, trying to relieve the tension I felt. "Well, there's a physical description, and it talks about your mom and dad and what they do... the grades you make in what classes and when those are... your social circles... and most importantly, your personality and my..." I hesitated and sucked air through my teeth. "...my plans for you."

"Which are?" he asked with careful control. Clearly, he couldn't decide if he was intrigued, disturbed, or angry that I had made plans to use him.

"Honestly?" I asked. He nodded.

"Why not?"

I shrugged. Telling him might not actually be a bad idea. "My plans are to hook you up with Suli, because the two of you are... quite frankly..." My breath caught in my throat before I looked him directly in his gorgeous eyes and whispered, "Perfect." Also to use him as a mercenary bodyguard and coattail into the rest of the world, if need be, but he couldn't know either of those if they were to work properly. It was dangerous enough to tell him anything at all.

"Perfect?" He grinned about that. "Perfect for eachother, you mean?"

I lifted the corners of my lips ghostily. "No," I said. "Just perfect." I let it sink in before quietly saying, "Thank your mom for the meal; it was great. I'll see you tomorrow," and walking out his door. I padded quietly down the stairs, snuck past his mother, and left through the well-oiled front door, so she wouldn't discover my disappearance and accuse her son of being rude. It hurt to leave him, when what I wanted most was his warm embrace around me, his voice in my ears, and his fur in my fingers. But I had to keep him hooked on me, so I'd have a chance of coming back.

Hopefully Suli would take notice of me, if he told her how I felt. I could and would never take her from him, of course, but I hoped to get as close to her as I could. It would open up strange venues, to have those two ghosts and Teva as my friends.

What would the world think of me then?