“This you?” they asked, gesturing at the wooded lot, as if we’d been walking together as panions.

  “No, I’m right in front of you,” I said, stig to my new dry affect of the afternoon. It seemed like a good way to deflect or stonewall them.

  “You should invite me in to see your pce,” they said, ign my reply, as if they were referring to an apartment building or something. Then they said, “I brought wine.”

  “Merlot does pair well with tampons, I’m told,” I lied.

  “Oh, those were just a versation piece.”

  “Effective. We’re having one.”

  “True. Though we could both be more fortable while doing so.”

  “I’d be more fortable if I knew your name. Since you know mine,” I said.

  “I rather think I don’t, actually,” they replied.

  Ah. There we go. Now my hunch was answered. They at least knew I was faking my identity at work. Which probably meant that they were a private iigator, a gover official, or something else.

  They were still smiling, and totally rexed, all looking like a soccer mom with a queer fre in their fuchsia pid shacket, dark burgundy hair, navy Capri leggings, and immacute makeup. But none of that meant anything.

  I sighed, and admitted, “Names are kind of meaningless actually. They hold no power. So I don’t have one.” I have many.

  They silently ughed once, smirking and nodding their head forward a little, lips pursed. “Same,” they said, then fshed that winning grin. “But, let’s call me Felicity.”

  I tilted my head to the side and heured at the woods, “After you, Felicity.”

  They bounced a little as they stepped forward and turo ehe wooded lot. And I followed somewhat listlessly.

  But I asked, as we left the view of the street, following a pathway betweeles and brambles, “What gave me away?”

  And over their shoulder, without looking, Felicity replied, “Oh, nothing in particur. I just have a really good sense for these things. Don’t really want to give away my secrets either, though.”

  “Ah, yes. her do I,” I said. “But I do want to be more careful.”

  “Oh, uood! Um,” they looked around as if entering the foyer of a fancy building. “Your facade could use a little work. You don’t stick to a single affectation very well. Watg you from er to er, you reflected eae back so fluidly. And it was more than just your voice or stance, you know. And then when I threw you off bance, you reverted to what I think is your natural state.”

  “Well, shit.”

  They entered my clearing and turo face me, swinging their bag jauntily aing it fall back to the side of their leg. Still grinning. “No, but it was subtle! If I hadn’t been looking for something like you, I wouldn’t have noticed! You really shouldn’t worry.”

  The fact that they’d mao walk to my clearing told me almost everything I o know, though. A typical human wouldn’t have been able to do that. They would have tinued right on through, following the path to the park behind my lot. To deted reach my clearing required skills and sehat your average private detective over official just does not have. But also, to choose to enter my clearing also implied things.

  I tensed up.

  A human was something I could deal with. Bamboozle. Manipute.

  A not-human most likely meant I rey.

  “Oh, rex,” Felicity said.

  I did not rex.

  “I really do just want to share my wine, and maybe my crackers and cheese, and talk,” they said. “Then I’ll go, and maybe I’ll see you around the stain sometime. Maybe I show you my pce.”

  I think I frowned, and asked, “Do the wine and crackers do anything for you?”

  They shrugged, “Not really. But they’re fun anyway. A kind of social ritual.”

  “I don’t have any furniture,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll jure some.”

  “In my home?”

  “If you’ll let me.”

  “I’m not sure I should,” I said.

  “Well, OK, I did sniff you out and stalk you, so I do owe you something you trust,” Felicity admitted. “But we are in your home, your domain, where you have power over me.”

  “There are those that turn your domain against you, if they e,” I stated.

  “True. But if I was one of those, I think you’d already be food,” they tered. “But, please, take some time to iigate me. I’ll leave if you tell me to. I will be disappointed, but it’s only right and fair.”

  I snorted and stomped around them in a circle, examining them much more closely than before. I used the same senses I o reach my clearing, which were all I had beyond the typical sets simuted by any nervous system. I’m pretty good at deteg my own kind just fine, but Felicity wasn’t that. Their physical camoufge was more plete than mine, allowing them to rely less on misdire. But there should have been some sort of clue to their nature.

  And there was. Just not where I was looking.

  I’m pretty sure that when they said that I had slipped and shown them my true self, they’d actually sehe very fabriy being. I wasn’t about to get the same courtesy here. But you don’t get to be as old as I am without learning how to spot danger or suss out potential allies, even with inferior senses.

  We’re monsters.

  Some people call us a variety of other things, like spirits, yokai, demons, rakshasa, ogres, fae, ogbae of these terms are very specific, others broad. Some are accurate sometimes. All of them have cultural texts that are not quite universal and may describe something else, actually.

  It’s also really hard to figure out which terms were inspired by some of us, and which of us were created by the terms themselves. en. And en for a number of reasons. And some of those reasons are primordial and some are linguistid a whole universe of other meisms.

  In the here and now, I like to use the word “monsters”. I’m really just a fan of the whole cept, the range of what monsters are in popur culture and mythology bined, including things like Sesame Street and various cartoons. It feels like an accurate assessment of what you expect from us.

  But call us what you want.

  Those of us who speak tend to use a mix of Greek and Latin words to categorize ourselves. We ied the idea from human sce, but I don’t think we’re very stific about it. The point isn’t to uand our ecosystem of monsters better, nor to create fas and draw lines of allegiances. We just needed words to quickly describe a given situatioween any of our kind.

  For instance, I’m an affectivore. I’ve seen that term used in human pop culture, too, in several different pces. But it’s not super on outside of a handful of fandoms. It means that I feed oion.

  But it’s not like I suck the emotion out of a person or other being. There are some mohat do that. I’m more like the pnkton of monsters. I feed off of radiaion.

  Any being that experiences emotioes an excess of it that just radiates from their prese affects the world and other beings around them, and generally shapes reality a little, just like sunlight does. So, I just have to position myself within that radiand I soak up what hits me. Pretty harmless, really.

  Some affectivo out of their way to create stroions in order to feed off of them. They’ll disguise themselves as things like printers, traffic lights, and other appliahat malfun just enough to be very irritating, but not enough to be repced. Others operate as serial killers, marriage offits, judges, household pets, natural disasters, and any other number of deeply impactful things. And depending ohey’ve set themselves up, they get quite a bit of nourishment that way.

  I don’t do that. I usually disguise myself as human, because that gives me a ce at the more plex iions that I personally crave. And then I go where there are a lot of people. I don’t really o do anything to provoke emotioher. When there are enough people, there is always emotion, a gale wind of it. People carry it around with themselves everywhere, and thehey i with each other it amplifies.

  A grocery store checkout stand is a pretty subdued potion pared to some of the venues I’ve frequented. But it provides a stant supply, and it has a predictable routihat creates a stability I find nice. I know I’m going to get a det meal every day, and I also know I’m not in one of those pces where affectivores like me are expected to be. It’s just a little off the beaten path, so there’s less likely to be any sort of a feeding frenzy there. Which I’ll get to in a bit.

  Oh, and another sideration is that the kinds of emotions I e do affect me. One reason I don’t hang out at bars, for instance, is that emotions that radiate from drunk people get me drunk. And I’d holy rather not be drunk. It lowers my ces of survival.

  Now, I eat all sorts of emotions. To me, they are like different fvors of energy drink. But some affectivores are more specialized.

  We sometimes use different words for them.

  An epialivore, for instance, feeds off nightmares.

  More specifically, epialivores typically enter a being’s dreams, turn them into nightmares, and feed off the emotions that happen because of them. Though, humans are pretty damn good at giving themselves nightmares, so most epialivores just set up shop in there and soak up the trauma without a lot of work. Epialivores are extremely numerous. If you’re human, you’re probably carrying around a handful of them.

  They’re also hard to get at because they’ve adapted to their preferred enviro and are basically imaginary. Someone like me ’t just rea and grab an epialivore to get its attention or something. I have to do something like vis host that there is an epialivore in their head and they please tell that moo e forward, take trol of their body and talk to me? And a lot of humans are resistant to that sort of thing.

  Not all though.

  But, anyway, there are a whole lot of different affectivores and other types of monsters. There are mohat feed off of physics, or various physical phenomehalpiphages are a fasating subject that I’m not going to get into here, for instahere are just so many.

  Now, we don’t have the reverence for a linguistics that human stists have, and have mixed reek and Latin in some cases.

  In one in particur, it’s at least partly because that mix invokes an appropriate sense ness. And, of all the variations, it sounds the darkest and most threatening.

  Teratovores.

  Mohat eat other monsters.

  There are numerous mohat have adapted themselves to eating other monsters such as myself. Which is why I do a lot of hiding, actually.

  In fact, the rgest reason that monsters hide from everyone is because of other monsters. We’re not really scared of humans. Those of us who are still around are fairly impervious to most things humans try to do to us. And we know we adapt. Even if humanity broadly accepted that there were monsters and developed a sce to study us and learn how to eradicate us, we know we survive it. We’ve do before.

  But, if I were to make a disturbance among my local popution of humans, it would draw attention from other monsters. And my own personal ability to adapt to the enormous variety of teratovores and their i in ing me would be put severely and immily to the test. It’s way easier to study my adversaries and adapt to them if I have time to do it, aainly if there are fewer of them present to focus on. A feeding frenzy is the worst time to do so.

  And most teratovores hide because it helps them catch their prey.

  But, sometimes they are also prey.

  Anyway, I obviously suspected that Felicity was a teratovore, so I was looking fns that they were adapted to catg and ing other monsters.

  And I could immediately see that they were not a carpedominator, the type of teratovore that cims your own domain before eating you, by the acetime was normal around them. Cirg them firmed that, with ale ripples in the background as it paralxed around them while I walked.

  A carpedominator trol just how much that happens, but as far as I know they ’t hide it pletely. Which is why, as Felicity had said, if they were ohey would have pounced by now.

  Carpedominator? Are we even using Latin correctly here?

  Don’t care.

  More important things to do.

  Unfortunately, my clearing doesn’t get much direct sunlight. So I used my cim over it to ge that, so that briefly Felicity cast a shadow.

  It was a normal shadow.

  Their skin was typical of a human’s.

  They had the requisite number of fingers, and I assumed toes. There was nothing I could reasonably do about clues that were hidden.

  Their hair wasn’t doing anything unusual besides having the appearand fragrance of being dyed.

  Their clothing had the detail of stitches and woven fabric.

  The irises of their eyes had a plex texture and a typical gradient from ter to rim. Their retinas didn’t reflect light.

  Their moles were made of menin.

  They rotated in space retive to me at the same rate as their surroundings as I walked around them.

  After three circuits, I couldn’t find a siell.

  For all physical is and purposes they weren’t a mohey were human to me.

  I rexed a little and looked them right above the eyes. Not a good idea to make actual eye tact, typically, no matter how fident I was.

  “You’re an epialivore in possession of your host,” I said.

  Their smirk ged shape to bee another smirk, and they replied, “Not quite.”

  I frowned.

  “I definitely eat other emanants,” Felicity said. “Just not you.”

  Ooh. emanant is a cool word for what we are.

  I narrowed my eyes, though.

  Words aren’t very reassuring.

  It would take time and care to build trust, even if I currently seemed to have the upper hand.

  “What are your pronouns?” I asked.

  theInmara