I like carrots, a lot, but digging for them all the time is getting old fast.

With a sigh, Suzi looked down at the neatly-hoed soil with its little mounds around the leafy green tops of carrots, all in clean precise rows. She suspected that the shapes of the gardens scattered around the island predated Barry, but he certainly was a stickler for making sure that everything was lined up and organized and that there was only one type of plant in any given garden.

Jazz and Bijou would like it here. They could run around and have so much fun. God, we could bring every dog from the agility club and the ones from our last couple of puppy classes too, and they could all have heaps of fun.

I doubt the gardens would survive it, though. We've got Bijou mostly trained out of digging, but all this soft dirt would probably be just too much temptation for my poor girl to withstand.

The mental image of golden retriever-cross Bijou wreaking havoc on the neat gardens, with older German Shepherd-cross Jazz probably watching in disapproval, made her smile for a moment.

Only until she thought of Barry's reaction, and the thought of him going after her girls made all the pleasure in the thought go away instantly.

Please let them be home safe with Levi. You're my smart girl, Jazz, you know the way home.

Please, God, I know You're very busy, I know people keep screaming for Your attention, but I think this is a bit bigger than asking You to give my team a victory over another team that's asking the same, or something like that, although I guess everyone thinks their stuff is the biggest. I don't want the lives of our families destroyed. I don't want the people who kidnapped us to keep doing these things. And I would really appreciate it if my friends and I could go home.

Can You even hear me, if I'm outside of normal reality? You can, right? Please forgive me if I'm finding myself having doubts sometimes... it's very hard to have faith under these conditions, when I don't understand the rules anymore. I don't even know whether fae or faelings have souls, or the same kind of souls, or can go to Heaven, or... or anything. But I'm sure dogs do, because what would Heaven be without them? So faelings probably can too? I mean, if we otherwise qualify? I don't believe, I will not believe, that You are so petty that You would condemn people for being what we're born, no matter what some people who call themselves Christian would say. But still... I'm scared. I'm scared like a little kid who just broke something by accident and is afraid her father won't love her any more. A loving father will forgive and still love, of course, but... I'm scared. And I can't really explain this one to my friends, because they believe different things but not exactly in You. Or maybe, in You but in a form I can't recognize, since they do generally believe in love and charity. But they wouldn't get it.

I don't want to be doing this. I'm so tired. I haven't really slept deeply since we were brought here, and now we're only eating fresh veggies that we scavenge at night, and fae or not, I think that's catching up. I'm so hungry...

She blinked, wondering if it was the tear that managed to well up that made her skin look odd, and wiped her eyes with the back of her arm.

No, her skin really did look different. No longer a light olive, but paler. She couldn't name the underlying colour, though, because it had subtle shimmery patterns all over it, and they shifted and flowed even as she watched. Sometimes it looked faintly rosy, but at others it had more of a barely-azure tint, or mint, or cream, or mauve, or peach, always such pastel shades that they blurred into each other.

That's strange. I wonder what that's supposed to do.

Why am I picking carrots? I don't want carrots. I want something sweet. Berries. Fruit. Apples if necessary, but wasn't there a peach tree around here somewhere? Enough is enough. If you won't feed us properly, then I'll feed myself before I pass out face-first in Barry's pretty garden.

She abandoned the carrot garden, trying to remember where the peach tree was. Irritably, she brushed her hair back in a repeated attempt to tuck it behind her ears. Its wispy-fine texture had been annoying her for the past two weeks, but if anything it seemed even more pronounced at the moment, as though gravity had only a tenuous hold on it; there was little wind here, only a faint breeze, but even the disturbance of her own motion made it lift and stir. She noted absently that it had changed much the way her skin had: the colours were deeper, more saturated, running from red through to violet, but it rippled and shifted. Keeping it out of her own face would have been more comfortable, but she'd resigned herself to that as impossible. There was nothing to tie it back with, although if she thought she could actually tear her clothes, she'd have sacrificed a strip of rose-pink fabric in a heartbeat right now.

Except that somehow, she was no longer wearing them. Or anything else, for that matter. Her newly-colourful skin was exposed entirely to the air. Though she thought she should feel more strongly about that, she couldn't really muster anything more than mild annoyance. She was so slim as a fae that it felt like there was much less to be self-conscious about. Finding something sweet to eat... that mattered. Nothing else.

She came first to a spiral garden with low three-leaved plants, deep red peeking out from beneath them.

Strawberries! That'll do! She dropped to her knees at the edge, reaching out with a narrow multi-coloured hand for the nearest ripe strawberry. She was certain nothing had ever tasted so good. Rapidly, she stripped the nearest plants, hardly pausing to savour the sweetness of them as hunger drove her to swallow each as rapidly as possible and snatch up more. She moved around the edge, gathering all the ripe fruit she could reach, then used the spiralled interior path to work her way inwards.

That was a good start, but not enough. She needed more.

She finally found a trio of peach trees, and scrambled up into one of them. Her whole body felt like it weighed less, which combined with her fae strength made the climb very easy. She wondered if the hunger was turning inwards, devouring her own substance because she couldn't keep up with it. She perched on a branch and grabbed a plump ripe peach.

Bare skin streaked with peach juice to go with the strawberry juice, she finally jumped back down and prowled on, leaving the peach tree devoid of anything ripe enough to eat. She could climb one of the others, but from up in the tree, she thought she'd seen a plum tree, and variety would be nice, as long as there was enough volume...

Again, a trio of them, and again she climbed up one and stripped it of ripe fruit.

Where was it all going? she thought vaguely. She must have eaten a substantial percentage of her own weight in fruit by now, but she still felt hollow.

A bank of blueberry plants. She got less to eat for more work, but the tart berries tasted so wonderful she didn't care. As many as she could reach, she ate.

There was more fruit around, she knew. Grape vines, cherry trees, raspberry brambles, gardens with watermelons. She licked blueberry juices off her fingers, and swiped the back of her arm across her face and felt stickiness. A stream could take care of that, next time she came across one.

The raging hunger was fading, though. She sank down there, near the blueberries, to rest. Without the desperate need for food, the tired feeling was creeping back up on her.

I need a catnap. I can't do anything when I feel like I'm going to fall asleep, whether I want to or not, any minute.

At least in a place that had only bees to pollinate the plants and earthworms to do their thing with the soil and no other creepy-crawlies, she could do so without wondering what would be sharing her nap. Scratching distractedly at her navel, which was beginning to itch, she stretched out on the ground, eyes starting to close.

Startled back to alertness, she pulled her hand away from her navel to see what felt damp—was she bleeding?

A long iridescent pale thread followed her hand, still linked to her navel; more damp threads were tangled around her fingers. It looked a bit like spider-silk, but with more of a shimmer to it, rather like her skin.

Dreamily, running on instinct entirely, she reached to her belly with both hands, and found that she could draw out a thin fluid that quickly dried into more silk. An endless thread of it, which she could keep making longer and longer. It would be nice to have a spinning wheel, or at least a basic drop spindle, but it didn't really need to be tight smooth cord, did it? Silk was strong. If she made enough of it to wrap all around herself, she could make the whole world stay on the other side of it long enough for her to really rest...