We shouldered our packs a few minutes later, waved to pebbles, then started down the hill. It was obnoxiously steep, every step threatening to send me tumbling down. Pebbles had worn me out, and I’d been tired before we even started this trip.

I… I didn’t get much sleep, but it was even worse after an exorcism. And it affected more than just my sleep. Just glancing at a random object could trigger a memory. And worse, I was traveling with a stranger who could smell when something was wrong with my head. She likely thought I was insane.

My foot slipped, and I started to tumble. Blair’s hands clamped down my arm and pack, stopping me cold. “Thanks,” I said as I fixed my footing. Once she was sure I wouldn’t do a Princess bride impression, she let go. Though I could feel her hovering, ready to react if I tripped again.

I fought the urge to shudder, the feeling of her hand on my arm fresh in my mind.

Damn Rogers! I didn’t have a problem.

We continued down, and I found myself struggling. I didn’t usually have so much trouble with this hill, but not only was I exhausted, I was in pain, and it was distracting as hell.

Racing Pebbles and tumbling down had reminded me just how beat up my body was. And while those tumbles had been guided by the elementals, it was still a lot of jostling.

My shoulder ached from the weight of the pack, and my neck throbbed with every heartbeat, which, combined with my other aches and pains, distracted me enough that I almost fell three more times before we reached the bottom.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the ground evened out. I readjusted my pack then started walking. The trail widened and Blair started to walk beside me.

I studied the werewolf out of the corner of my eye. I was starting to get a little worried. Each round against Pebbles, she’d grown angrier and angrier. At the end, I thought she was going to attack the little elemental. She’d controlled herself, but the look in her eyes had been savage.

I was definitely chalking that up as a red flag. But I didn’t know if that was a her problem or a werewolf problem. She had been reasonable in actual conversation, but when the situation turned high stress and involved confrontation, she had been decidedly less reasonable.

Which left me circling back around to whether or not that was a werewolf problem. I didn’t have a ton of experience with Were-Kin, but more than half the werewolves I had met were quick to turn to violence. That wasn’t uncommon among spooks. You didn’t survive long if you weren’t ready to defend yourself.

And did Blair’s aggression matter when it came to the vouchers? I didn’t need her to be perfect; I just needed her and her family to have Silver Spruce’s back.

I wasn’t sure yet. It was going to depend on just how aggressive she was, and where she directed it.

It didn’t matter how good her decision-making was when calm, if she was going to attack the people around her when things got tense.

Well, the point of this trip was to help me get a read on her. So, I just had to get reading.

~<>~<>~

We reached the Pass half an hour later.

The mountains loomed above us, and the Pass stretched ahead.

It didn’t seem too different from the forest around us, not at first. We exchanged a glance, and Blair gestured towards the Pass with her chin. “Anything weird about the entrance?”

I shook my head. “Naw, it’ll feel a little different, but there’s never anything hostile in the first region. The next ones are a different story, though. When the trees change color, don’t talk. Under any circumstances. Even if you see a monster about to crash down on us, don’t say a word.”

Blair stared at the path. “When the trees change color, huh? How far in is that?”

“We’ll have to walk for the better part of an hour to get to the Silent Straits.”

“And if we do talk?”

“We die.”

“Hmm. Any chance you going to surprise me and say that one of the regions is pleasant and non-murderous?”

I chuckled. “There are at least three nice areas. It’s where we sleep. Aside from those… maybe? Some of the regions move around.”

Blair turned to fully face me. “Move around? The pass isn’t the same every time?”

I waggled my hand. “Kinda. All the key regions stay the same, but a few switch around. Luckily for us, I’ve seen them all at this point. Probably.”

She pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Well, that’s not any weirder than The Wandering Tree.”

“Fair.”

I started walking, and Blair fell into step beside me.

Walking into the Pass was an odd sensation. Everything didn’t change all at once. It was wide enough that the mountains didn’t totally block our view of the sky, but they were definitely butting in. And the trees were mostly the same, ancient pines and spruce that stretched endlessly ahead of us on either side.

But the sensations from the forest shifted. Old and grumpy as the forest may be, it wasn’t actively malicious. But as we walked, an undercurrent of smithing darker slipped in.

The forest was overwhelming, but not overly interested in two ants crawling around its roots. But Old Tom’s Pass took note as we stepped across its boundary. And while its attention wasn’t stronger than the forests, it was curler, hungrier.

Blair shivered and took a step closer to me. Her gaze scoured the trees, and she even spared a few glances for the sky as if expecting something to attack us from above.

“We’re safe for now. But I’m not going to fault you for the caution. Old Tom’s Pass isn’t the most welcoming of places.

Blair stayed silent, and her eyes never stopped scanning.

~<>~<>~

The path dipped lower as we hiked, not enough to cause a problem, but we were definitely losing altitude.

Blair had relaxed slightly. But only slightly.

She still scanned our surroundings with impressive diligence, but she wasn’t twitching at every rustling branch or disturbed bush.

It was a little comforting, actually. True, most of the dangers here couldn’t be punched into submission, but it was the thought that counted.

Every time Blair thought there might be danger, she moved to protect me. That wasn’t something I was used to from the living. Everyone I was close to was dead. The few people in town I talked to regularly were more acquaintances than friends, except for Barry. So having someone I barely know lookout for me was…nice, if strange.

I’d considered that she might just be protecting her own interests since I was her guide, both to this pass and to the vouchers.

But I’d seen people who calculated every action.

I could remember being them.

That wasn’t Blair. She acted instinctively, and had been the same way in the- …In the Manor.

She’d thrown herself in front of every object that she could and fought with an almost insane fervor when one of her pack got hit.

I might have been reading her wrong, but I didn’t think so. When you meet enough people from all across time, when you…understand how they think, you become a pretty good judge of character.

So far, Blair was a bit of a contradiction. Comforting and worrying at the same time.

Something cold brushed over my senses. I stopped, and Blair matched me.

“We’re close.”

My senses were muted with my aura veiled, but I almost always had my aura veiled, so I had learned to pay a lot of attention to what my magical senses did manage to tell me.

“I think now is a good time for some more details,” she said.

I nodded. “This region is called the Silent Straits, and while it’s dangerous, it’s also simple. Don’t speak, and we make it. Talk, and we die.”

I stared straight ahead. I couldn’t see any oddly colored trees yet, but they had to be just up ahead for me to feel something.

“The area itself is a shallow stream we walk along. It’s a little slippery, but nothing too bad. The real danger comes from…well, the region. It doesn’t like people very much.”

“That’s not a Strait. A strait is a narrow channel connecting two large bodies of water.”

I scoffed. “Nerd.” She frowned. “And I didn’t come up with its name, Old Tom did.”

“Old Tom? I’m assuming he’s the namesake of this place?”

“Yeah. He rolled in here in the 1800s. I found his journal on my first time through the Pass.”

“Okay, so how does this place actually kill us?”

“… It’s not something we can fight. Let’s leave it at that, please.”

Blair frowned but didn’t push. “Is it any noise we make or just talking?”

“Just talking. It doesn’t care if a squirrel or deer makes some noise. Just people.”

She nodded, took off her pack, then began to strip.

I blushed and turned around.

God, I was lucky Ben wasn’t here to see that. He’d never let me live it down.

“Why?” I asked. Barely managing to avoid squeaking the question.

“Huh? Why are you- oh. Humans have nudity taboos, I forgot.” I heard one last rustle of clothing punctuate Blair’s words.

“You said the Straits respond to human speech. You’ve made it through before just fine, but I haven’t. I think I would make it, but I can make that a certainty. Can’t talk if I’m not human.”

Ah, that was pretty clever, actually. She had just taken me off guard with the impromptu stripping.

“Sound reasoning, but ah, can’t you still talk while shifted?”

“In some forms. With werewolves, it’s like… we have a slider from most humanoid to most wolfish. If I push that slider as far as it can go, I won’t be able to talk at all. Won’t have the right parts.”

“Quick thinking.”

She grunted, then something popped. Then, a moment later, something snapped.

I turned to look, my curiosity getting the better of me.

I had seen werewolves in their shifted forms and seen someone performing a partial shift, but I had never witnessed a full transformation.

And with the partial shift, I’d been too distracted with said werewolf trying to kill me to take in the finer details.

Plus, Blair clearly didn’t care if I looked.

Though it wouldn’t hurt to double check.

“Do you mind? I’ve never seen a shift before.”

“Knock yourself out.”

The embarrassment from seeing someone naked quickly faded when they, one, clearly didn’t care about being naked, and two, were turning into something from a horror movie.

The snapping sounds had been her knees, which were now bending backward. That was unsettling, so was realizing that Blair was staring at me as she shifted.

She wasn’t saying anything, just staring.

“…Does it hurt?” I had to say something. The silent stare was making me freaking uncomfortable.

She grunted as her muscles writhed beneath her skin, rearranging themselves as I watched.

Blair stayed quiet for long enough that I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but after something in her spine cracked, she spoke.

“Not exactly. Not when I do it like this. Be a different story if I was rushing. But this way is-“. she paused as her hands started to lengthen and black claws sprouted from her fingertips.

“…Imagine an intense stretch that isn’t quite painful, and popping your neck hard at the same time, but it’s your entire body all at once. It’s like that.”

She stopped talking as her head began to stretch and elongate.

The sight was borderline nightmare fuel, if I was being honest. …But it was a skin-deep nightmare.

Blair wasn’t in some terrible situation or in pain. A monster wasn’t trying to kill us this second. She was just changing forms.

So while it disturbed me on principle, seeing a human body contort and snap, it didn’t go any deeper than that.

Besides, I felt like it would be rude to act all horrified. This was a normal part of being a werewolf she was showing me. I didn’t want to respond to that with disgust.

So I kept quiet and watched.

It took the better part of twenty minutes, but in the end, a dirty blond wolf stood in Blair’s place.

Sort of.

She had the general shape of a wolf, but nobody was going to mistake her for a normal animal. For starters, she was six foot at the shoulder and more heavily muscled than any wolf I had seen.

But the differences didn’t end there. Her shoulders were broader, and her front limbs were somewhere between human and wolf in shape, though they leaned more towards wolf, with front paws that looked more flexible than they should.

She swung her head towards me, and I saw that deep blue had shifted to blood red. I glanced away, reminding myself that eye contact was to be avoided.

I studied her head as I avoided eye contact. Following the trend, her head looked like a wolfs but bigger. The proportions were slightly off as well, with her snout being broader than a wolf’s.

She yawned and stretched. Heavy muscles shifted, and I caught sight of massive, gleaming white teeth.

The sight reminded me just how lucky I was that the few werewolves I had fought in the past hadn’t shifted. They’d have torn me to shreds. Werewolves were killing machines. In her current form, Blair could outrun a horse and keep up that pace for hours, had senses better than a real wolf, and enough strength to kill a human in one swipe.

And that was assuming that she was a young werewolf. I’d never seen it personally, but the stories about what the older Were-Kin could do were insane.

Blair finished stretching and padded over to her pack. She had, somehow, managed to put away her clothes in the handful of seconds my back had been turned and was now nudging the pack with her nose.

“Oh. Uum, Blair, I don’t think I can carry that thing. It probably weighs more than I do.” The thing looked like she’d pulled it from a damn cartoon.

Her ears pulled back, and she sneezed.

Whoa, that was really dog-like. I don’t know what I expected since she was literally a giant wolf creature, but still…

She leaned down and nudged the bag again, then twisted and used her nose to point at her back.

“Oh! You want me to put the pack on you! That makes way more sense.”

She nodded and gave me an exasperated look.

I brushed past her and squatted down.

Wait. I took my own pack off. Trying to lift hers with extra weight seemed like an excellent way to throw my back out.

I got a good grip and heaved.

Now, I don’t want to give off the wrong impression here. I am a paragon of manly strength and prowess, and I don’t want anyone saying different. Sure, all five feet of me was made up of skin and bones with some wires holding everything together, but it was manly skin and bones.

So, you can imagine my shock when the pack was not impressed with my prowess.

I turned to the werewolf, who was watching over my shoulder. When did she get that close? Jesus, no one that large should be able to move that quietly.

“I thought you said you couldn’t fit the kitchen sink? This feels like you managed to fit it and a few dozen bricks to boot.”

Blair looked at me and flicked her ears.

“Don’t look at me like that, you fury jock! I'm not Schwarzenegger!”

Blair grunted, then brushed past me. She went to the pack and laid down next to it. Then she grabbed a strap with her mouth and effortlessly pulled the pack onto her back. But it sat at an awkward angle, and part of it was hanging off completely.

Which was where I came in. As I stepped up to help adjust the pack, I realized that it was made to fit around her current form, with straps that worked more like a harness built-in.

After a bit of finagling, we get the pack situated. It was strapped along her midsection and front legs; it wasn’t going anywhere.

It had been surprisingly easy once Blair had taken care of the weight. Her limbs were more flexible than a normal dog’s, so getting them through the right loops had been a breeze.

I walked over to my pack and took a drink of water. The time spent without my pack had helped me recover, but I was still exhausted.

That was dangerous. I needed to be sharp in this place.

Of course, telling your tiredness that it was being a real bummer didn’t make it go away.

I rubbed at my eyes, then did a few stretches, trying to wake myself up.

Once I was as alert as I was getting, I pulled my pack on and turned to Blair.

The sight was… well, she was a six-foot-tall, easily five hundred pound wolf monster with a giant backpack.

Strange? Definitely. Oddly cute? Definitely. It was the same energy as a malamute or other big dog carrying a beer keg or doggy pack.

Blair’s red eyes narrowed, and I realized I was smiling at her.

I coughed. “I think it’s time to head out.” I started walking, and while Blair continued to squint at me, she matched my pace.

I considered making a joke since this was the last chance I had to speak until we were through the Straits, but Blair might just respond by biting me.

…Baw, worth the risk.

“Say, how do you feel about dog jokes?”

She growled at me.

“Noted.”