These Our Actors

Quil

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

THE TEMPEST, Act IV, Scene 1

I'm not a big fan of bullshit. I don't like secrets. I don't like to play games - well, not mind games, anyway. I fucking love kicking all my bros' asses in Halo or Call of Duty. But see, that's kind of what I'm getting at, those games are simple. Straight. At least they are the way I play. You got your gun and your grenades or whatever, you point, you shoot, you kick butt. You charge straight down the middle and take all comers like Leeroy Goddamned Jenkins, my new personal hero, and if it all blows back in your face, at least you have chicken.

That video is amazing.

Anyway, that's what I like about the pack. We don't have secrets, especially when we're running on four legs. The pack mind kicks in and we're all on the same page. Okay, yeah, it can get kind of gross sometimes, and we've all gotten in plenty of practice not thinking about how hot Emily or Leah or Leah's girl Callie are. Look, don't judge, I think every guy on the Quileute and Makah reservations has had a crush on Emily Young at one point or another, even if she and Sam have been a thing since before Sam's balls dropped, and Leah and Callie...well, look, Leah's awesome, but she's only human, or shifter, and sometimes stuff leaks, okay? I don't think they've really done a lot, but she sure thinks about it.

Now I'm thinking about it. Great. Last thing I want is for Leah to pick up on some memory of me spanking it to her and her girlfriend.

Okay, so I guess there's something to be said for some secrets, and we've all picked up our little tricks to avoid TMI in pack mind, and stopthinking about stuff we don't really want to share. Bella Swan once told me I should think about naked politicians if I really wanted to get my mind off track, especially if I wanted to stop thinking about sex, and it kind of works? I mean, I think about Dick Cheney with a rose caught between his teeth and I'm definitely not that horny anymore. That chick's still weird. Fun to hang with, sure, and she'll throw down on Xbox or whatever, but weird. I mean, her taste in video games alone is bizarre, who the hell plays gay vampire games when they're already around gay vampires all the time?

Fine, yes, I jumped at that stupid hotel level. And yelped. And Embry got it all on tape. Whatever. Halo's still better than that dumb vampire game every day. At least the one werewolf in there was a total badass.

Ugh. And here I go getting off track again. Get to the point, Quil, right? Okay. The point. Here it is:

I hate bullshit, and maybe secrets aren't always bullshit, but it was bullshit to keep this one from me.

I didn't really figure out what was happening at first. Yeah, Sam's thoughts got kind of deliberately random sometimes, the way they do when he doesn't want to share something with the pack, but Emily had been visiting La Push a lot lately and I figured he didn't want to give us a peep show. Except after a while, I noticed Emily was acting a little weird, too, especially around me. And then our patrol system started changing.

The Quileute and the Makah aren't exactly the same, but we do mix, and as shifters, we feel a certain responsibility for both, especially since the Clearwaters have a whole Makah branch of the family, including Emily, and Embry's Makah on his mom's side. (We know his dad's Quileute, but that's about all we know. Embry doesn't like to think about it.) Neah Bay's an hour and a half away by car, but that's nothing to us when we're in wolf form. So the treaty we have with the Cullens keeps them out of Neah Bay, too, and our patrols extend around all that territory.