Accidentally On Purpose

How The Heck Do We Actually Get There

                                                                Quill's P.O.V.

At sundown, we all collapsed. Arctica made a bi---biad pierson oiut oif hierself (ha see what I did there? Sketch approves even if you don't).

But, what she had done was complain about how everyone dragged her with us and we were all horrible and they should call the cops to take us home. What was wrong with her, I will never know, but she made me so mad it was hard to keep my cool. And then she yelled at Uanai when he asked her why she was lying, which made Zaastaish get so angry he had her hair tie itself over her mouth and get stuck together so she couldn't speak.

I like him already.

Apparently he and his brother were Jinn, but French. Jinn were Arabic, I think. I had googled it on my phone and I said middle-east and Africa is where the myth originated from.

Ha-ha, yeah. Myth. Just like everyone else I am standing next to.

Anyway, it explained why it didn't seem right for them to have a French accent and look Arabic. Not that I'm saying I expect them to speak Arabic, Annelid has triplet cousins identical to her whom are Scandinavian but speak--and have an accent from there, too--Portuguese.

When I woke up, everyone was standing up and stretching except Zaastaish and Uanai. They had lain in invisible hammocks, not even offering us one. Kitty was fine, she slept in cat form almost always, and right now she was pulling ticks from the kid's hair. She had a lot in her hair, but even if the ticks were more toxic to her than the kids she didn't seem to care. I began to silently pick the ticks from her hair, too. She didn't protest, but she stiffened very visibly. But I did notice her breathing seemed labored, and she was swaying on her feet. And then she had to focus on getting a cockroach from poor little Dylan's ear. Arctica had started calling her Dyl, and for the first and only time I agreed with her. The nickname saved confusion.

When Dyl was cockroach-free, she pranced to her brother and his friends. Kitty was left to pick ticks from Fox's hair, too, and Arctica refused to be touched by Kitty, whom she called the cat.

"So, is anyone wondering how to actually get to Arizona from here?" I asked, yanking on an especially fat tick from Kitty's scalp. She yowled like a cat, and rubbed the back of her head, but it was slow. Normally she had good reflexes.

 I studied the tick. It surprised me. A Rocky Mountain wood tick. All the others were harmless, but if this one got enough venom into Kitty she would be paralyzed, and get sick, have a fast heart beat, etc. Left untreated, it could be fatal.

"I know how to get to air zone!" Ferrin yelled, and I resisted the urged to sigh in defeat. All of the kids called Arizona air zone and refused to call it anything else. "We get the tiny blue capsule thing and step on it. A blue portal opens up, and when we walk through we're in air zone!"

I saw Fox glance at Zaastaish, whom had flinched at Ferrin's words, before saying, "We don't have tiny blue capsules."

"The Jinn do."

We all knew they didn't. They had made them, against their will. It was why they had the shackles, technically they were still under the service of the Vampire Hunters.

"Not anymore." Fox said quickly, as he could see Uanai and Zaastaish's feathers ruffling. I finished taking ticks from Kitty's head, and though she didn't say thanks, her eyes were shooting me rainbows. That actually sounds really weird, and I just pictured it in my head. Funny.

Kitty finished picking ticks from Fox's hair, and shifted to cat form. Shifted to human. Cat. Human. Cat. Human. She did this about fifty-eight more times before Uanai grabbed her arm and cried, "Kitty making me dizzy!"