[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/eE6lcKb.png[/img]

[h3]Outskirts of Lost Haven[/h3]
Just after dawn[/center]

Berenice winged low over the trees heading east towards the city, working harder than she might otherwise have had due to the number of tiny people riding on her back and in her shirt. Tiny hands gripped feathers, pulling gently but insistently at every wing beat. The weight of them reminded her of her new burden as the wind coursed over her skin. She had to find these people a new home, along with herself. Her nest, the one piece of solidity in her life, had just been utterly ravaged, and worse, had been proven exposed to some unknown enemy. She had caught the meaning of “Sebastian” as an evil person who wanted her for...something. 

The siren's brain was fizzing. Over the course of the last month, her awareness of the world had somewhat come back, though she was still as lost as a child. She could communicate, and hunt, and fly, but largely those were her only concerns. The addition of people she actually had to care about and for, the presence of some unknown entity that wished to harm her and her friends, the encounter with the rockman who had been on fire(and what had happened to that nice David man?). All of this was causing no small amount of confusion for her, and feelings that she was completely unfamiliar with. The world was beginning to be a very dangerous place, and she was putting herself at even more risk to protect others. Not that she minded, but she couldn't put into words why she would. It made no sense to her animal brain.

A strong wind blew suddenly from the south, and Berenice was both bearing more weight than usual and distracted by her own thoughts. The gust caught her under the wing and threatened to bowl her over, and a normally quick decision to dive turned to panic as she realised that that would dislodge her passengers. She instead tumbled as gracefully as she could, bearing the brunt of the wind and banking with it. Even so, she could hear the cries of fright from the younger ones. She made a silent thanks to her new friend Eva for having taken the ones who wouldn't have been able to cling on, even as Sunheart, riding on her scalp, leaned down to yell in her ear.

[color=FFFACD]”Great Hawk, it feels there is a storm coming soon! We cannot fly the whole way!”[/color]

She turned her head to look south. Eyes adapted to spot prey at great distance noted the roiling clouds that were building over the ocean and she nodded, turning down to the ground and landing as gently as possible on a street. She realised she might cause some commotion, but there seemed to be no one out and about at the moment. Above them, the wind whistled sharply, and she was glad she had decided to heed Sunheart's advice.

[color=82ca9d]”I can't walk around like this. I have to wear the thing Charlie gave me. I don't know if it will cover you, though.”[/color]

[color=FFFACD]”Well, we will have to find out, then.”[/color] Sunheart turned around and called out down to the rest of the clan that had come with them. [color=FFFACD]”Prepare to scatter, but don't panic! We will have to track her along the sides if it comes to that! Don't lose each other! At least five to a group!”[/color]

A chorus of affirmatives rang up from Berenice's body. She figured there were probably about fifty on her, all weighing but a few grams, but all were survivors. She pulled the little tiara off of her belt where she had tucked it for safekeeping, and noted with some satisfaction that she still had the telling phone that Charlie had given her. She had worried it might have dropped out during their flight from the nest, but apparently some enterprising young rider had secured it with a line.

She began walking down the pavement, remembering from yesterday that the roads were for cars and they grey stone was for people. Charlie had seemed exasperated that she hadn't known, but Charlie was patient with her, and knew that there was much the siren was simply not aware of through lack of experience. Walking was still awkward, but she had confidence that the illusion that her headpiece granted her would mask that.

A few hours passed, and Berenice's stomach growled mightily as she walked. The day grew brighter and brighter, and now there were people walking and driving. They took care to avoid dogs, who seemed overly curious about their little party, but otherwise remained unmolested. The smells down on the ground, as they had yesterday, were intense for someone who generally did not come down this low. Of particular note were the cars and trucks, which caused no end of grief for her as she struggled to not wrinkle her face in disgust at every time one passed. Even those scents, however, did nothing to ease her hunger.

The illusion did seem to cover her friends, as they drew no additional attention, but looking over occasionally at Sunheart, she could tell they were on the edge of panic even if they weren't directly observable. She guessed this was probably the first time any of them had been this exposed in their lives, and they were essentially prisoners on her body, as leaving would make them visible again.
As quietly as she could, she began whsipering to Sunheart, now standing resolute on her shoulder.

[color=82ca9d]”We need to eat. But I have no things to get people food with, and I cannot hunt in the city.”[/color]

Sunheart nodded, and began scanning the areas nearby. They were just beginning to cross over a massive bridge, a river running below them towards the sea. The tiny girl pointed towards the edge of the structure.

[color=FFFACD]”If we can get underneath the bridge, you can then hunt in the water while being mostly unobservable. You'll have to be fast, though.”[/color]

Berenice moved cautiously to the edge and looked around the fencing preventing people from doing exactly what she was trying to do. There was enough traffic that she couldn't just hop over like she wanted, so she motioned everyone to move to her sides and began squeezing through the gap between the fence and the brick wall of a riverside building. While a tight fit, everyone made it through safely, and she was just preparing to move alongside the outer edge when the squeal of a suddenly braking car echoed along the street. She swiftly made her way back through, anticipating that she had done something not allowed by humans. A car door slammed, and she peered about, looking for the source.

On the other side of the road, a battered but stately old sedan had come to a stop. The driver, an older looking man with a little grey in his brown hair and stubble from more than a few days, was making his way across to her, shouting at cars as they, in turn, honked at him. He wore a button down shirt and dark brown trousers. His face was rugged, tired and worn out looking, but his eyes were steel, and they were looking directly at her. As he crossed the street, he took out a small black rectangle and held it up.

Berenice was frightened. Far more so than she had been when the men last night had been shooting at her. This man wanted something, and she recognised the object inside the rectangle as a police thing, which meant he had authority. The clan had all moved to her back to hide. Only Sunheart stood, grimly hanging onto her hair and leaning against her neck, both a reassuring presence and and advice giver.

[color=FFFACD]”Try to relax. He must want to ask questions, but he doesn't know what you are or that we are here. As long as you give him no reason to suspect anything, we should be free of him quickly.”[/color]

The spot she was in, up against the wall, was a small triangle of cement between the street and the fence. The only piece of cover was a bench set to allow people to look out over the river. The feeling of being cornered was not pleasant, but the man didn't look angry or hostile. In fact, he looked worried. He held up his hand placatingly.

“Miss, are you okay?! Do you need-” The concern on his face shifted abruptly to shock, and his jaw actually hung for a second. Berenice, fearing they actually had somehow been seen, tensed, ready to fly at his first movement towards them.

After a moment of recovery, he spoke, almost to himself. “My God, it's you, isn't it?” He did something with his black rectangle, and pulled out a scrap of some sort of paper, almost the same size. Holding it up for a moment, he glanced from the other side of it that Berenice couldn't see, and her face.

“It really is. Oh my God!” Suddenly, his expression changed again, this time to what looked like happy triumph. “I found you! Oh my God, you're [i]alive[/i]!”

He seemed to notice the confusion and fear on her face. “Look, okay, Miss Adams, please, could you tell me where you have been for the past month? Oh man, I'm going to need a statement. Shit, you look like hell, I need to call an EMT. Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

He didn't seem like a danger, even nice. The tension left Berenice's shoulders as she said the first thing that popped into her head. [color=82ca9d]”What's an Adams?”[/color]

That stopped him cold in his tracks. His eyes narrowed, searching her up and down. “Do you not know your name? Do you even know where you are?”

Berenice cocked her head to the side. “My name is Berenice. I am in the city. Just like you. Do you know [i]your[/i] name?”

For the second time, the man's jaw dropped, though he recovered much quicker. He took one step forward, still holding up his hands, one still clutching the paper. “My name is Detective George Owens, I'm with Lost Haven Police Department. I'm part of the Missing Persons unit. Do you know what that means?”

Berenice knew the word police, though Charlie had used 'cop'. [color=82ca9d]“You are missing?”[/color]

“Oh no,” Owens groaned. “Look, just...Are you hurt at all?”

[color=82ca9d]”Nooo,”[/color] said Berenice. This conversation was confusing her more than most did, including the explanation of toilets. [color=82ca9d]”I am not hurt. I am looking for my friends house and something to eat.”[/color]

“Okay, okay. I have a sandwich you can have. It's in my car. Just...look at this photo? And I will go get it.” He reached out with the paper, which Berenice gently took. “Just stay right there, okay? I'm going to get you that sandwich.” He turned and ran back across the street, shouting at cars.

Berenice flipped over the scrap of paper and looked at the other side, which was shiny and colourful. She had seen things like this before, it was an image of a person that got printed at paper so you could see them even when they weren't there. The girl in the photo was smiling brightly, green eyes nearly closed. The place she was in must have been sunny, maybe in a park? It was a close up, so she couldn't see the girls body or clothes, but her reddish-blonde hair was pulled up and held by a multitude of colorful pins into an elaborate style.

[color=FFFACD]”Berenice...”[/color] Sunheart whispered. Her voice sounded frightened and shocked. [color=FFFACD]”That is you in the photo.”[/color]

[color=82ca9d]”It cannot be me, I have never been in front of a camera.”[/color]

[color=FFFACD]”But it [i]is[/i] you. That is your face![/color]

Berenice glared up at the man, who was sitting in his car, talking excitedly to a black box. How had he stolen her face? Why did he have it? She was angry. People should not steal faces without consent. It was her face, not his! He had his own!

A few minutes passed, and he had also talked to someone on his own telling phone. Berenice thought about trying to call Charlie, but she figured she should not use Charlie's name in case they thought Charlie was a bad person. The police dealt with bad people, which Charlie was not. She doubted her friend would be happy with the attention, though. She kept saying things like 'low profile'.

The wind felt good as it picked up a bit here on the ground. The salt smell of the sea came through a bit, washing some of the car stink out of her nose. But the smell reminded her that she should have been fishing, and instead was watching this Owens man and waiting for a sandwich. She wasn't even sure what a sandwich was. As he climbed back out of his car and made his way back over to her, she copied what the kids had done when they were impatient and upset, and crossed her arms in front of her.

This time, when he approached, he held up his telling phone for a second. It clicked, and he began typing on it for a split second before he froze. He stood perhaps five feet from her, glancing up at her and then down at his phone. This repeated several times before he stared at her. His eyes were wide.

“What did that bastard do to you?” he said with horror in his voice.

She felt Sunheart duck behind her neck and whisper, [color=FFFACD]”Your spell! It doesn't work on phones, only on eyes! He knows you have wings!”[/color]

Berenice lowered herself slightly, wings flaring. This man seemed nice, but plenty of people, she had been warned time and again by the kids, could seem nice and then suddenly turn cruel. Police were probably no exception. Inadvertantly, she croaked like a distressed crow, causing him to step back a pace.

“Whoa there, hold on! I'm not the enemy here, okay?”

[color=82ca9d]”Why do you have my face? Why are you here?”[/color]

“Do you mind calming down? I don't want to hurt you! This is...this is going to take some time to explain. Mind if I sit over there?” He gestured at the bench.

Berenice, unsure of what was happening, nodded once and relaxed slightly, though she was still ready to take flight, disguise be damned.

As he sat, Detective Owens kept looking at her oddly, his eyes a little out of focus. It looked like the disguise might be coming back, but then he looked at his phone again and seemed to see her again. Apparently it only worked if you didn't know it was there. After a moment of gathering his thoughts, he began speaking. 

“About a month ago, the girl in the photo there, Gloria Adams, disappeared after her band played a show at a local bar. She had gone home for the night, but never showed up for work the next day. No one could reach her by phone, she wouldn't answer her door. Eventually her friends called us, that is, the police. We got into her apartment, and it looked like she had been attacked. Someone had used magic. There was...well, there wasn't enough blood to know for sure, but a lot of people assumed she was dead. They assigned me to her case, to try and find her.

“I thought I had a lead. There was a man in one of the photos from the show, someone we had seen before on a couple of other cases. Known magic-y guy. Talked to him once before this case. He was sleazy, creepy. Smelled awful, but not in the normal sense. Anyway, I figured he must be our number one suspect, but it turns out he had disappeared as well. The rest of the department chalked it up as him kidnapping the girl and getting out of town. Gave the girl up as dead, murdered. But since the case was still open, I didn't want to give up just yet.

“She had been a good kid. Going to college, working at a local diner. Straight-laced, helped her neighbours. Sort of person I wish we had more of, and I felt she deserved more effort. With all of the things happening, though, it's been all hands on deck. I couldn't spare a lot of time. The city's falling apart. One lone girl doesn't outweigh everyone else. But I've been keeping my eye out. And then, I'm driving out to check on a report, and I see you, climbing through the fence. I think to myself, oh damn, a jumper. Gotta do something.

“And then I see you. Spitting image of Miss Adams. But you don't know anything. Don't even seem to understand half of what I was saying. And I think maybe she's been brainwashed. I don't know jack about magic, it could have happened. And I don't want to think about what that little scumsucker could have done to you. And I radio for help, they're on their way, and I call Miss Adams parents and one of the band girls, and I say I may have found her, I will send you a picture. So I take your picture on my phone, and then I see you. Like, really see you.”

He sighed. A deep, resigned sigh, like he couldn't handle his words but he had to anyway. 

“Like I said, I don't know anything about magic. That could just be a face someone sculpted on you, and you have nothing to do with my case. But I can't take that chance. So there's a few things I have to know, Berenice. For one, where do you live?”

The siren had been listening raptly. She could understand why he felt so sad suddenly. She felt bad for this Gloria, but she still didn't see the connection. Sunheart, however, was shaking a little. She couldn't look at her though, and give her away.

[color=82ca9d]”I live outside, towards the setting sun. In the forest.”[/color]

Owens nodded, apparently this made a lot of sense to him. “And how long have you been living there?”

[color=82ca9d]”I don't know. Four weeks? Three and a half?”[/color]

“And before that, Berenice, where did you live?”

Berenice thought. She though hard, sifting through her memories. There were not very many. [color=82ca9d]”Nowhere.”[/color]

“You were homeless?”

[color=82ca9d]”No. I was nowhere. And then I was there, at my nest.”[/color]

“Jesus.” Owens ran a hand through his salted hair, then rubbed his face. He look more tired than he had, older than a few minutes should have made him. “Okay, I am going to ask you to stay here. There are more police coming. We have to figure out what is going on.”

Sunheart tensed at the same time that Berenice did. She knew, from his tone, from the way he was trying [i]not[/i] to look directly at her, that they were going to catch her, and put her in a car. And the horror stories the children had told her, about what the Guvment did to people like her, came thronging back in her mind.

She shouted at him. [color=82ca9d]”No! I will not be cut apart!”[/color] It wasn't like her scream, but her emotions caused a bit of the same effect. Owens clapped his hands over his ears as she beat her wings and took off, up and over the fence and out over the water. She looked back once, to see him standing, hands in his pockets, as two police cars pulled up near him, and then she dove around a building and lost sight of him.

[hr]

[center][h3]Dusk[/h3][/center]

She had eaten, and so had her charges. Fish had been caught, and she had whipped off her disguise earlier, fearing losing it, and tucked it back in her belt. Now, she sat in a tree in the park. She didn't remember, but her subconscious had guided her to the exact same spot that Charlie and Carrie had seen her the first time. 

No one spoke. Unknowingly, she had kept the photograph Owens had made her look at, and now she perched on the hidden branch, staring into what were, if the detective had been right, her own eyes. Sunheart had tried talking to her, as had the rest, but she had ignored them. They had moved up into the branches, hunting bugs for dinner and settling in to camp for the night, though she had heard Sunheart warn them that it was not a permanent camp.

Berenice was trapped in her own thoughts. Try as she might, she couldn't remember anything about [i]anything[/i] before she had woken up in the blasted shack that she had made her nest. And now, even that place was lost to her. The times added up with what Owens had said, but if she was this Gloria girl, why couldn't she remember? Even the face looked odd to her. She decided it was the eyes. Those were not her eyes. Her eyes were black and gold, the eagle's colours. These were bright and jade, human colours, colours she did not have. 

None of this day was good. Her nest destroyed, her friends lost or driven away, men and monsters hunting her. And she [i]knew[/i] that the monster had been sent after her, not anyone else. It had come to her nest. It had been watching [i]her[/i] for most of that fight. Salamander knew things he wasn't telling her. That crazy woman Eva had come with probably did too, but she was cold and aloof. No help there. Eva and Charlie were as lost as her. Sunheart and the Clan had lost their home as well.

Berenice stiffened her jaw and looked up into the darkening night sky. Well, she would sleep, and then go to Carrie's. There, the Clan would be safe, and she could take some time and develop a plan. Because, now that she thought about it, it was obvious. Only she could keep her friends safe from the monsters. She would have to find this Sebastian, her [i]father[/i] and then get the truth out of him. And after that?

She would make sure there were no more monsters.