The Tale of Mitch
By Solo Ion

Mitch had never been happy with his life. He had been orphaned at the age of three, and forced to live in the home of one of the village's widows - Ms. Rosenboom. Her husband had been a very successful Hunter, but had never returned from one of his hunts over 15 years ago. Ms. Rosenboom had lived by herself, until Mitch moved in. Since then, she had treated him like her personal servant.

"'Rake the lawn, weed the garden, sweep the footpaths, weed the lawn, make me some tea… and don't forget to weed the lawn.' Does it ever end?" Mitch complained to himself as he was weeding the garden. "Nobody except nobody tidies their house as much as she does."

When he was only three, a dragon had attacked his village. Both of his parents had been killed in the attack. From what other people had told him, he had had an older sister that had been blooded in an earlier attack. She was barley one when it happened. Around a year before Mitch was born, she had been playing outside when the dragon attacked. The dragon was flying overhead when one of the village's Hunters shot it with a rifle. The bullets must have found a weak spot in the dragon's scales, because it lost a lot of blood, right onto Mitch's sister. What followed next, Mitch knew even less of: his sister, obviously transforming very fast and screaming so loudly that she could be heard clear across the village, had been taken into the forest and killed, but Mitch didn't know everything for sure. He never even heard her name.

On Tuesdays, Ms. Rosenboom had a day off from her housework. And instead of giving Mitch one as well, she sent him to school. Their school had school days of Sunday to Thursday, and 'day offs' on the last two days of the week. The entire village followed that pattern. The school had different lessons on each day of the working week. On Tuesdays, they had Theory. Mitch almost preferred spending the day doing endless chores at his house, and occasionally did.

Sometimes Mitch would stop whatever he was doing and wish that he could just fly away from it all and find an adventure somewhere. Mitch knew all to well about the blood monsters that lived outside of the village perimeter, and how simply coming in contact with their blood would transform you into a blood mutant, and how your blood would then, in turn, transform other non-blooded people into mutants as well. Though Mitch wanted a completely different life to the one that he had, he knew that becoming a blood mutant wasn't the answer. From what he heard, it was really painful, and then you would be put to death. Mitch hated the way that his aunt and peers treated him, but he didn't want to die.

The only time that Mitch was free to do as he wished was for half an hour after lunch, but there was never much for Mitch to do anyway, but he always left the house. Sometimes he hung out with his friends, but he didn't have many friends, and they weren't very close friends; he was usually the underdog anyway. He spent most of his time in solitude, until lately when he found a new hobby: making a crude rope ladder.

His village put most of its resources into defense. It was protected from all flightless monsters by a high, thick outer wall. Mitch, along with most if the children under 18, had never been outside of this wall, which, Mitch figured, would be the perfect way to get some excitement into his dull life.

Mitch went to a spot between a house and the wall, where he wouldn't be seen. He attached the end of the ladder to a rock, and threw it over. The rope ladder worked surprisingly well. In less than a minute, he was over the wall, and tucking the ladder under a bush. It was the first time that he had been outside of the village. Mitch looked at the nearby forest edge with a new sense of freedom.

Though he had to remain aware of the time, he enjoyed the freedom of the forest: the dead leaves beneath his feet, the light between the branches. He had spent most of his time in Ms. Rosenbooms house and knew little about survival outside of the village.

But even with his lack of woodland skills, Mitch knew danger when it arose. He suddenly stood perfectly still, listening to the faint crackle of dead leaves behind him. Slowly turning around, he found himself face to face with a griffin.

The griffin was small for its species, but was still much larger than Mitch. For the first time, he felt the twinge of fear running down his spine.

"Get down you fool!"

Mitch instantly ducked and threw his arms over his head. An arrow flew out of the bushes from Mitch's right and struck the griffin on the side. It screeched in pain and turned to face its attacker.

"Run you idiot!"

Mitch recognised the voice as one of the villager's Hunter. While still in a crouching position, he begun to turn and crawl away from the griffin, while its attention was drawn elsewhere.

Instead of the twang of a bow's string, a sharp gunshot ripped the air and a messy bullet hole appeared in the neck of the griffin. A very bloody hole. So bloody that Mitch got a back full of the stuff.

Mitch screamed, but silenced himself when another bullet made a small hole in the ground inches away from him. Mitch heard the sound of the thudding of the Hunter running away.

Mitch stood up. His legs and back where completely covered in blood. Some blood begun to run out of his hair into his eyes. He tried to rub it away with his fingertips, but that only got blood on his fingertips as well.

He looked at the griffin. It still had an arrow sticking out of its side. Blood was still pooling from the messy hole in its neck. One wing was twitching.

Mitch stood back from the scene. "Well, I guess that…" and then the pain set in.

Mitch couldn't believe that something could hurt so much. Sharp stabs of pain ran across his upper back as feathers sprouted. More pain coursed across his scalp as his hair was replaced with feathers as well.

Aches in his legs told him that they too where reshaping, becoming shorter but stronger, and growing a shaggy coat of fur. The coat ran up his back until it reached the feathers, but stopped just above his navel at his front. His feet shrank out of his shoes, and then expanded to become the paw of the griffin. The base of his spine extended into a tail.

His fingernails (which he'd always had to keep strictly trimmed and clean) begun to twinge and grow into sharp claws.

He felt a sharp pain behind his shoulder blades, and then a different sort of pain. The pain of his tee-shirt suddenly becoming too tight. He quickly pulled it off before it choked him.

A handful more moments passed, and then the pain receded. He opened his eyes and gasped.

He could see much better than he could before; he could see things in incredible detail. It was like he'd been walking around with his fringe in his eyes, and had finally got a haircut.

He looked at himself. His fingernails had become sharp claws. If only Ms. Rosenboom could see them now. She'd have a fit, Mitch thought. He kicked off his trousers that had bunched up because his entire legs had changed: become shorter, stockier and covered in tawny fur. He had also gained a lion's tail.

Mitch felt an extra weight behind him, and reached over his shoulder. "Wings! I have wings!" he exclaimed.

He pulled one around for a better view. "The feathers are the same colour as my hair is… was…" Mitch ran his fingers over his head. Instead of hair, he felt feathers. Covering his entire head except for the lower half of his face and jaw. He also felt ears, now further up the side of his head, and pointed. He looked over his shoulder. The feathers continued to about halfway down his back, where they changed into tawny fur.

Mitch gathered up his clothing and stuffed his shoes and trousers into his somewhat-stretched-at-the-seams tee-shirt.

"How am I going to walk now?" he mumbled to himself as he tried to stand. He fell over. He tried again, using a tree for support. He managed to stay upright for nearly half a minute before loosing his balance and slumping.

Eventually, hindered by his clothing, Mitch made his way away from the dead griffin, back to the village. Along the way, he noted that not only was his sight better, but his hearing has improved too. Soon, he could see the wall. He headed for the spot where he had left the rope ladder.

Mitch looked at the wall with regret. Now, he was free, but never able to enter any village. Life will be challenging, he thought. I'm going to have to forge my own way now. And with that, he gathered up his belongings, cast one last glance back at the village and then headed back into the forest, never to return.

Many months passed. Mitch learnt to walk with his new legs; he even developed a small swagger. In several ways, Mitch enjoyed his new life. There were no bossy adults or strict schedules to follow, only the daily need to eat and sleep. There was much more danger in his life now, he had to look out for monsters and Hunters, and he found himself running for his life on a weekly basis, but he pulled through. He spent the first few weeks hanging around the forest near the village, but he ended up moving for open areas with a question hanging over his head: "I have wings, so surely I can fly?"

Mitch traveled through the forest for 3 days before he reached a large enough area. It was a long walk for someone that had rarely left his house.

He spent most of the next day un-successfully trying to get lift, and spent the remaining time recovering from his umpteenth attempt.

Maybe if I tried to put more effort into jumping while I run, instead of running as fast as I can, Mitch thought to himself. Maybe if I also held my wings differently. "Why couldn't I simply just be able to fly, instead of having to learn first?" Mitch complained just as he heard something approaching him from his left.

"Who's there?"

Mitch saw the head of the person appear over the bush. He was a boy, who can't have been much more than a few years older than Mitch. He hesitated a second, before walking into full view. He was wearing trousers, long sleeved jumper and shoes, all slightly too big for him. He looked normal at first, but then Mitch noticed that his right hand was a talon.

"Uh… hi, um, who are you?" he asked.

"I'm Mitch," Mitch replied, and then indicated the newcomer's talon. "So you were blooded by a griffin to?"

Tim looked slightly irritated. "My name's Tim, thanks for asking. And no, I was blooded by a hippogriff, not a griffin." He sat down near Mitch.

"Besides the arm, what changed?" Mitch asked.

"Well, I got a coat of fur from here down," He indicated a spot about half way down his side. "And feathers on my shoulders."

"Interesting," Mitch said. "I only changed where I was blooded."

"You got wings," Tim said. "Why didn't I get wings?"

"Well, I don't know how to fly with them," Mitch responded. "At least you have that talon."

"I wouldn't say that's something. I'm just glad that I'm left handed."

They talked for a while on the topic of monsters, mutation, and the cruel way it affected people's lives. During that conversation, Tim raised an interesting question: "What would happen if you were blooded by two monsters at once?" They speculated on that for a while, inventing whole new monsters with strange abilities.

It was getting late by the time that they finished.

"Burrr, do you think that we should light a fire?" Tim asked.

"I don't know how to."

"You mean that you have never lit a fire? Not once?"

"I haven't really felt cold enough. I think that my fur keeps me warm enough."

Tim looked at Mitch skeptically. "I've had one every night. I'll make one now."

Tim got up and walked off. He returned a few minutes later with an arm full of kindling.

"Instead of just sitting there on your furry haunches," Tim said, "could you find some dry grass and leafy stuff?"

While Tim went of to get some bigger wood, Mitch gathered an armful of long, dead grass and a leafy dead branch.

When Tim returned, he was dragging a log along behind him, his talons latched into the bark. His other arm was wrapped around a bundle of arm-sized branches.

"That's plenty, I'll set it up." Tim cleared the area of leaf litter, building the fire in a shallow hole. He left the log nearby.

"Now comes the harder part," Tim said. "Getting a flame. Could you give me some shelter from the wind?"

Mitch shuffled closer and extended his wings to create some shelter.

Tim pulled a file and a flint out of one of his pockets. Mitch watched with interest as Tim begun striking the file with the flint, creating sparks. After awhile, some of the dry grass begun to smoulder and he soon had a little flame licking up into the leaves.

"You've gotten quite good at it," Mitch commented.

"It took me a while to master," Tim replied. "Sometimes I rubbed a smooth stick against a larger piece of wood, but I've found that I like this way better."

"I once heard that it's possible to use glass to light fires."

Tim scoffed. "Glass would just shatter if you where to strike it against a file."

They sat in silence for a while, while Tim fed more wood into the fire. Mitch was the first to break the silence. "So, where do you come from?"

"I used to live at a village, somewhere in that direction," he replied, indicating with his hand to his left. "But that was more than a year ago. I got blooded when isolated from the rest of a group while on my first Hunting trip."

"You were going to be a Hunter?" Mitch said.

"Yeh, and my instructor said that I was looking very promising, but due to this twist in fate, I have become the hunted," Tim said, holding up his talon.

"Well, I just didn't fit in," Mitch said. "For as long as I can remember, I lived with my aunt…"

As the last colours of the day faded away, Mitch told Tim about his own life before his bloodying, before they unanimously called it a night and slept.

The next morning was a brisk one. The fire was naught but a pile of ash and the end of last night's log. Mitch woke up with a cramp in his right leg.

Mitch yawned and said "Mm? Must've fallen asleep on a twig." He removed the offending bit of wood and threw it into what was left of the fire.

"So, you finally woke up. I was afraid that you wouldn't wake up until lunchtime," Tim said, with some mock-disappointment on his voice.

"What's the hurry?"

"Didn't you say that you where going to learn how to fly?"

"Why are you suddenly so interested?"

"This I have to see."

The day seemed to pass quickly for a change. While Tim sat off to one side, Mitch attempted to get lift. Tim didn't help by shouting 'encouraging' things at Mitch.

"C'm ON! Faster! Faster! Spread your wings wide! And jump!"

Mitch's wings lifted him a few feet into the air, from which he glided down to a belly landing that winded him.

Tim couldn't stop laughing.

"Hahahaha… you… hahaha, you need to… hahaha… to… haha to use your… hahaha… arms to stop yourself… hahaha… yourself from… hahahaha!" Tim was unable to finish the sentence.

Mitch, who was still having trouble breathing, didn't see the humour in the situation. But he could do little more than glare angrily at Tim, now lying down, still laughing.

Over the following week, Mitch learnt some skills that would eventually enable him to fly. Once he had gotten the knack of gliding along level ground, so he went to the top of a small creek bank, of which one side was two or so metres higher than the other.

Mitch successfully glided of the top of the bank, but when he tried to slow down with his arms, he tripped and landed head first, providing more amusement for Tim.

After several more head-firsters, he finally managed to land without getting a mouth full of soil. Mitch soon attempted to flap his wings. His first attempt threw him off balance, as did the following few, but after some more trial and error, Mitch began adding height and distance to his glides.

Two days later, Mitch felt he was finally starting to accomplish real flight. He was able to stay in the air, but was always exhausted after just a few minutes.

By the end of those two days, Mitch was recovering from his hard work. Tim took the opportunity to tell Mitch a bit about what he knew.

"If you were to run into the wind, you would get more lift, and once you get above the trees, there's no stopping you," Tim was saying

"You're a real know-it-all, aren't you? How do you know all of this stuff, anyway?"

Tim sighed. "Before I was blooded, I spent some of my spare time watching birds, and even more time afterwards. There were times when I would watch a predatory bird fly until it caught a warm up draught, and then soar up until it disappeared from sight."

"Mm? Very interesting, I'm sure that I'll find that very useful tomorrow. Speaking of useful, let me show you a trick," he said, picking two blades of grass, one for himself and one for Tim. "This is a really neat trick that I learnt while weeding once. You need a fairly long blade of grass, hold it between your thumbs like this, and pull it tight, but don't break it," Mitch said, demonstrating as he did it himself. "Once it's ready, you blow throw the gap." Mitch did so, and…

PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Tim jumped at the sound.

"Now you try," Mitch said.

Tim held the blade of grass cumbersomely with his talon, and blew.

Fhhhhh

"Harder."

Fhhhhhhh

"Harder!"

PEEEE-*

"You blew too hard."

"Ah." Tim picked another blade and tried again. This time the grass didn't break. "Now I've got it."

They sat in silence for a while, watching the sunset. Mitch turned his attention to a small bird hop from twig to twig in one of the trees above them.

Tim was the first to break the silence. "Mitch?"

"Yes?"

"You really need to have a bath."

"Shaddap!"

Mitch woke up early the next day, leaving Tim still sleeping. Even though it was still cold, Mitch had high thoughts. He said to himself, "Today, Mitch, you are going to soar."

For a change, Mitch did some stretches first, to warm himself up before he tried to fly. Feeling better than before, Mitch walked to the well-used creek bank.

Mitch took note of the wind direction before he begun his sprint up the side of the bank. As he jumped, he spread his wings, which caught the air and he begun to glide. Wasting no time, he began to flap his wings to gain some altitude, and then veered into the wind and found that it lifted higher still.

Keep climbing; you're almost above the trees, Mitch told himself. He gained some more height and his legs trimmed the top leaves off of a tree.

You've done it! You're flying! Mitch thought, still gaining altitude.

He continued to gain height, until he felt warmer air billowing up under his wings. Mitch spiraled inside the rising air, effortlessly gaining height until he was almost as high as the clouds.

The view was stunning; it took Mitch's breath away. Mitch had thought that his sight at ground level was amazing, but he hadn't expected anything like this.

The field that he had launched from looked little more than a dash of light green in a sea of dark green. Small rivers and narrow roads cut gaps in the vastness of the forest. In one direction, he could see a tiny amount of smoke from a village just below the horizon. Some massive mountains in another direction looked little more than large hills.

For the first time in his life, Mitch felt truly free. He had always wanted to be able to simply fly away from his life, and now he finally could.

Mitch left the updraught and slowly glided back down to ground level. He narrowly avoided crash landing.

Now where's Tim? Mitch wondered as he begun to their camp, calling "Tim! Tim? Where are you?" and then Mitch saw him, sitting with his back against a tree, staring across the field.

Mitch padded across to where Tim sat, and sat beside him. Tim barely even blinked.

"What's wrong Tim?" Mitch asked and then paused. "Did you see me? I flew! I…"

Tim replied sharply, "And I didn't. I'm stuck on the ground. You got wings. Why didn't I? A hippogriff blooded me. They have wings, but I got none." Tim's voice almost broke.

"I… jeeze, I don't know. There's no predictability in the way you change when you get blooded," Mitch stammered, his high spirits suddenly shattered by sympathy for Tim. They sat in awkward silence for a while.

"Y'know it's strange…" Mitch began "that for the entire time that we've been here, I haven't seen a single monster, not one. I guess that some places get lucky. These things happen."

"I was thinking that I will go a separate way from now on."

"Why?"

"I just don't see how we can stay together from now on. You can fly now, you probably want to go your own way."

"I don't have…"

But Tim cut him short. "I'm going my own way."

There's no arguing with him, Mitch thought. "Well, at least take my old clothing and that rope ladder that I have been lugging around for the past few months. I've got no use for them."

Their parting was brief. Tim picked up his newly acquired clothing and rope ladder and left without even a backward glance. Some people are so headstrong, Mitch thought to himself as he watched Tim disappear from view.

Tim spent the rest of the morning gathering a light lunch for himself. At noon, he launched off of the creek bank, caught a thermal, and was gone.

Mitch spent the evening flying in the general direction of the mountains that he had seen earlier that day. As it got darker, he was forced to land in a narrow gap between trees, where he spent the night.

He woke the next morning with an ache in his left wing. Because there wasn't enough clear space to launch from, Mitch had to put up with walking the rest of the distance.

Mitch spent the following day and a half on paw (as opposed to on foot), foraging for food wherever he could. Not long after noon of the second day, Mitch found another clearing that was large enough for him to launch from. After judging the wind direction, he begun his run and launched into the wind.

"I'm getting better at this," he said to himself as he caught another updraught.

As he gained height, he shifted his gaze back towards the mountain, which by now, was only slightly higher than him.

And near the top of this mountain sat a building.

A very large building.

Mitch circled a couple of times before landing in the flat area in front of the building. It looked as if it had been cleaned recently.

The building itself, though made of metal and plastic and other such rare materials, was very old and weather worn. It looked like it had been abandoned long ago.

Mitch had no idea of who or what he would find inside, so he entered carefully. The first room was fairly well cleaned. In the middle of the room, there was a white, marble fountain. Even though it was as old as the rest of the building, not all that large and didn't look like it had had water in it for ages, it stood proud in the entrance hall of the building. The base of the fountain was about two and a half meters across. At the centre was a life-sized statue of a blindfolded woman in a robe, holding a set of scales up with one hand. She also had a pair of wings on her back. Like me, Mitch thought, with a grin.

Mitch walked across to a door on the other side of the statue and found himself looking down a long hallway with more doors along the walls. The size of the complex amazed Mitch, after the pokey confines of his old home.

Mitch pricked up his ears. He could hear activity in one of the rooms.

"Hello?" he called softly down the hall as he begun walking down it.

A young boy poked his head half out of a door on Mitch's left, and then went back into the room.

"Aimee, there's a new-age angel at the door."

Mitch waited a moment for Aimee to show.

Out of the door she came. All three and a half meters of her. Some sort of snake monster had obviously blooded her, Mitch thought. If only I had paid more attention to the different types of monsters in class.

Aimee had a normal head, neck and right arm, but her body from her chest down was that of a snake. Her left arm also bore a strong resemblance to a snake, with the fingers fused together and the whole arm covered in scales.

"Hi. Welcome to Haven. My name is Aimee," she said.

Mitch hesitated. "Haven? For what?"

"For blood mutants," she replied. "This is a haven, sort of a sanctuary for blood mutants."

Mitch glanced around, at the paint that had peeled off the walls and at other bits of debris strewn around. "Well, compared to out there, almost anything is."

"Oh, we have plans for Haven," Aimee replied with a wry smile. "What's your name?"

"My name's Mitch. I flew in just a minute ago."

Aimee's gaze shifted to Mitch's wings. She began leading him down the hallway. "Then you must be fairly tired. We arrived here several weeks ago, and we're still cleaning it. You won't believe the size of this building. It'll take forever."

"Actually, I saw it from the air. It sure is massive," Mitch said, and then snuck a look into the room that Aimee had come out of as he passed it. The boy that Mitch had first seen was there, and definitely a blood mutant. The right side of his face was covered in green scales, and his eye was reptilian. He gave a small smile at Mitch, showing that half of his jaw was filled with sharp teeth. His left leg was also transformed. Instead of a normal foot, it was also dragon like, with sharp claws.

"We plan to turn it into a sanctuary for blood mutants," Aimee continued. "Already, we have a few. Beside myself, there's Tara, Daniel and Lisa. A chimera blooded Tara. Together we found this. Daniel, the young lad you saw earlier, was blooded when we got here. The dragon that blooded him…"

Mitch stopped walking. "What dragon?"

"The dragon killed Daniels parents and almost killed me to, but it now lies dead…"

"A dragon attacked my village many times before I was born. I wonder if it's… Take me to it."

"What's the hurry? It's not going anywhere," Aimee said.

"Which way?" Mitch replied, more like a statement than a question.

Aimee sighed. "Follow me, it's near the middle of the building."

Aimee continued slithering down the halls with Mitch following close behind.

"In there," Aimee pointed to one of the doors up ahead. Mitch dashed past her and entered the door, but then recoiled from the smell.

"If you would just be more patient…" Aimee said.

"OK. Point taken," Mitch gasped back. They entered carefully, holding their hands to their noses to lessen the smell. "Could we open a win… uh, okay, no roof." The room had been half demolished by the dragon, and was open to the sky.

"Well, it's certainly big enough," Mitch mentioned. "But how can I tell if it's the one that attached my village?"

Mitch and Aimee left the room, for the relatively fresh air of the halls.

"What's this about a dragon attacking your village?" Aimee asked.

They began walking down the hall.

"I'm pretty sure that when it attacked my old village, one of our Hunters shot it with a gun several times, hitting it at least once. From what I've heard, it lost a lot of blood, so surly there'd be a scar somewhere." Mitch had another look in at the dragon, but didn't enter the room again. "I see some scars, but they could have been from anywhere. I can't tell if that was the dragon that attacked my village so many years ago."

"Why do you want to find out so badly?"

"Like I said, my old village had a problem with a dragon that kept on attacking us every few years. The last that it attacked, I was only 3. My parents where killed along with several others."

"Gee, I'm sorry." Aimee said.

"That's not all… 4 years earlier, during another attack, someone shot it with the only gun in the village. The dragon flew on, but not before loosing a lot of blood. From what I've heard, my sister who was only one at the time was playing outside, and got covered in blood. One of our village's Hunters took her away and killed her."

Aimee looked as if she was about to say something, but remained silent until, "There are some rooms up ahead on the right that you could use," Aimee said.

"It doesn't look like you'll be running out of rooms anytime soon," Mitch said as he entered one. It had a row of tables with chairs under them along one wall. For every chair, there was a flat, white box with a sheet of opaque glass across the front, and a board with neat rows of buttons, each with a letter on top.

In the middle of the room, a rusty cage with the door ajar stood on a raised platform in the middle of the room. Mitch could see no way of holding the door shut.

Mitch arranged a few small tables against one wall for a makeshift bed and retired for the night.

Mitch stood in the door of his room. In the cage, a griffin prowled. Men in white suits sat in the chairs. They where constantly tapping the buttons on the boards in front of them, looking at the sheets of glass on the boxes, which were lit. Around the caged griffin hung more of those contraptions with lots of little letters on them. Many glass plates fixed to the roof lit the room. Mitch walked around the cage. The griffin watched him. Suddenly, the lights went out.

"Hey, let me out," Mitch said, shaking the bars of the cage once the lights came back on. The griffin strode out of the door and down the hall.

"Let me out… I…"

Then Mitch felt his legs reform to become the lion-like legs of the griffin. His spine lengthened, becoming a tail. Then his waist narrowed, and a thick coat of fur covered his skin. His arms and hands changed into talons as Mitch fell forward onto them. His chest and back began to grow feathers. His head reshaped, his eyes reformed and his mouth went hard, and then extruded into a beak, making his face exactly like a griffin's.

"Our test is complete," one of the men said. They all filed out of the room.

Mitch tried to open the cage door, but it was locked. I can't get out, he thought as he lay down on the cage floor.

Have to get out… have to get… out… have… to… get…

Mitch turned over and bumped a wall.

"Wha..?"

He sat up and felt pins and needles in both of his wings. The cage remained where it was where he left it, still rusty and empty. The glass-fronted boxes on the far side of the room still blank and cracked. The glass plates fixed to the roof were dark and shattered.

Mitch walked over to the window and looked out. So, it was only a dream, he thought. Wow, what a view. Mitch watched as the sun begun to rise above the horizon. A room with a view.

Over the following week, Mitch grew accustomed to living in Haven. He got to know the other blood mutants, including Lisa, whom Aimee hadn't gotten a chance to explain to Mitch about. A basilisk blooded Lisa. Even though she didn't change physically, anyone that as much as brushed her skin would become petrified, as good as dead. Lisa had at first kept her distance from the others, afraid that she would be cast out, but Aimee convinced her that she could safely stay in Haven.

Mitch also made good friends with Daniel, and spent much of the time cleaning his new room.

On one such morning, Mitch arrived late for breakfast.

"Mornin'," Mitch said as he walked into the room that they had designated as their dining room, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Morning Mitch," Daniel replied. "I was wondering if you where still with us."

"Mm… I seeped in…" he muttered, rubbing the sleep out of the corner of an eye.

"I found a small underground room with some sealed dried food stored in a cupboard. It'd kept quite well." Daniel said.

"How big was the room?" Tara asked.

"I couldn't see. It was too dark to see very far down there."

"We could have a look after breakfast." Aimee suggested.

"It's very dark down there, I couldn't see a thing much father than a few feet from the stairs."

"Easy. We make torches," Tara said. "There's plenty of wood lying around."

"Does anyone know how to make reliable torch?" Daniel asked.

Nobody had an answer. Tara, who noticed that Mitch hadn't been paying attention, went over to him. "Mitch, you look like you fought off a griffin in your sleep last night. What happened?"

Mitch, still groggy from lack of sleep, said, "I don't think that I told you any of this, but before I came here, I met up with this hippogriff blood-mutant, Tim. We parted a few weeks ago. I couldn't sleep last night because I kept on wondering if he was all right or had gotten himself into trouble."

Daniel had been eves dropping on Mitch. Tara sent him an angry look with her lion head, and Daniel went back to his food.

"You can't do anything on an empty stomach. Have some soup before you leave," Tara said.

Mitch had intended to leave straight after breakfast, but Tara Insisted on loading him up with supplies. Mitch ended up with a generous two days supply of food and a small first aid kit, which Daniel had found while rummaging in a cupboard. Mitch used a small bag strapped around his waist to carry the food and kit, and left around mid morning.

As he floated up another warm updraught, he went over his day's plans. I last saw him at least two weeks ago, but I think that he stayed in generally the same area. So if I head back to that same clearing, then I should be able to find him within a day or two. If I get a good tailwind and some strong updraughts, I should be able to reach the clearing by nightfall.

Luck was on Mitch's side. He barely had to catch any updraughts, so he made it to the clearing just as the sun was setting.

Once in the clearing, he went back to the spot where they had the fire. It looked like it had been used only about 3 days ago. Mitch made another whistle out of grass.

PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Mitch waited a few moments, and then tried again. After waiting a few more moments, he turned to his right and tried a third time. This time, he heard a response behind him, of in the distance.

Ditching his own whistle, he hurried after the constant whistling.

PEEEEEEEEEEEE PEEEEEEEEEEEE PEEEE-*