Page 72 of How Does It Feel?

It was a long shot, but it was the only thing I had.

My feet slammed against the mossy dirt as I ran back to where I had started. To where I had torn my dress.

This had to work or else . . . or else . . . I’d never get to see them again, and I’d die with a half-full heart.

Click, click, click.

No surprise they had found me as I was struggling to locate the strip of white silk I’d left in the brush. Where had it gone? I continued to spin and dash about like a mad woman on the hunt.

Like a beacon of angelic light, the fabric lay under the moonlight in front of me.

I grabbed it and ran. They could easily pluck me at any moment, but they seemed to be lazy and waiting for me to tire.

As if they had heard me, more acid drops pelted toward me, just missing me.

My legs continued to pump as I tore the fabric into strips. Thank god the dress was real silk or this wouldn’t work. I needed to pull the fabric at exactly the right direction until I got it torn a bit and then turn it the opposite way. That should force a spiral in the strips of fabric.

The silk coiled loosely at the ends in both directions. It was perfect!

I took a sharp left and stopped. I needed to move quickly if this was going to work.

I searched the ground for the thickest and sturdiest stick I could find and forcefully jabbed until two holes formed in the back of my dress.

The ground shook as both beasts landed.

They thought I’d given up.

Quick as my hands would work, I tied the spiraling silk to the back of my tattered dress. Fighting the cramps in my legs, I took off again just as they drew closer.

Click, click, click!

The luna moth had gotten me here, and they would get me out.

Chapter 20

Run

Callie

One of the monsters took flight into the trees again while the other chased me on foot, not near as fast as when they flew.

With all my studies and obsession with wings, the luna moth had always been one of my favorites. It was so easy to fall in love with them after Eli had told me about the beauty of the wonderful green moth.

I touched the V-shaped scar on my thumb as a painful reminder.

After I had come home from the hospital as a child, no one believed me, and I had started to feel crazy. No one believed my story about the tiny fairies, insisting that it was a hallucination from the mushrooms I had picked, but Eli believed me. He knew I wasn’t crazy.

Click, click, click, click!

Fuck, they were getting close!

I took a sharp right and pushed to run as fast as I could, the strips flowing elegantly behind me.

Luna moths are unique in that they thrive at night next to bats. They only live about one week as adults, as their sole purpose is to breed. Evolution needed them to survive and outsmart their biggest predator—bats—long enough to reproduce. Thus they were blessed with long spiral tails that acted as acoustic camouflage, bouncing the bat’s sound waves in different directions, making them nearly impossible to track.

Click! Click, click, click!

It was working. The monster began to stray slightly as the silk of my new tails worked in a similar fashion, redirecting their sound waves.