Prequel - The Angel
One year prior
I realized something was truly off after my birthday. Mom and Dad got me a store-bought cake and a hiking backpack. Not that I had much interest in hiking, or anyone to hike with. Still, the backpack fit and my school backpack was starting to wear, so I smiled and took it.
Rachel didn't even call, though I wasn't expecting anything from her. I wasn't expecting much of anything at this point.
I snuck out that night and heard Mom talking to Dad about it.
Dad said, "The Visser is getting annoyed at us again for being tied down by that girl."
Mom was worse. In a comforting tone to Dad, she replied, "She's closing in on maturity fast, and she's learned not to cause trouble. We don't need to pay that much attention to her anymore and once she's of college age we'll be free of her. Then again she's so well trained at this point she's not distracting from our duties at all."
I started taking notes over time. We were averaging exchanging less than a dozen words per day, and trending downwards.
At some point, I stopped caring. Dad was wordlessly happy to sign me up for a Sharing-affiliated weekend hiking/camping program so that I took even less attention for him to deal with, and I stopped going home on weekends.
Over the course of several months I slowly gathered a decent set of camping gear - some from The Sharing, some from my parental units who were just happy to have me out of the house. With some bartering I managed to get my hands on a one man tent, bear spray, and a shovel multitool. I made myself a shepherd's sling.
I wasn't very good with it at first, but it felt good to be able to just throw rocks at stuff.
After a few months, I decided to test a theory I had, and just didn't go home one school night. I caught the bus home after school, got all of my went into the woods on the edge of town, and set up camp in a dry ditch overnight.
Dad noticed, but bought it when I said I'd been at Rachel's place.
I stopped going home except to scavenge food, do laundry, take showers, keep up appearances with gymnastics, and to make sure Fluffer was still getting fed. I was spending a lot of time in the library when not hiking. Anything to avoid the oppressive silence or outright irritation from my parents when I was at home.
Nobody really noticed as I slowly moved out. Not at school, and certainly not at 'home'.
I kept up practicing with my sling for self protection, eventually getting my hands on some lead fishing weights in case someone on the trail tried to get handsy.
About a month later, it happened.
I was sitting in camp, wondering how long it would take for Mom and Dad to notice if I just... stopped going home at all. As long as I kept my grades in the B territory and kept showing up to gymnastics, they didn't seem to care what I did at all.
"I'd still need to go home to get food," I said to myself, as I followed the directions in my field book to skin and dress a rabbit for my little camping pot. "This is the first rabbit I've managed to tag, and in the winter that's just not going to work."
The air in front of me tore open like someone had slashed it with a knife.
I stepped backwards, unfurling my sling. A creature — no, a thing — appeared out of nowhere, perched on a fallen log on the other side of my stove like it had been sitting there the whole time. It was small, maybe twice the size of Fluffer, but roughly humanoid.
It had grayish, wrinkled skin, too-long arms with clawed fingers, and a face that looked like someone had tried to make a cutesy goblin-thing and then smashed it. The dim light of my alcohol stove reflected in its gigantic eyes.
“I believe the appropriate line here is be not afraid, daughter of Eve, I mean you no harm,” it said, raising its clawed hands in a placating gesture. "My name is Drode, and I come bearing the gift of information."
I kept my calm and reached into my sidepouch for one of my larger fishing weights. "You're a little miniature and gross for an angel."
It grinned, and wow that was a lot of teeth. "I'm not exactly an angel, but I am your ally. The Adversary has decided to play fast and loose with the rules on several occasions, so we will too."
I put the fishing weight into the sling's pouch, but didn't swing it.
“Everyone loves a good rockthrower,” the creature continued, its voice amused. "That’s one of the things we love about your species - everyone underestimates your capacity to be so lethal, working with so little. Congratulations on your first kill, by the way."
"I've lost it. I foraged something poisonous and I'm hallucinating," I said, turning back to my pot as the water boiled. I quartered the rabbit and tossed it in the pot, keeping a piece for Fluffer when I went home.
"You’re not insane, Melissa Chapman," it said, chuckling again with a hacking noise. "You're just ignorant, through no fault of your own, and so, so ripe for... development. I work on behalf of a higher power who has not forgotten that you exist. And we think in a few months you'll have the opportunity to remind the world that you do, in fact, still exist. Preferably at high volume, in a residential area."
It clapped its claw-things together. "So. Your parents haven't just lost interest in you, they've been replaced by something both more and less than human."
"What are you trying to say? They're possessed?" I said, tossing my forage into the pot with the rabbit, with a scoff.
The creature leaned forward, those huge eyes gleaming in the dim alcohol fire, with a tooth-filled grin again. "Ah, I'd ruin the fun by giving you the story, but I can nudge you down the right path. I can tell you that there's a war in the shadows for the soul of your species. And if the wrong side wins, your very survival as a people is in doubt."
"Why? Assuming you're even real, why appear to me, of all people?"
"The universe has shit on you from a great height, and I think it's funny to do something about that," it said, spreading its claw-hands apart before clapping them back together. "What's left of your father has functionally forgotten you exist. If you were to say... return home, a little more than you do right now, and start to listen in to some of his phone calls... you might get a little bit more of the picture. Though don't get caught, or you'll suffer your the same fate as your parents."
It hopped down from the log and circled me slowly, keeping some distance.
Then, with a little bow, the air ripped open again and the creature vanished.
I stood there for a long moment, keeping my breathing slow.
I was either completely insane after being isolated so long, or there was something cosmological going on. Either way, it was the longest conversation I'd had in months.
Either way, I intended to find out. I packed up my home, pulled out a notebook, and started my trek to the house.
"I guess I'm really doing this," I said to myself, annotating in Forkner shorthand everything I could remember about people seeming off over the past year as I walked home. Either I was a hallucinating lunatic, or... something big was going on.
Working with the theory that people were getting possessed or something... Mom and Dad had started abandoning me when they became full members of The Sharing. They still remembered me when I talked to them, they just... didn't care.
Rachel's cousin Tom had quit the basketball team around the time he'd joined The Sharing.
Rachel herself had stopped trying to talk to me after she'd gone to a Sharing event. I ticked a question mark by her name.
Jake and Cassie had started acting strangely around the same time, but also weren't full members. There was definitely a correlation to full membership in The Sharing and ignoring me, but it obviously wasn't the complete picture as Jake Rachel and Cassie were clearly also zonked, or replaced, or possessed, or something. Yet they weren't members of the Sharing at all.
Mom and Dad were aggressive at pushing the cult, with everyone except me.
The spate of zoo animals repeatedly escaping lined up with the same time period.
I sighed, accepting that I wasn't going to figure it all out on my own. If there even was anything to figure out and I wasn't hallucinating.
The Drode had said to listen in on "Dad's" phone calls, but to be careful about it. I got home, shed my pack into the corner of my bedroom and sat down with a grunt.
"Hey, Fluffer, I saved you part of a rabbit," I said, pulling my haul I'd saved for him out of my backpack as he attacked me.
I didn't get much out of the phone call, but I did find out the thing replacing my father was called Iniss, and Iniss was very concerned about some group called Andalites destroying all of us when they showed up from... somewhere. He was also pleased that I had become self-sufficient enough I barely required any attention... apparently I was 'well-trained'.
I made customized Forkner glyphs for what little I'd learned.