James became aware of himself again while the monster purged anger over its inability to catch Lunchable. Instead of chewing carbuncle bones, it decimated the arrangement of chairs inside the tent, shrieking annoyance as it shrank back to the shape of a man. Finally, he put a hand on the back of a chair and stopped to look at it, rather than destroying furniture. His claws receded. Dirt and filth filmed his skin. His shredded clothes were...somewhere. Holding his hand up to study it as if it was foreign to him, the white and red striped backdrop grabbed his attention. He didn't know where he was, how he'd gotten into a tent, or how long he'd been the other one - only that he'd last been with Cricket and Quinn.
His own fear throbbed in his chest. Complicated by nausea from the change and what felt like tears in the deep muscle in his right leg, bile rose in his throat. He tipped forward like an elementary school drinking thermometer bird. Up came a froth of sick viscous yellow and...a rat tail with a few dainty ribs, for decoration. Hacking around a tiny rib caught in his throat, he considered the presentation. He thought of Gordon Ramsey troll posts. 'Do I have talent? Smoked ham on a bed of shell pilaf avec fromage' captioning a picture of a burnt Oscar Meyer dog on a slop of Velveeta Mac N Cheese. The mess at his feet, he'd call Ratatouille with Hollandaise Sauce. Do I have talent? He chuckled. Doing so loosened the rib.
Ripping a length of waxed sailcloth to wrap himself, he limped to the tent's entrance. Worry over the damage he might have done kept his pulse in a furor. A blast of white in the clearing killed the rest of the lights before he got answers. He groaned aloud. The sound distorted into an animal's growling at its retirement. At least two body cavities of quality organs would be needed to compensate for back to back shifts. The voice outside was familiar in the way a partly remembered dream triggers déjà vu, but James' dwindling human consciousness couldn't place it. The tracking beam of light, however, was a beacon he understood in any state. The chance to abort his shift was worth the risk of a high voltage shock.
Tonight was just...not his night. A half ruined abhorrence stuck in limbo between human and monster hauled itself from the entrance of the Pool. Draped in candy cane sailcloth, coated in a paste of rime, grit and wood splinters, James sank to his cracking knees in the path of Gray's swiping flashlight. He winced pain, though with half his gums exposed in a rotten slash beneath mismatched eyes both human and hellish, it looked like aggression. A clawed hand thumped his chest. "Light," the thing rattled. "Here."
The staticly charged peacock standing in for a weathervane crowed objection. He imagined she'd taste delicious, like chicken with lemon zest. Although he couldn’t see them, that Quinn and Cricket were likely still close by kept him from purposefully assaulting her pride. The Haisla called these creatures Wakinyan. He remembered, because he'd intentionally mispronounced it as 'whacking on' for several days, until the Shaman's daughter had caught on and tutted him. He wouldn't think it so funny, she had warned, if he offended one's pride in person. Last autumn felt like a lifetime ago.
Supplication appeared to cost him, judging by the pained scowl he turned toward the earth when he bowed his head. Have some mercy on the hangry, half naked and muddy, O Sparkly Rooster.
Whether it was the smell of him or oddly, the plasma globe floating hair, James recognized the Menagerie Manager, now. He lifted his head to spy the other man from under a heavy brow. A jagged grin exposed too many teeth, back to the molars on one side. "Trust. Fall." Low chuckling moved his ribs and shoulders, the protruding bone and foul hide covering the latter receding with the help of the flashlight. As long as birdbrain could curb her 'there can be only one' Highlander bullshit for another few seconds, a small crisis could be averted.