"Said the boy who removes existence with his fingers."

August said cheerfully as she walked by Cory, lips quirked as she idly listened to everyone tromping around. Ignoring the fallacy of the spirit deciding to randomly eavesdrop on a group of kids it happened to come across at that exact section at the edge of the forest and decided specifically to listen for ways it could usurp their, up until now, unknown plan to stop it *which wasn't totally unfeasible* ignoring the fact that August had prepared for a hike and Jackson had prepared for a week long military assassination mission and managed to once again put her on edge by his garbled paranoia and the sheer amount of knives he had brought, ignoring that Mary was not only higher than balls judging by her wide eyed wonderment at her coffee cup, but also drooling over Raven's existence, ignoring Raven's drool over Cory, the boy who was too good for everything, ignoring Maxwell's silence after coming up with his own way of proving himself to others, and ignoring Kanoa staring at her beanie like a hound eyeballing a chunk of beef...it was quite pleasant here. Not enough things to tinker with though...she fiddled with her cellphone in it's pocket as she looked around, pouting slightly at the lack of things she could focus her thoughts on. Mary's objection caught her attention.

"If Kanoa is sticking with her usual methods here, I imagine she has a destination in mind, or something to work off of, but is not telling us in order to see if we can figure it out ourselves, or perhaps to see our reactions to how we handle being in a situation with little information about it at all."

Logic. So much logic. This was starting to become a downer.

"Or, you know. The nubile feasting thing or something. Pretty sure I'd taste like burned jerky."

Boring...bored. Lethargy? A spiral of emotions, old and faded, flew out across the trees. Hikers, wanderers, animals, lovers, it was all here. Painted in vivid swathes of invisible color. She could taste every nervous touch stolen behind a tree. Hear every fright from the scared prey hiding from the predator. Smell the giddiness from hikers previous. It was almost too much. She took a deep breathe for a moment, clearing her head and focusing on her own emotions, lest they flew away and were replaced. Her brother's old knife wasn't helping much, apparently it had been in the room when he lost his virginity. Gross...boring. Emotions, too many. Too many faltering whimsies. After awhile, August just found everyone to be so...bland. She had experienced so much with her new gift, she had felt so many beautiful, horrible, wondrous moments stolen from the memory of others. She was one of the few people who could probably understand anyone, no matter the situation. And it was put behind a wall of logic, a calculating mind that saw repetition as inefficiency, that saw habit as a lack of ingenuity, and thought of the daily routine as a wire that needed to be snipped. The ones around her so far were...static at best. Her sharp green eyes flitted from form to form, mouth still quirked, not really listening to the talks about...foxes and fire.

Jackson. The broken robot, gutted and rewired by the fumbling hands of a spirit.
Mary. A faded painting, covered in soot from the smoke the painter used to hide the strokes.
Kanoa. A cracked camera that never took the picture you wanted.
Cory. The ken doll with knives for hands.
Raven. A doll with a cracked face. Hard to tell if the smile is nice or malicious.
Maxwell. A radio that played nothing but the odd crackle.

Then there was herself. The computer that was overheating, the computer with too many inputs and not enough output. A tired machine that wanted desperately to upgrade itself every second, and kept losing bits of itself in the process. Was she any better? Probably not. Hard to tell lately. How much of her emotions were hers and how much was infection by outside sources? She'd think herself to death one of these days. Mental overload. Loneliness? Possibly. Empathy to the point where she was unable to tell if what she was feeling was real or just something left behind by a pissy preteen that touched the same doorknob. Suicidal cause she touched an angst ridden sweater...homocidal cause the bus driver had a bad marriage. Lonely cause the boy leaned against her locker too long. Lustful cause the cheerleader who sat in her seat forgot her underwear in the locker room. The worst part was how it all...lingered.

August began to wish she had brought her DS. She fiddled with her cellphone again.