The inside of the RV was dully lit by a single bulb in the ceiling; a wan whitish light fell over a couch under a window, an unkempt bed in a nook at the front of the trailer, a scruffy and dusty carpeted floor. Even though the inside of the RV seemed oddly large, Hawk still had to crouch to get inside.

"I-I need, uh, a pair a' scissors, and tape," he stammered, and in one easy motion swung Teige down onto the couch. The noise was swirling down from his hands and face around the bloodied hole in Teige's back. As Hawk propped Teige's shoulders against the couch back, he saw little embers of bright green fire blazing in the wound. "An' clean gauze," Hawk added, "whatever y'got, as long as it's clean."

"You heard him, Abi," the striped woman said to the shorter one, pushing her firmly back out the door into the night. Abi went reluctantly, gaping at Hawk, who was now pulling Teige's shirt taut at the shoulder.

"How's breathin', Teige? 'S it hard t'breathe?" he whispered, finding the shirt's seam at Teige's shoulder and splitting it with one motion. He noticed, now, that the shreds of blue noise were now also streaming gently from Teige's eyes and nose and mouth.

"Naw," Teige mumbled, and expelled a puff of noise from the gaps in his sharp teeth.

"Y'sure?" Hawk asked, ripping the shirt down the sleeve and peeling it back. "How d'ya feel?"

"Heavy," Teige replied, horned head resting against the cushions.

"Ain't he a pooka?" the striped woman asked. She was behind Hawk, pulling a tin box with a cross on it down from the shelf above a microwave. "Y'know they say shapshifters'll survive anything if they don't bleed out first."

She'd retrieved a pair of scissors and now held them out to Hawk, who crammed himself onto the couch behind Teige to look at his back.

"I gotta cut your shirt off, Teige," Hawk told him. Teige managed to curl his lips into a snarl.

"Don't fucken."

"I got to, okay?" Hawk had pulled the shirt back to expose Teige's undershirt--or not quite an undershirt, since it only covered to the bottom of his ribcage. Blood had soaked into the white cloth around the wound, and a tiny blaze of green fire was smoldering in the hole itself. Hawk slid one scissors blade under the edge of the shirt and tried not to cut Teige's fur with it. "Unless y' think you can lift your arms."

The woman looked at this in silence for a moment, and then looked at Hawk. In the darkness the blue shreds of noise had formed themselves into a shape around Hawk's face, like a long mask with jagged teeth.

"What are you doing?" she asked.