Rough, soft pad of toes against your arm a good sign. Trust, too, in how you do not flinch, pull away. Read once that salamanders can be poisoned by touch. How any oil or soap, any unnatural thing can hurt them. That you can hurt by touch. That you can hurt another living being just by existing in the world. Just by passing through the world. That is all. That is all. Panic, wanting to pull away, to preserve, to avoid causing distress.

But the touch is steady, warm, insistent. Reassures though you do not want to be reassured, know that keeping the horror of what happened in your mind is survival. Don’t want to hurt to feel. Don’t want to remember. Can’t get past it. Into the future. There’s nothing that cannot be reconciled, the salamander’s gaze tells you. Caught in that gaze, in the touch. A wall of globes that causes pain.

Then the salamander is gone, taking the pale man’s eyeless head with it. Still feel the touch. The touch exists all around you. Makes the world better. Takes part of your past with him.

Back in the forest, you see from afar two pale men searching for their third. Hear the distant cry of their distress, the call inhuman that is the flare sent up for their brother. It sounds like the caw of a crow hiss-mumbled so it tumbles out into the world ungainly and new.

In the journal, the pale men and the dark bird are on the same page. But here, in this forest, they are enemies.

<<The demons always came out at night. Certain incarnations had a grin on their faces, even when they meant to do harm. That was worse than being a true monster, because true monsters didn’t first try to be a friend. And the worst thing was, people wanted to be fooled even as they knew they were being charmed. Even when they knew what was coming. Even when the girl knew what the smile might turn into. The reflection of the moon in their eyes became a kind of juddering cruel laugh and then the rush, the enveloping.

Demons could speak to the dark. But demons became contaminated by it, and that’s why they couldn’t be trusted. A demon that couldn’t be trusted was a terrible thing. Then she couldn’t predict what it might do. Which is why when she grew up, she gave up alcohol unless it was the only thing she had to drink. Alcohol made it hard to tell a demon from a monster.