Whatever the answer or our reservations, we were both delighted by Harvey’s new form as well. We were both greeting and talking to him like an old friend we were picking up at the airport, or possibly like an online friend we were seeing for the first time. Because in some ways that was true. Harvey looked more like something familiar now, and he had a face—a cute face with large amber eyes that sparkled with intelligence and understanding. He wasn’t talking to us, but he did have expressions and body language as we spent the afternoon with him, and in a hundred different small ways I could feel us growing closer to Harvey now that we could interact with him in a way we could more easily wrap our head around.

In some ways, I think that day was the best day of my life. I never wanted to leave, and I could tell that Rusty felt the same. It was well after dark when we finally forced ourselves back to Aunt Karen’s house, and I felt a stab of guilt when I saw her frail form standing on the porch looking at us with worry and relief. She hugged us tearfully as we drew near, kissing our cheeks and making us promise to never do that again, to always be home well before dark. We promised, and it was one promise that we kept during the short time we had left together in her home.

Still, if my regret over worrying Karen had cooled my excitement a little, it had done nothing to stave off my fears. Harvey had seemed very content to hang out with us in the clearing that afternoon—we had played games, petted his strange pelt, and told him more stories of where we were from and what life was like there. But how likely was it that he would still be there the next day? We still didn’t know what he even was, but if he was like most people or animals, he would probably want to be far away from the place he was trapped for so long.

The next morning we were out of the house at sunrise, and as soon as we were out of sight we broke into a desperate run back toward the clearing. I felt my stomach drop when we arrived and saw no sign of Harvey. We started walking the area, calling out to him, but there was nothing. If the day before was one of my best days, that one was one of my worst. We spent hours combing the woods, but there was no sign of Harvey anywhere. By late afternoon we were bone-tired and heading back to the house when Harvey found us.