“Same idea. You can work with anything living in the ’Verse. You understand a cell or a microbe, that’s the first step to creating an animal.” Bugz put her hand on the earth and a star-nosed mole quickly appeared and ran up and onto her back. She let it run across her shoulders, and suddenly there were two moles running down her other arm. Soon there were four, eight, and sixteen moles scurrying on the ground. After doubling a few more times they gathered to form a massive mole, the size of a rhino, composed of thousands of little moles writhing and crawling on top of one another. “And creating an animal is the first step to creating something supernatural.” The mole-king, still growing, burrowed into the dirt quickly. After a moment, it shot up into the air and flew far into the sky. As it disappeared from view, it exploded into dozens of stars, each of which became fixed and shone brilliantly against the sky.

Dusk approached. Feng shook his head as Bugz admired the mole constellation. “But it takes everyone so long to level up into the Spirit World,” Feng said. “And even after that, it took me more than a year just to learn how to create a horse. It blows my mind you learned to do all this.”

Bugz shrugged. As much as she was opening up to Feng, she still didn’t entirely trust him. So she changed the subject. “Let’s go for a ride.” Bugz waded into the water. “And you have to swear not to tell your clan about any of this, okay?” She walked into the shallows up to her waist and dove forward. She surfaced a few feet away and rolled into a backstroke as she called Feng to join her. He offered his best slow-motion movie-style run into the water. He’s trying to look good for me, Bugz thought. That’s cute.

“Mishi-pizhiw!” she shouted.

“Is he coming?”

“He’s already here.” Bugz looked beneath the surface at the dark body below them. Before he could look down, Feng felt the lake bottom rising beneath his feet. “Hang on!” she shouted.

Suddenly the massive beast emerged and leapt out of the water. Bugz and Feng were tossed from the shallows into the air like children launched from their parents’ shoulders. Mishi-pizhiw screamed at the sun and dove back into the lake.

Surfacing a hundred yards away, Mishi-pizhiw breathed fire into the sky several times to amuse them. Bugz and Feng laughed and clapped their hands at his dancing dragon show.

Bugz looked to the sky and caught a glimpse of the Thunderbird flying overhead. She waved. The bird swept down screaming. It picked Bugz and Feng up and tossed them onto its back, and flung a few thunderbolts at Mishi-pizhiw for good measure.