They were preparing for something. The second I walked into the brightly lit room, having been called and allowed to come in by Myrus, I could see the change in them. The glint in both of their eyes. The small upturns on the corners of their mouths.
I knew what it meant.
Someone must be coming. Someone they were after.
I’d glanced at the photos.
New marks had been added.
New targets, I presumed.
It was fine.
I tried not to pay attention to their names and faces, staring at me, almost as if they were pleading for help in their innocent candid expressions. How they even managed to get photos, I had no idea. Again, I didn’t really want to know, so I ignored that curiosity.
There were letters on the desk, or rather, what appeared to be imitations, all of the same letter, as if someone’s handwriting was being copied into an entirely new letter. The practicing of the ‘W’ on the signature. The original letter looked to be old and frail. Worn. Opened and reopened over and over again, but it also didn’t. It was a photocopy, not the real thing. But the original had to have been soaked in sunlight, causing a sort of yellow discoloration.
I didn’t ask. I turned away from it, disinterested in whatever they were scheming.
Myrus gestured me closer, holding a stack of something within his hand. As I closed the distance, he put them within my reach on the table in front of him. I picked them up and leafed through them. The small squares of paper were all the same in one aspect – they all had a picture and name of a plant on them.
I read the names in my head, familiarizing myself with them, but made no other moves. My face, I knew, remained ever stoic and unexpressive as ever around the two of them. They didn’t need to know what I was feeling. And in situations like this, I wasn’t sure I felt at all. Survival was bland to me. And this? This was just survival, appeasement of the ones that fed me.
When I looked up, having looked at the final one, Myrus nodded to the door with his head.
“Go on out and show us you can make those.”
A task.
I nodded once and let my feet carry me away, away from them and their… plans all laid out on the walls and tabletop surfaces. Though, I supposed I was a part of those plans, wasn’t I? I stopped just outside the cabin, to the flat box of dirt there. I set the first picture down near the end and put my fingers just barely within the soil. I focused on the name, the picture and let it consume my thoughts until it grew into a mature plant. Six inches to the right of it, I placed the next picture and did the same. Over and over and over, until there was one of each plant in the box and I held no more small paper squares.
I glanced over to see her watching me with a satisfied smile on her face. She nodded and called to her father to come look now that I was done.
Myrus came out as I stepped back a few feet from the plants. He looked each of the plants over carefully. His silence didn’t say much. It was the small nods or shakes of his head that I always looked for. Today, he didn’t do either, just stared down at them, occasionally glancing over at his daughter, who kept a satisfied look on her face.
He finally turned to me after the last one, his face a mask, not showing anger or pleasure.
“They’re good. Take a break for an hour.”
With that, he turned away. I breathed out, relieved. I turned to leave as his daughter nodded her head and gave me a wide smile.
“Good job, Pet.”
Take a break for an hour.
It meant make yourself scarce for an hour while we talk about things you don’t need to hear, and we’ll know if you’re listening in or not. If you listen, you get punished.
It didn’t matter, I needed space to myself anyway.
I found myself stopped in a secluded area that spoke only of nature and silence. I knelt down, reaching out to brush my hand in the loose soil there, closing my eyes. I sighed, feeling the same warmth of my powers rushing through me.
The wind set a gentle breeze around me that ruffled my hair and brought cool peace to my soul. I let everything wash over me in the silence and calm of night, the glow of the moon up above me and the light of morning beginning in the distant sky.
I forgot about the pictures, the plants they asked me to grow… everything.
As I opened my eyes to the sights I knew were there, I stretched my fingers out and felt the dirt move under the tips of my fingers. Green begun to weave up and around hand, slowly, gently, like a caress filled with care. The stems cracked and popped as they grew fast in an unfamiliar environment at a speed unlike their kind.
In the space around my hand, more plants started to grow timidly.
Grasses.
I lifted my hand from the ground and plucked a single wide blade of grass. Settling the stolen blade between the outer parts of my thumbs and pressing together just enough to keep it in place, I bent my head to my hands. I pressed my lips to it, to my thumbs and the grass blade, blowing gently into the small gap between my two fingers until it made a noise like a whistle or an animal cry, the grass vibrating in its cage. I closed my eyes and listened to it. I had no idea where the idea had come from, or where I learned it, but it always seemed to settle me more than anything else, like a calm breeze on a mildly warm day, or a patch of shade just when you need to escape the sunlight.
I took a deep breath in before blowing it out again.
For some reason, I got these kinds of feelings. Familiar. Like I’d done something before. That I used to signal to my brother with the grass… in this way, with the blade between my thumbs. The motion felt normal, natural… like breathing.
But there wasn’t a memory that matched that. There was never a memory to match these odd feelings.
We were born and raised in a prison.
There were no fields of grass and I’d never grown them in there.
And then we were separated forever.
There was no way I had ever called to my brother with a blade of grass. We signed to each other, that was all. Nothing else. Nothing more.
A dull ache in my head made me wince.
Whenever I thought about the past, that happened to me. I dropped the blade of grass, watching it land on the ground with a sound much quieter than the waves. A sound I couldn’t hear, even if the waves were nonexistent in this moment… because I was the strange one here. I didn’t fit right.
I was… the wolf who couldn’t howl, who couldn’t… be a wolf.
After all, I’d lost the ability to transform back when I was a kid.
I was broken.
As I turned and stood, I plucked the flower I’d grown moments earlier, holding it gently in my hand, stopping me from heading back so quickly. I turned back to the view I’d had, the peaceful serenity, the calmness and quiet.
The whistle of a blade of grass.
Everything around me seemed to be trying to send a message, to tell me something was in the works, something was happening.
If I was honest with myself, I could feel something coming too.
I didn’t know what it was, but it felt…
Good.
It was strange.
Using a vine, I weaved the flower into a bird’s nest far above my head, giving it a new home.
And it was…
Good.
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