away from him. I am smirking, because I know that was going to be his first question.
Aakir scowls at me, “Really?” he says sarcastically as I reach him, “Everything’s dandy since you didn’t accidently break a bone or two?”
I raise my eyebrow in surprise, “Were you there?” Or maybe someone informed him about the fight, because he certainly wouldn’t have let me go as far with Viktor as I went.
Aakir shakes his head, “I read the blog.” he says, his anger, all but gone. Again, that’s my best friend for you. Making Aakir absolutely angry is nearly inconceivable.
My eyebrows rise up again, “Neal posted on the blog already?”
“Yeah, ten minutes or so ago.”
“He is fast.” I say, completely taken aback by Neal’s spontaneity. Aakir and I start to walk out, towards the commencement of woods, approximately one mile away or so from the school gates.
“He always is.” Aakir says, a little edge to his voice.
I look at my friend to see his weirdly colored eyes brimming with apprehension. Aakir has the most bizarre eyes I have ever seen, not that I have seen much except for the usual blues and blacks in this part of the world. But Aakir’s eyes can beat even the most outlandish eye color ever existing on earth. Maybe because his eye is not of a single color. His eyes are a swirl of grey, red and black. His irises are of coal grey with the globs of red and black moving in them. Yes, those globs of colors move around the pupil, as if floating above an endless dead ocean. Everybody in our family, especially Rufina aunt, Aakir’s adoptive mother, was sorely worried about the condition of Aakir’s eyes during our childhood. Rufina aunt feared that a bleeding might be resulting into the odd outcome. But upon several tests and various sittings with the ophthalmologist, it was acknowledged that Aakir doesn’t suffer any sort of eye disability. In fact, his eccentric eyes may be a result of a pigmentation disorder. But even in cases of such disorders, the victim is usually an albino. Aakir is a healthy looking fair guy, with dark curly tresses. He is definitely not an albino. The physician was highly bemused by Aakir’s condition and requested to carry on further research so as to know the cause and name this particular disorder. Rufina aunt had politely declined. And now we all are accustomed to his weird eyes. People meeting him for the first time either usually get highly spooked or blatantly awed.
“Still sensing Neal’s…weirdness?” I comment offhandedly. In reality, I could care less about what he senses of Neal. The fact that he can ‘sense’ at all is what has me ticked off.
Aakir’s gets my tone and rolls his eyes, “You’re not too far long, Josh. Give it a few days and you’ll be mature too.”
I scoff. Leave it to him to rub it in my face.
“Seriously, Josh?” Aakir continues, “You’re being incredibly childish upon the issue. Remember that your dad got mature at nineteen. You’re still seventeen.”
“So are you, but you’ve matured.” I snap back.
Aakir sighs, “That’s not the only thing different about me, is it?” he says tiredly.
I sigh too, realizing that I really am acting childish. Aakir has a lot of disparaging characters. And not one of them is welcomed by him. Though why is that so, I always fail to understand. It’s not like his attributes are useless. In fact his abilities surpass the usual abilities of my species.
Of us different people.
Not species.
Damn it.
I thoroughly detest considering myself different than humans. At the end of the day we are different, yet I like to believe myself to be a normal human.
When we reach the edge of the woods, Aakir and I break off into a sprint, steadily increasing our speed till we acquire our fastest speed. It’s a fairly cool day for a summer. But then summer in Liepāja is always cool, owing to the Baltic Sea towards the west. The city is built right next to the sea and is sufficiently green. It is probably the only city in Latvia with the perfect balance of the beaches, the forest parks and the core city. It has abundant reserve parks. Even without the government restricted natural flora, Liepāja has plenty of green lush to offer. Our house is situated right in the middle of a forest park which opens at one end to the white sand of the sea, and the main Peter’s market on the other end. In between is the extension of moss colored woods and long grass everywhere, at the center of which our house resides.
Perfect for us. Perfect for the therians.
Being Therians, we are innately inclined towards nature, always desiring to be blended along with the fauna and flora surrounding us. Living so deep inside the woods poses only one problem. It gets increasingly difficult when we purchase things for home delivery. People don’t like to come right in the center of a forest, even when there is a complete, though narrow, but sufficiently decent road connecting our house to the main opening road to the Peter’s market. It is not even a ‘forest’ in the literal sense. More like a natural park, but denser, with a lot of trees and some harmless animals. Liepāja is not known for dangerous animals, still people are not comfortable to drop down here lest encounter a savage animal.
It’s kind of ironic if they are looking for us in the first place. Because as much as I hate it, I can’t change the fact that we are in fact animals. Or part animals, at least.
Therians are characterized by their ability to metamorphose back and forth between their human form and any animal form. The new world humans, unaware of the existence of us pure therians, label therianthropy as some sort of a disorder resulting from a psychiatric illness. Some also call it species dysphoria, where one resolutely believes of himself belonging to the wrong species and tends to divert mentally towards a species he is more comfortable with. Those unfortunate therians, declared mentally unstable by the humans, actually fall into the category of Mental Therians. Mental Therians are one of the types of our species that only mentally transform into an animal, physically remaining in human form. Such mental therians resort to growling, instead of talking; savagely destroying, instead of being civil. Some even become cannibalistic; so far they get empowered by their animalistic instincts.
Our Therian ability has been a gift to us, from what I know of our history. But to me it feels like a curse, especially when I think of Rome locked somewhere in the attic of my house. Rome is a mental therian and a part of my family. And I try to not think of him as much as possible.
So, I shake my head to clear myself of the disturbing thoughts and instead concentrate on the earth getting beaten below my feet, the continuous thumping of my bag pack against my back and the blissful silence of the forest that I have so much become familiar with. It doesn’t take long for us to reach our house. We are faster on foot. Not ridiculously fast as some Hollywood movies may portray supernatural beings to be.But I take pride in the fact that we are probably faster than the fastest human on this planet. We can easily attain an average speed of thirty-five to forty miles per hour, which is definitely quite fast. I do not think any human has made it past thirty miles per hour. This is one of things I enjoy of our species. Ability to run at such high speed. I had expressed my desire to my father one day at the age of eleven, to participate in the Olympics and be famous for being the fastest sprinter. My father had in turn gifted me with a very long and boring lecture upon not to attract attention towards us.
I had given up the track team that I had joined in school. Not because my father warned me against pursuing my dream, but because the other students were preposterously slower than me. If I will unleash my full running speed on the track, I will undoubtedly attract more attention than I’d want. Even if I stop minding the attention even then it’s incredibly boring to run along those slower humans. I have recourse to soccer in the last few years which requires bit of a technique and good reflexes than mind blowing speed. But on my father’s face I tell him that he is the one because of whom I disjoined the track.
He always rolls his eyes at me, seeing right through my façade.
Nevertheless, running has always been my favorite part. I have alwa
ys felt gratified that our running ability is irrelevant to our maturing levels. I do not have to be a mature therian to be as fast as the fastest therian. But that is not the case with our other abilities. We do not have a fixed age or even a phase to determine the exact level at which we’ll mature. It’s a part of growing up, equivalent to, maybe, attaining puberty. The elders of our house make sure that we test our therian abilities every Saturday. This way we know how long it may take us to be a full mature therian, since most of our abilities enhance with time as we mature. But the full-fledged abilities are only exhibited by the mature therians. Like heightened hearing and better reflexes, none of them being redundant so as to get us labeled as ‘non-human’. Our abilities may be superior as compared to the humans, but not enough extravagant for us to be called non-human.
There are only two of the traits of mature therians to be called highly exceptional. Blatantly, the first is the ability confined to all the therians, mature or not. That is the ability to flux into the shape of an animal. The specialty exclusive to a mature therian is that he or she may transform only a part of their body into an animal form. Transformation of only hands into claws or only legs into paws or even only the head into that of an animal’s. Though being a