Page 106 of Awry
I’ve said something wrong.Or missed something.
“I’ll let you work,” he says.Then he turns and walks away.
The hollow feeling inside me expands.The feeling I didn’t truly acknowledge before, always just pushing it away to be examined later.But I refuse to stand there like an idiot, watching him leave while I dissect every moment of our brief interaction.
Presh is here.
And I’m here for Presh.
I squeeze her shoulder slightly, then drop my arm.
She hikes her backpack up on her shoulder a little higher, smiling up at me tentatively.She’s also in black jeans and thick-soled boots, but she’s wearing a black puffy coat over a thicker, multicolored patterned sweater.“We’re walking?”
“We’re going to investigate the flow of essence and see what you can sense.There are various points on the property that are perfect for that kind of work.”
She bobs her head, not quite hiding her trepidation.
Presh has spent the fifteen years of her life thinking she was going to be a shifter.I don’t want her to be afraid of the purple taking over her eyes.
“But first we’ve got freshly churned ice cream to taste-test.”I nod her toward the house.I’ve left the door open, and Presh steps past me eagerly.
I pause in the doorway.Presh is already wandering up the hall, looking eagerly around as she heads toward the kitchen.And I glance back toward the barn, toward the shifter who feels as if …
Who feels as if he belongs.On the property, yes.But also to me?
Rought has opened the rolling door that leads to the garage section of the barn.The large multipurpose space has always been called that, though my aunt never kept any livestock.Beyond the garage and workshop are the two floors of the caretaker’s suite that was Mack’s.The classic black pickup that Cayley had seen sits alone in the garage, and Rought has crossed back to the Chevy to pull it inside one of the two empty spots.
Except he’s looking at me.Again.
I don’t know why I do it, but I raise my hand and smile.
A grin swamps the shifter’s face.And even at this distance, he looks relieved.
As if he has some sort of hollowness inside himself as well.
As if my smile, my presence, fills him as well.
I shake my head, my smile twisting at the stupidity of my thoughts.
Rought Guerra has a powerful charisma.Apresencepotent enough that the energy anchored in the property is simply reacting to his proximity.He doesn’t belong to me.
Still, I’m grinning like an idiot as I cross into the house and close the door behind me.
It’s drizzlingrain as Precious and I walk the grounds of the estate, but it isn’t the weather that inspires me to direct us back toward the barn after only a few hours.Rather, it’s because she’s starting to flag.
When she showed up, I was pleased with how well rested Presh looked— and far healthier than when I’d dragged her from the grasp of the Cataclysm shifters.Okay, I didn’t so much drag her as bumble about, get her even more hurt, then get both of us to relative safety.
But the property is that.Safety.
Presh is quiet about what she’s picking up with her embryonic awry senses, but I can feel her essence shift slightly when I direct her attention or have her focus on specific things.We avoided the intersection point during our walk.It’s my intention to have her spend some concentrated time on the bluff, but even before she starts tripping on her own feet, I know she’s not ready for that yet.
The bodies in the barn provide a different opportunity — as morbid as it might be — because they’re without essence.Even amid the abundant energy of the property, they’re inert.And sometimes understanding the opposite of a lesson is a path to grasping the fundamentals of the main objective.
No matter how anyone might want to shield her — myself included — Presh is awry.She will be no stranger to death.And possible mass destruction, depending on where her powers lie.The point is to help her understand how to not get overwhelmed by the energy, the essence, that wants to eagerly flow through her.She’s an awry among generations of shifters.It’s as if the universe reached out and decided that she’s the vessel it wants, the vessel it needs in the Now … or at least the near present.
The why isn’t for me to know.At least not at the moment.
I try to ignore that sense — that little bit of insight — as it filters into my consciousness, instantly deciding that it’s just a logical observation and not a hint of a knowing.Because surviving as an awry is firstly and mostly about surviving yourself, and only then about navigating what others will want from you, demand of you.Awry who abruptly manifest have the shortest life spans, if not also the briefest … freedom.Presh’s liberty will literally be tested every day, until the day she’s too strong to be shoved in a cage.
