Valeria Jade

Sarah traced her fingers along the cold marble countertop, watching shadows stretch across the kitchen floor like spilled ink. The clock on the wall ticked deliberately, each sound a small death in the quiet house. Outside, branches scratched against windows, beckoning.

Shapeshifting is one of my many gifts, but what’s more important is my adoptive parents knew what I was the moment I was given to them. If they didn’t have what amounts to an instruction manual given to them by my biological parents, I’d be a much different person than I am now. Jake, I’m not remotely human or Aberrant, and neither are you. You may feel human, and do all the same things humans do, but that’s only because you’ve no idea what you are.

Either you can tell him, or I buy a dictionary in a bookstore which will quickly illuminate what we both know. Better he hears it from you than learn the truth from a book that he could’ve picked up years ago if he’d bothered to take the time to learn the language. Of course, that isn’t what you or anyone else in the city wanted him to do. That risked ruining things.