Universe of Soulmates

"Border Terrier on the Loose!"

"Mija, there's more to life than just a soulmate, verdad?" Ari's father asked. He was always the practical of the two of them, especially after her mother died a few years back. "I just want you to be happy because you're doing something you love, not because of someone else."

"I know, papá. I'm only fourteen, though. I have my whole life ahead of me." Ari, short for Arianna, was always the dreamer. Her head in the clouds and her heart on her sleeve.

"Just remember you can do so much better than some pendejo you are crushing on in middle school." Ari rolled her eyes at her father, trying to figure out how serious he was being. It wasn't as obvious as one would think. His steel gaze bore into her, but she knew how not to crack under it. She'd grown up with it all her life, and in the last couple years, it rarely changed.

"Papá, don't worry, I'm not going to go looking for him anytime soon. School is more important to me," Ari explained to her father, and he believed her. Despite her dreamer personality, he knew she was committed and wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that.

"Then why are you professing your animal as if it's the most normal thing in the world?" Their whole conversation started to click in Ari's head, but there was a slew of misinformation that got passed on. She had never shifted, never mind talked about her animal to another. They were told it was dangerous to do without supervision the first time, and she believed it after the horror stories on the news.

"Some other brujas were doing that, but I would never. Honest." Ari held a hand to her heart, their way of saying that they're being honest. Anything said while their hand was on their heart was taken as the whole truth and nothing but. To them, it was as sacred as vowing with a hand on a bible.

"Okay. I trust you." Ari's father caved to her words, before asking about her school day. It was his way to stay engaged in his daughter's life. "How was school?"

"Fine. Mrs. Weeks gave us a huge packet to do this weekend covering geometry, my project for art got a 90%, and my Shifting test went well." Outside of her math, art, and Shifting classes, Ari also had Surface science, vocals, and writing and literature. She was usually lucky, only getting homework assignments from half of her classes one day and the other half the next.

"Good job. Have you figured out what your animal is yet? Or is that later in the year?" Her mother and father's animal was a cardinal and, based on genetics, hers would most likely end up being a bird or similar creature as well. The power of genetics had something to do with what animal each person got, but there were rare occasions where two had nothing to do with each other.

"We start doing that next week, actually. According to a bunch of the personality quizzes we've taken, I'm predicted to be in the avian category, and quite a few narrowed it down to songbirds." The personality quizzes, despite their reputation for being accurate, rarely were representative of what truly went on behind the veil of mystery that soulmate animals lived behind. Although most of them ask a lot of questions about personality, the genetic factor carried the heaviest weight and nearly nullified the rest of the answers.

"I'm excited to see what you transform into." He and every other parent with a child in the eighth grade was equally nervous and excited to see what their child shifts into. There's dogs, cats, and birds among the most common with their multitude of species, but some have dangerous animals—sharks, vultures, and lions are just the tip of the iceberg of highly dangerous predators—that cause enough chaos for the government to wish they tracked the animal each citizen shifts into. It does become dangerous, though, since some end up hiding in that animal skin for years to escape the government (after all, it's not tracked by anyone) or used to persuade (more like instill fear into) others to do as they wish.