Reading Between the Lines

Chapter 30: Semblance

Prashanth uses his Soulstone to teleport us back to the human world, and then we drive in the Firefly car to this fancy Indian restaurant, the same restaurant we went to a month ago. I'm still awestruck as I look at the flower-shaped building that the restaurant is inside. It's so hard to believe how much architecture has progressed here. It reaches out-of-this-world level advanced.

Well, that could be because we're in a world.... out of this world.

I'll stop now. I think my nerves are getting to me.

"My sister mind linked me and told me she'll be here in a couple of minutes," he informs me before we stand outside, letting ourselves get blown away by the light wind. It's surprisingly really nice today, even though it's the first week of January. But one thing I've learned about Texas weather is that it can be 20 one day and then 80 the next. Turns out, the Netherworld brought something from the human world.

"What do you wanna do in the meantime?" I ask him while he looks around at people walking by.

"I don't know, what do you want to do?"

"I wouldn't have asked you if I knew either."

"Touché."

For a couple of seconds, we don't say anything until we look in front of us at the park in front of us, glowing under the bright stars. And then,

We both just say, "Park."  And walk towards it.

"You know, you never told me much about your sister," I wonder as I look at him kicking the stones on his ground, holding his blazer with one of his hands while putting the other in his pocket.

"I didn't?"

"All I know is that her name is Prerna, she's like 10 years older than you, and she lives in London," I remind him as he nods his head.

"That's it? Damn, I thought I told you all about her. Maybe your memory just sucks," I can feel him unintentionally walking close to me, and I don't know why, but it's making me nervous. This god-forsaken mate bond. I can't even give him a fist bump without having literal hot flashes.

"Say that again," I threaten him playfully as he puts his hands up and chuckles. His laugh is so dry and hoarse, and it sounds like a tiny rumble in his chest. It always throws me off guard because I never associated the word "sexy" with laughing. But I heard him laugh for the first time, and suddenly, there was a dictionary definition for it.

"Well, there's not much. Prer and I are eight years apart. My mum and dad had her very early, like in their early 20s, so they waited a couple of years before they had me."

I'm still not used to how parents look so young here, but now everything clicks. If they had her so young, no wonder they're not that old. My mom and dad were 26 and 27 when I was born, so even if I wasn't their only child, they're still pretty young without all the freakish reverse aging.

"My parents moved to London in 1994 for a change of pace. Not just that, London has the second-largest lycan population in the world. Since they're council advisers for the lycan chair, they are basically the leader's right hand. They have to understand their people, you know?"

As Prashanth keeps telling me about his life in London, especially his two best friends Nivedit and Utkarsh, his normal blank face is betrayed by the biggest smile I've ever seen on him. It's like how he is with the others. You can tell that he's protective of the people he cares about. Even if it seems like he doesn't care about anything, he just lights up like a bulb when mentioning all the adventures he and his friends had together when they were kids.

"When I was 11, my parents decided to move to Singapore. More lycans were moving there, so they wanted to test the waters there. My sister was starting university soon, so she stayed behind. Kind of a downside when it came to the age gap. That was when we did the promise thing."