I hated the humans.
Despite this, I persist to observe them. It was an obligation passed on to our race despite it being a recurring process. We watch from above and never did the humans change. They are always sprawling and trashing endlessly, wallowed all across the face of the earth. They are little crumbs of bread preyed upon by those that lived long enough to be birds; they are a series of wars and sugar-coated deceit. They struggle unceasingly to be colorful in a world that they painted black and white. They are a pretentiously arranged chaos, foolish enough to believe in a lie they made themselves.
Humans are feeble creatures and their faux sense of superiority sickens me. All they do is exhaust every beautiful thing in their planet. They were bound by time and time they cannot escape from. But time does not exist for me as a plane. Time has no meaning to me. And that was what made me strong—what made our race strong. It was also the weakness of the humans.
We are able to see their core. When we look closely enough, we witness their lives unfolding up to their last breath. Humans have a curt and cruel lifespan. It only made them drearier in my eyes. You may think that they have each have a unique story to tell but you would be mistaken. Different story, same context.
The shadows we see floating around them represent the danger they pose to us. But they were all just mere ghosts of them. It has been a decided truth that humans will never be able to disrupt our order. They were way too weak for that.
But you see, she was the first.
I've seen faint to no shadows. But those are not the ones that stay with you. No, the subject of my concern is something else completely.
A shadow greater than any I've seen before, black as night.
I thought it was a glitch as first. Nobody else seemed to notice the shadows dancing around her. Nobody saw her as a threat. But the shadows never faded. As I kept staring, they just got bigger and bigger, taller than she was. The shadows never lie. She was dangerous.
I kept a close eye on her. She didn't seem much. She hardly did anything except eat, sleep and go to work. Her daily routine was dull. Her work wasn't in a big company or the government or something suspicious. She works as a barista in a small and quaint coffee shop. Had it not been for the shadows, I'd immediately lose interest and cast her out as just another human being.
Purely based on appearance, she looked pretty harmless. She didn't seem to amount to much. She was neither violent nor influential. I believe she was what humans would consider as a conventional beauty. It never really had much of an appeal to me, until now.
Contrary to the shadows surrounding her, she had a rather pallid complexion. Her hair had the color of the earth. In a sea of straggling humans, she was the flower that gets trampled on, like every beautiful thing destroyed by the humans.
Her life didn't seem to be any less tedious. The events were mostly repetitive. I was about to give up observing her until I saw something that instigated my curiosity.
Her future... it had a man in it.
I have never seen this man before. He didn't belong to her past but somehow, I felt that he'd play a big part in her future. At first, he appeared to be an occasional customer in the coffee shop she worked in. He was a bit gawky, I noticed. I saw him once stumble across chairs, gaining some stares. In the next scene, he was by the counter. Then he would head to a table, the closest to the counter and stare at the door, taking a few sips from his cup of coffee. He never tore his eyes from the door. On the next day, he would do the same. Only, he slowly learned how to avoid the chairs. His eyes were always glued to the door.
But the next vision started to be a little bit different. Instead of looking at the door alone, he would spare a glance or two in her direction. She wouldn't notice. Deliberately, his gaze would leave the door and fixate on the counter... on her.
The scenes started to unfold quickly. He'd be by the counter more often. He'd stop looking at the door and start staring at her. This went on for quite a long time.
Until one day, she looked up. The man was nothing less of dumbstruck. He didn't say anything until she laughed. She would smile. He would, too.
And then, it was all black. The vision was filled with darkness, as black as her shadow. I felt a rush. Never have I encountered an abruptly cut future before. I had been right. She was dangerous. Whoever the man was, he was a factor to it.
I tried to alert my race about it but nobody saw the same future or shadow as I did. Nobody believed me. But I stood my ground. The mere fact that there was a discrepancy in her persona was danger in itself. If nobody would act upon it, I would.
I did the unthinkable. I took the form of a human and headed down to their planet. It was a punishable act but I did it for the sake of our race.
I wasn't aware of how I looked like or if I was a man or woman. That was the catch. Only humans could see us when we take their form. I myself could not. But that didn't matter because I was there for a sole purpose. Whatever the woman plans to do, I need to stop it from happening.
I located the coffee shop she worked in. I entered and my eyes looked for her in an instance. There she was, standing across the counter. There was a slight difference in her appearance when up close. I never got a chance to notice her eyes before. They were the color of the oceans. Her eyes reflect the crashing of the waves. Violent and then dead silent. The change was mystifying.
I was too absorbed in her eyes that I tripped over a chair. I still didn't master the art of walking in human legs, which made things worse. I ended up tripping five times on five different chairs. The humans started to look at me strangely. I did my best to ignore them as I did my best attempt on walking to reach the counter where she was. It was about time I scrutinize how dangerous she really was.
I ended up ordering a coffee. The bitter taste reminded me of human nature which was why I took pleasure in drinking it. I couldn't get anything from mere looking at her. I guess, at this point, she still wasn't a threat. I couldn't see shadows from a human's viewpoint, much to my dismay. So I waited for the man to show up instead. I waited, and waited, and waited.
He didn't come.
To my frustration, I averted my gaze from the door to the woman. She was scribbling something on a notepad. I narrowed my eyes. She must be devising a plan. Perhaps the danger she would bring was mounting this very instance. I began to grow more and more suspicious as she did this every day, in between her shifts. I never tore my eyes from her.
Until our gazes met. An unexplainable feeling took over. It was as if my chest was being plummeted repeatedly. I couldn't force a single word from my mouth. Her eyebrows furrowed. She didn't look mad, not exactly. She just seemed to be... pondering. There was a far-off look in her eyes. The waves continue to crash, gently this time.
And then she laughed. Barely. It was soft and almost inaudible but undeniably genuine. Afterwards, her lips curved up into a small smile.
I found myself smiling back. And at that moment, I finally realized why she was such a danger to me.
ΑΓάσπηνθοι.
It was because I ended up loving her.
