Shifters (Feline english version)

Chapter 2-2

I stared at her, shocked. How did she know about this? I never told anyone about it. Certainly by hacking into your medical file, you poor idiot, I said to myself. But what interest could she have in doing that? None at first sight. So, would it be possible that there's a rational explanation for who I was? Or was it just a cleverly designed trap to get me to do what she wanted, that is, follow her of my own free will?

My breathing accelerated and I tried to mask my nervousness. If she felt how much I wanted these answers, she could use them against me. So I decided to play the stunned girl part, which was not very complicated. Could that be the reason she's here? That it was my difference that interested her all along? I had to know for sure and if it was a trap, so be it. I would fall into it, and happily so, if it could allow me to have even the smallest bit of an explanation.

- 'Tell me what you know!'

My voice, made hoarse by stress and apprehension, still sounded very forceful, while I wondered if anything positive would finally come out of this crazy evening.

- 'It's not for me to tell you...'

- 'But of course, how practical!' I cut her dryly. 'Now...'

- 'Not now and certainly not here,' she interrupted me in turn with the exasperated voice of a person convinced to speak to a decerebrate moron.

And here we were again. She was going to try to convince me to follow her again. It was so predictable that I was barely disappointed. As I opened my mouth to ask her once and for all to get out of my house, she held out her hand forward to interrupt me.

- 'We thought you had at least a vague idea of what you were! At the very least, that it would become obvious when we met. But obviously, we were wrong! And it had to be me,' she ended grumbling for herself.

- 'Now, that's very enlightening. Thank you, really, thank you! Everything is so much clearer now,' I replied without hiding my sarcastic tone, which reflected my state of mind quite well.

- 'They better not count on me to do a catch-up class for losers! And then what else,' she growled again between her teeth, giving me increasingly hostile looks.

I looked at her with wide eyes, increasingly convinced that I was dealing with a mentally ill person.

- 'I'm talking about your empathic abilities, you stupid idiot!' she said, looking mean, as she rolled her eyes and raised her arms to heaven as if I were a desperate case.

Seeing that I was not reacting to her shattering revelation, she continued with an increasingly exasperated look.

- 'Your ability to capture the "emotions and feelings" of other living beings, especially animals,' she continued, articulating each word carefully, in order to convey all the contempt she held for me.

Oh, my God! Could it be that? I had restrained my thoughts so much, without really knowing what they were, and for so long, that they were nothing more than a kind of incessant background noise to which I no longer paid much attention. As far back as I can remember, the feeling of not being alone in my head had always been present.

Was I capturing the emotions of the people around me all this time? Could I control it or even better, get rid of it?

Then the end of her explanation finally reached my overheated brain and finally realized what the abilities she was bestowing on me were all about: communicating with animals. My initial enthusiasm fell like a soufflé. Seriously? I mean, come on! I was dealing with a crazy woman after all and maybe I was as crazy as she was for wanting to believe it. I felt a deep despair overwhelming me, proportional to the hope I had had of finally having real answers.