Creature (CENTURIES series: Book #7)

4

Watching as Charlie ate his Cap'n Crunch cereal with a pensive expression, I sat in the chair next to him, sipping my coffee and biting into my toast. I knew we eventually had to start talking about what happened yesterday, but I just didn't know how to begin.

"I like this." Charlie suddenly said, looking down at the content of his bowl. "Did this Cap'n Crunch make it?"

I couldn't help but smile. "Uh, sort of. Listen, Charlie it's time we talk. Are you up for that?"

His magenta eyes briefly connected with mine, but then he looked away quickly, as if he was afraid that they would scare me. He nodded.

"Okay," I said, setting down my mug. "About yesterday... about the... levitation..."

Charlie sat very still and stopped chewing. He looked down into the almost empty bowl where just soggy pieces floated around in the leftover milk.

"I know you didn't mean to scare me like that," I said, soothing my voice into a motherly tone. "It's probably normal for you to, uh, levitate stuff, am I right?"

He swallowed, but then nodded, hesitantly.

"That's what I thought. It's not normal out here, though," I said, giving a little smile, even though he wasn't looking at me. "We can't move things with our mind. That is what you did, wasn't it?"

Again, he nodded carefully.

I took a deep breath. Okay, that was just something I would have to get used to. "What else can you do?"

"What do you want me to do?"

I blinked when he looked up, meeting my eyes. "I'm sorry?"

He blinked back slowly, parting his lips. "I said, what else would you like me to do?"

I swallowed, hard. He spoke so calmly, yet so... intensely. Putting pressure on each little syllable. "Uh... what does that mean? Can't you just tell me what other abilities you have?"

"I... I am not really sure what I can do yet." He confessed and broke eye contact with me to look down again.

Okay, I thought. Another thing to work on. "Alright, that's not a problem. We will just have to take them as they come, then. I might react a little strongly again, just a fair warning, but I'll try to avoid the screaming. Is that okay?"

Charlie hesitantly looked up at me again, but then nodded. "Okay."

"Excellent," I smiled, quickly taking a sip of my coffee. "Now we can move on to the next bit. Step one. Remember we talked about those yesterday?"

He nodded. "Step one, introductions."

"That's right," I nodded, too. "I'm going to walk you around the house again and this time more closely go into each thing's different uses. You can ask questions along the way, of course. Then we're going to sit down here in the living room, and I'm going to go through some basic human knowledge with you. Okay? Did you catch all that?"

He nodded again. "Tour, then teach."

That was one way of putting it, I suppose. "Exactly. So, whenever you're done eating..."

Charlie quickly slurped down the finishing bits of his cereal and then we begun the educational tour. I went over everything, but focused on the most important parts. Like the refrigerator, the oven, the stove, the dishwasher, the microwave and the laundry machine. I also explained the smartphone to him, but he seemed to already know much about the device.