A Walking Shadow

6. Teacher

"Ah, yes, the story collector," is the first thing Økar's father says when he and her mother welcome me into their house. "Come in! Økar's very excited to talk to you."

I smile and nod, glad that we'd communicated about this beforehand.

Økar is a small, plump kid, not young enough to be a child, nor old enough to be a teenager. The red feathers on her head stick up at odd angles, and her purplish-brown skin is shiny and smooth. She's absolutely beaming.

"Do you want to hear my story?" she cries.

"Of course!"

Her smile widens, and she pulls me into a small room that I can only presume is some sort of family space. A couple couches are arranged around a center table. Økar jumps onto one of the couches, and I sit across from her, taking out my recorder.

"You know I'm recording this, right?"

"Yeah. Dad told me."

"Cool."

I click the device on. She stares at it for a couple seconds, then up at me. "Can I start now?"

"Go ahead!"

*

This happened two years ago! I was only seventeen years old then. Now I'm nineteen! That's kind of young for a Suhaili like me. I know other species live for different amounts of time. And since I'm younger, I still have school. On Suhail, everyone has school from when they're ten to when they're thirty, with breaks in between. Well, I won't talk about that, because you probably know some stuff already about our version of school.

One day, I went to school and it was a history day. That means we learn about history all day. And then we learn about something else the next day. I wasn't very excited about the history class though, because my teacher sucked. He was very, very boring. I guess he knew what he was talking about, but he didn't know how to tell us about it and make it interesting. It was just like... a sequence of events. I don't know. He was also really old, and sometimes stared off into space for a really long time because he forgot what he was talking about. Oh also, his name was Fabiq. I forgot to say that before. I also forgot what species he was. One of the ones with reddish-orange skin.

Yeah, so it was a history day, and I knew that Fabiq was going to be talking about the decolonization of Rasalhague, and I wasn't looking forward to that at all. Also, usually I don't remember the details of classes I took two years ago. But I do remember this one, because it was so memorable.

Fabiq was late, almost an hour late. Me and the other ten students all waited for him. Finally, he rushed into the class. He looked very confused and a bit flustered. But he also looked cheerful, which was unusual for him.

"Hello everyone," he said. "Sorry I'm late. There was a bit of a dilemma at home. But I'm here now, so it's all good."

Everyone stared at Fabiq. This was not at all how he usually was. Normally, he talked slower, and had much less energy. Maybe the anxiety of being late had done something to him? I still don't know.

He looked back at us, frowning as if trying to remember something. "What were we going to talk about today in class again?"

"The decolonization of Rasalhague," said one student, with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Fabiq's eyebrows went up very suddenly. "Oh! That! I can talk about that!"

"You were going to have us read stuff about it," said someone else.

"Read stuff about it? No, no, I've got to tell you about it. Did you know, I was there?"

"You were?" I asked, surprised. I never would have guessed that Fabiq went anywhere other than his house and the school complex. Also, the decolonization happened about a hundred years ago. But I don't know how long Fabiq's species lives, and he was also really old, so it was possible that he'd been there when it happened.