human

I shook my head, trying to clear the image. It was my imagination. There was no possible way I had seen that. They were fairy tales, for goodness' sake! Humans were not real.

For one, I lived in the middle of nowhere. My cabin was so deep in the Altus Woods that I hadn't seen anyone, not to mention a human, in two years. It was just how I liked it. Silent, peaceful, but not void of friends. I had the birds, the deer, the foxes. It was better than people any day.

Second, Mercury would have heard the human. He could've scented it out from a hundred meters away. Mercury was my greatest friend, a magnificent owl griffin. He was a beautiful creature, standing nearly three feet above my head. His soft gray plumage seemed a dull during the day, but at night, he shone in the moonlight like a glittering body of water. His razor sharp beak was capable of tracking a hurt coyote from a mile away. His large eyes worked much better during the night, but during the day, he still had ultra-powerful hearing.

Thirdly, I had been tired when I spotted the human through my window. I had woken up early at the sound of rummaging in my garden. Assuming it was Mercury or one of my other animal companions, I stumbled out of my cabin, still in my sleeping clothes. I walked outside, blinking in the blinding sunset filtering through the trees. My eyes were not made for sunlight, but they still managed as long as I shaded them. Instead of spotting an animal, I discovered the human crouching over my tomato plant. It must've have been a figure of my imagination.

As much as I was trying to reassure myself that I couldn't have possibly seen the human, I had. I understood the way my brain works well enough to know I had a horrible imagination. I could have never designed its unusual eyes, the color of a blue jay's plumage. It was beautiful, now that I had seen it. My kind had gray eyes, boring and dull, uniform throughout our species. The only abnormality was the way they glowed silver in the moonlight. But blue eyes? It was unheard of.

As beautiful as those azure eyes were, I knew they were deadly in the same way a colorful frog was deadly. The curiously vivid color was a sign of its toxicity. The human was poisonous, especially for my people. We were polar opposites. Humans were creatures of Day while my kin, the tenebrans, belonged to Night.

I was raised in my clan, where tales of the fearsome humans tormented children. We had grown up afraid of Day, afraid of the sun, and afraid of humans. Once tenebrans reached adolescence, we typically disregarded these tales as myths. They became children's legends because no one had ever seen these creatures with skin that was pale and warm and blood that was red. This was in great contrast to us tenebrans, with dark skin, cool to the touch like water. Our blood was not red; it was blue. The idea of these humans being warm and red like fire was why we accredited humans to be nothing more than a myth.

But here I was. I had seen one. It was not a myth. It had blue eyes and light skin. It had hair the color of a sandy beach. Its hair was shorn close to its head, in contrast to the tenebran tradition of growing out hair from a young age. The longer your hair, the more beautiful you were. I had disregarded this belief since leaving the clan to live on my own. It was my first act of defiance. I had cut my hair to my shoulders.

Once I had seen the human, I quickly ran inside my cabin and locked the doors. Mercury was asleep in his cave beneath the garden, as it was too early for him to wake yet. The sun was still on its path of descent, limiting my vision. Here I sat on my sleeping blankets, trying to convince myself that I had not seen that creature. It was no use. I know what I saw. I needed to confront it. Humans couldn't be as dangerous as the myths made them out to be, with pointy teeth and violent, primal minds. There was only one way to find out.

I looked through my simple curtains to peer into my garden, to see if it had run off. There was no sign of it from where I could see. I clutched my crossbow tight in my hands as I opened my door, cautiously stepping out into the soft grass. My feet tingled as the grass brushed against my ankles, wild and overgrown. A snap to my left caused me to jump and point my crossbow at anything moving.

Before I could fire, I noticed it was just a rabbit. Ah, I had seen this one around here before. The black marking around her eye was very recognizable. I crouched down next to her and petted her ears, feeding her a clover I had picked from among the grass. Her whiskers twitched as her nibbled on the leaves, but then her keen ears picked up some sort of noise in the distance. She bounded off into a burrow she had dug under a tree. I wish I had a burrow.

I glanced around to see what the hare had heard. Slowly, a figure emerged from the woods, a crossbow in its hands similarly to how I held mine.

It was the human.

I studied it better this time as the two of us stared each other down, deciding whether the other was a danger. It seemed scared, ready to pounce, like a wolf protecting her young. We kept a distance from each other, about four meters. Its nose was thin and pointed, rosy pink at the end. If all humans were like this, they were redder than I thought.

"What are you?" It muttered. They were sentient, not primal. That was good to know. It had a deep voice, so I figured it was a male.

"Can we lower our weapons first?" I asked. Its lightly colored eyebrows scrunched up before it slowly crouched down and set the crossbow in the grass. I mimicked its movements so it would not feel scared. Now that we were disarmed, I would attempt at civil conversation. I wrung my hands, reminding myself I had nothing to fear. One sharp whistle would summon Mercury in an instant.

"You are a human?" I asked, trying to keep my lips from quivering.

"Yes. What are you? I've never seen someone like you before." Its teeth flashed as it talked, but it showed no signs of pointed teeth.

"I am a tenebran," I stated, trying to keep my voice strong.

"Why have I never seen another like you?"

"Because humans are not supposed to be in our lands. How did you get here?"

"My horse led me here. It went down a path I had never seen before. My men are missing and I hope to find them."

"You look in the wrong place, Day creature. Humans are fairy tales. If another tenebran sees you, they will kill you on sight."

"Why didn't you?" It asked, cocking its head. Humans were so inquisitive.

"I am a pacifist," I said with a shrug.

"What is your name?" It demanded.

"Ianthe. And you?" I straightened my posture. If it was going to be cordial, so was I. It smiled, its teeth blindingly white.

"Thomas."