Shades Of Morality

Chapter 14 "again?"

I walked home that night with a warm belly and a warmer feeling in my chest. I opened my front door, strode forward a few steps, and collapsed face first on my bed.

I dream sometimes, more often then I'd like i dream of the things I've seen.

Sometime I have dreams because someone just died and I can literally feel it. Sometimes their just nightmares.

This night However I dreamed of better things.

             
                              ~<>~

I found myself waking to a familiar sight, that of a dead man starring at me.

"Hey Rogers, how's unlife been treating you lately?"

"It's been pretty good all and all." The man replied in a deep, booming voice.

"I cataloged a new type of mushroom yesterday!" "It has a tiny amount of awareness as well as a little Talent, it tries to mimic things around it in order to blend in. I found this one with cat ears sticking out the top."

I blinked at that. "Cat ears?"  "Yes! Cat ears. I suspect that it sensed a cat nearby and so mimicid it in an attempt to blend in."

"Okay..."

Thaden Maxwell. Rogers was a big man with a dark red beard and shiny bald head. He wore the uniform of forest ranger. And if you didn't know better you'd never Be able to tell that he had been dead for over twenty years.

When I said that I had no friends I meant no living friends. My morals, all the knowledge I had about the supernatural world. All of it came from ghosts.

I had met Rogers about ten years ago. He had found me lost And wondering in the woods one day. it was a few weeks after I realized that Linda and Ronald didn't give a rats ass about me. I had started thinking about running away and I would stay out for longer and longer periods of time. I inevitably got lost one day.

I had sat and cried for an hour when I realized that I could die in the woods and no one would know what had happened to me, no one would care.

He found me then, while I sat, crying in the woods. I had looked up only too see a man  towering above me.

I wasn't scared, i not sure why when looking back on it.

Why I wasn't scared of this huge man with his big beard and craggy features. No, I knew why I wasn't scared. His was the first aura that I felt. That I didn't just see, I really internalized it, knew it.

I wonder what kind of person I would be if seen an aura like Kyle's first. I wonder how different my life would be.

But I didn't see a monster. Instead I saw a truly good man, one who would shape much of my life. 

"Are you listening to me?"  Rogers had continued talking while I was lost in memory. "Ummm."  "That's a no," He said with a deep chuckle.  "I was saying how Some creatures use those that stand out in order to hide them selves, like a sort of social camouflages."

"I thought we were talking about mushrooms?" "We were but some tactics can be used by anyone."

"Yeah I'll keep that in mind next time I need a group of cats to accept me as one of their own."