Second Sight

Around the World and Back

Ava had a feeling that the first semester back in Salem would be just fine. If anyone considered drowning in papers due the third week of classes and hardly having a social life fine. To add on top of it, now Ava was able to see... creatures? Beasts? Well, whatever she wanted to call them, she felt like it certainly wouldn't help with the final stretch of her history degree.

The week before classes started, Ava was striding through the student union when she saw the most peculiar thing. A large, furry beast was just... sitting there! Like it didn't realize how entirely out of place a sasquatch looked in the campus center. Ava had to admit, she was still getting used to this whole nonsense of seeing mythical creatures in real life—not just in story books or on the internet—so she found it difficult to drag her eyes off of the legendary beast in front of her. And the sasquatch noticed. But instead of getting aggressive, or rising up and shouting out at Ava, a bright smile flashed across its face. Maybe, Ava thought, she should start saying "he" or "her." After all, it wasn't as though all these different creatures didn't have feelings. Whoever it was, the bigfoot began approaching her, with arms outstretched. The closer the creature got to her, the faster Ava felt her heartbeat get. This couldn't be happening, right? Bigfoot wasn't actually a thing... right?

"Ava!" A familiar voice echoed her name as the beast spoke, and it took her a moment to realize what was happening. "Ava...?" The voice sounded more concerned now, confusion shining across its large, deep-set eyes. "Hello? Earth to Ava?" He waved a massive hand out in front of Ava's face, as though to wake her from a trance.

Rather than shaking her head from her trance or blinking away her thoughts, she screamed at the gargantuan hand that was so close to her face. Eyes from all across the student union drifted to Ava and the creature—person?—in front of her.

"What on Earth is wrong with you...?" The sasquatch asked, bewildered, appearing somewhere between disappointed and angry. "I haven't seen you since you took off for Northern Ireland last January, and you come back and scream in my face when I try to say hi? Is that any way to greet your best friend?"

It all clicked. This wasn't some rampant beast ready for a fight with the only human in Massachusetts able to see him, this was...

Ava closed her eyes in relief, a dash of embarrassment, and a pinch disbelief at her actions. "Oh, my god," she took in a long, deep breath and dropped her shoulders, which she just now realized were incredibly tense. "Jasper?!"

The sasquatch nodded his head up and down with a face he only gave to people who appeared to be complete idiots. "What is wrong with you today?" His voice was dripping with exhaustion and frustration at the girl in front of him.

Ava was glad to know that, despite her best friend currently looking like Bigfoot, he wasn't the "I'm so furious I'm going to throw you across the room with my mighty bigfoot strength," kind of angry. It was more of a "what the hell, you're being way inconsiderate right now, what happened to my best friend," king of fury.

She shook her head with her mouth agape. "I wish I could give you answers," she said, shaking her head back and forth, giving as much remorse as she could with her eyes. "Something happened in Ireland, and since then, I've been seeing... things."

"Let me guess," Jasper began, guiding Ava to a chair across from where he was sitting, "I'm not..." his hands waved in front of him in a poor attempt at charades. After a long pause, he sighed. "I'm not your average, ordinary Jasper right now, am I?"

"Um..." Ava didn't know how to answer his question. No, of course not, Jasper, you're a gigantic Bigfoot! Did you know this or is this a recent development? I thought they were extinct, but you've got a great costume!! That seemed like it would either offend him or she'd confirm his and her concerns that she belonged more in a padded cell than in Salem's university right now.