A Pride of Werecats

Chapter 32

Tahi's POV

A nod from a stranger had her stomach doing a flip and her heart leaping out of her chest. Her internal organs had apparently joined the circus. She looked up again and he was gone. However the train hadn't stopped since she had seen him. She scanned the carriage but there was no sign of him.

Her restless movement must have caught Nau's eye "What you looking at?"

Tahi looked to Afah who was sitting beside her "you didn't see him?"

Afah looked confused "see who?"

"There was this man with really green eyes," Tahi mumbled watching the amusement arise in Nau's face.

"The skinny one is imagining pretty boys," there was laugher in her voice.

"Your boyfriend Tahi?" Afah added.

Tahi sighed and zoned out of the conversation, letting them giggle and poke fun. Actively deciding to leave the part that he was a fully grown man, probably at least forty, out. That fact would probably lead to even more laugher. Instead Tahi wondered, the man was so eye catching how could Afah not have seen him and where did he go? Was she really that tired and done with everything that she was imagining random men?

"You need to eat more Tahi your so skinny you can't even see properly," Nau teased.

Tahi drew into herself even more. Comments on her weight were always her bane yet they were made almost every day. The tired world rushed passed her as her cousins' prater died down. School wasn't much better as per her nature Tahi didn't attract too many people so she was yet to make friends. She supposed it wasn't too bad as it allowed her to focus on her studies which was the reason she was there in the first place. But always stories of parties that would linger in the hallways drove a nail that was loneliness deep into her. She always enjoyed the laid back parties on the beach, barefoot she would have back home.

Today she came to school bundled up in a huge coat. She got strange looks for teachers and students as it wasn't quite cold enough to be justified. It was for Tahi. Used to a tropical island the air was so cold and dry here. Even when she arrived during summer the air was dry. It was like god had sucked the soul and life out of it. The dull concrete didn't help either. Though as she looked around her school had tried to make the concrete more appealing, the school's bright colours soaked into it. Like some kind of garish display of patriotism for the school. Tahi saw through it, just concrete.

Her classmates gave her kind smiles as she walked into the room which she returned. And class went by as usual with Tahi's head in the clouds.

Recess came along and she wandered to the back of the school. Smoke drifted in the stale air towards her there from the students that smoked behind the gym. However as she wandered there today there was someone sitting at her table. Not a student, not a teenager but a man. He looked up at her and she plunged deep into the forest; his eyes beckoned her.

Sure she as a teenage girl knew better that to sit beside a strange man but none of the other students were reacting to him. She wasn't entirely sure he was there. Curiosity and a sense of adventure burned deep inside her.

She walked over.

The closer she got to him the further she was pulled into the forest and away from reality. She found sitting beside him staring up into the lush greens.

"It has taken a long time to find you," his voice was rich and powerful and his scent was... wild, like running through a jungle.

"Who are you?" She asked in a trance.

"They always ask me this," his smile shone down on her "I need to get you to the rest before it's too late."

She didn't understand what he was talking about but it didn't bother as she was lost and far away. It seemed what he was talking about had a lot of importance to him as his smile dimmed.

"So it won't be too long before it's time," he looked away, turning his head, "evil is stirring."

Tahi followed his eye line to the group of kids smoking behind the gym. Surely that's not what he mean by evil. Unhealthy but not evil.

She turned back to gaze once again into the forest but it was gone, he was gone. It was quite possible she was imagining it but now the smoke gave her a bad feeling. It was time to change her sitting spot. Was it possible to be so homesick you hallucinate? 

She pulled out her phone to google it but shook her head with how ridiculous it sounded. Wandering around looking for a new spot she found herself by a garden overlooking the soccer field, boys were playing soccer. They looked majestic with long hair and powerful legs. Like brumbies running across a plain. The most beautiful of them all had rich silky chocolate brown hair and stood slightly taller than the rest. High cheekbones and beautiful lips, Tahi always admired him but he had never once looked her way, she had have never once had a reason to speak to him. There was one thing that didn't match the rest of his beautiful face and body, his eyes. Burgundy, more to the red side than the brown, they were unsettling and always tired looking. No one ever said anything about them but to Tahi they made him stand out. Tahi wasn't entirely sure everyone else could see them. After imagining a man with forest green eyes it wasn't impossible that she was imagining a boy to have burning red eyes. Hot coals.  He was real though, definitely real. 

The bell rang and her brumbies broke up their troop each going to their seperate class. Tahi joined them, of course not walking with them but behind them. 

She sat in the corner of the classroom as always keeping to herself as the students piled in she scanned over them, the head brumby was among them. As he walked into the class his burgundy eyes looked with her's and he smiled before sitting down with his friends. 

What was with today and getting smiles from strangely eyed men?

Published 31/5/19