“...What?” Was all I could respond with to the absurd question I had just been asked.

“I said, that depends. Are you here to arrest me or to kill me.” The strange girl said in a quiet, emotionless tone of voice.

What was with this girl? Is this just a weird joke she was making, or does she really believe the insane things she’s asking me right now? Why would I want to do either of those things to someone, much less a girl I just talked to for the first time?

“I don’t want to do either one of those things. Why is that even a question, or are you just making a joke or something?” I asked, hoping that she would quickly clarify her odd question to me.

“Why…?” She asked in an incredulous tone of voice while looking me directly in the face for the first time. Her face looked unremarkable and a bit plain. That said, she could probably still pass for pretty if she put any actual effort at all into her appearance.

“Why?” The strange girl repeated with more annoyance in her voice now. “Because of what you are. That should be all the explanation you need.”

“What? That doesn’t explain anything.” I insisted. She couldn’t mean what I thought she meant. It could be troublesome if she had found out about my secret somehow. I was pretty certain I wasn’t supposed to let other people know about that stuff if I could help it.

The girl with unusual ears just rolled her eyes at me. “Of course it does. Someone like you wouldn’t be trying to start up a conversation with someone like me unless she had an agenda, and what agenda does your kind usually have with mine…?”

She let her unanswered question trail off without any further explanation, leaving me to fill in what she seemed to assume was an obvious answer.

“I don’t know.” I told her bluntly. “I don’t even know what you mean by your kind and my kind.”

I actually did have a pretty good idea, but it wouldn’t be wise to just come clean right away about it if I didn’t have to. It seemed like she already knew some things, but maybe I could get her to reveal more about stuff that I don’t know about yet in the process.

She narrowed her eyes at me in suspicion before scoffing and beginning her explanation. “Your kind, supernaturals… You couldn’t have been any more obvious about it when I saw you at the party. That, plus the things everyone is saying happened to the monster you killed, I’m assuming, make it fairly apparent what you really are. So please, don’t try to act like either of us are stupid here.”

The girl named Mira concluded her blunt explanation with a swish of her hair and a turning of her head away from my direction as she began to look intently at the wall in the opposite direction of where I was currently standing. Pretty rude, it seems like this girl already decided she didn’t like me much.

“Okay…” I began strongly. “Are you sure we should even be talking about this stuff here? Other people could overhear us, and it’s been made pretty clear to me that letting other people know about this stuff is not okay.”

“What?” It was Mira’s turn to be confused now. “What are you talking about? I could scream at the top of my lungs that monsters and magic are real, and everyone here would probably just be annoyed that I was being too loud or something.”

“What?” I copied her. “That’s not…I had a quest to protect the veil…they said I shouldn't reveal the truth to anyone and….”

My thoughts seemed to wander off as I wracked my brain for the discontinuity between what this girl was saying and what I’d lectured about when it came to revealing the existence of magic and monsters. Something didn’t add up, and the new conflicting variable was this girl sitting in front of me.

“Explain what you mean.” I insisted, maybe a bit too loudly.

“There she is.” Mira said with a triumphant smile. “I knew I recognized a supernatural when I saw one.”

Her reduction of my behavior and apparent discrimination against supernaturals was starting to irritate me.

“Just…answer the question already.” I snapped uncharacteristically.

“Fine.” She snapped back. “I’m not sure what you’ve been told or think you know, but it’s extremely obvious you're pretty new to all this.”

“Less insights about me and more explanation of what you mean about the veil.” I ordered her a bit harshly.

“I’m getting there. Take a chill pill, or were you actually lying about not wanting to arrest or kill me 'cause it’s starting to look like you were lying about it.”

“No, I’m not…please just explain what you were talking about.” I stopped myself from getting any more angry and reigned in my temper as much as I could.

“Fine, so like I said, just casually mentioning things about monsters or whatever isn’t gonna do a thing.” She patiently explained to me. “If you want to convince someone with just words, you’re gonna need to basically tie them to a chair and repeatedly yell at them and slap them silly while continually insisting things like monsters and magic are real.”

That didn’t quite fit with my understanding, I was warned not to reveal the truth, but maybe there is an explanation… Maybe different stimuli had different effects.

“The veil that's messing with everyone's perceptions is pretty resilient when it comes to things like that.” Mira went on while my attention had started to drift. “Not so much with other things, though.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She quickly and awkwardly began to fuss with the hair on the side of her head, trying to cover up her pointy ears that were sticking out a bit still, despite her best efforts.

That would explain it then, based on what she was explaining to me. Words and speech had less of an impact than things like physical evidence, but then…didn’t she herself contradict things. Her ears were blatantly apparent to me, in spite of whatever attempts she was still making to cover them up with her hair.

“So wait, what about you then?” I asked cautiously. “Why aren’t you…breaking the veil?”

“And there it is.” She announced while sticking both her hands out and offering her wrists to me like she expected me to slap a pair of handcuffs on them. “Finally found a reason to arrest me, huh, or are you just going to execute me right here in the middle of class. Maybe a bullet to the head, or are you more old school, maybe you’ve got like a big ole’ claymore sword tucked away in your backpack or something.”

This girl seemed to have a pretty wild imagination about the things she expected me or other supernaturals to do to her. Why was she so paranoid? Then again, was she actually being paranoid? Maybe she was completely justified in being fearful and mistrustful of me. There was still so much I didn’t know about all this.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Knock it off already.” I said with an obviously annoyed tone to my voice. “I just want to know how all this stuff works. You seem to have more experience with it, so I was only hoping you could explain some of it to me.”

“Ah, so you can better track and hunt me and others like later on. I guess that makes sense.” She elaborated, giving a satisfied nod at her own twisted conclusion

“No…” I started to say with an increasingly irritated voice before I was interrupted.

“So, you two are partners, then?” The voice of Mr. Gomez asked from behind me. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

“We’re not.” Mira was quick to correct him.

I was slightly offended by her swift dismissal of me, but I also couldn’t disagree with her.

“But are you two working together then or not…?” He asked a little more hesitantly this time.

“We um…” I started to say before looking towards Mira to see if she was still against the idea.

“I guess we can work together, so long as she doesn’t plan on killing me or anything.” Mira casually explained to our teacher.

“Hah, well, I believe you should be fairly safe working together with Ms. Morrow here.” Mr. Gomez replied, obviously taking Mira’s outlandish condition as a joke. “You’ve both done pretty well so far in class, so I’m expecting good results from your report then.”

“Uh, y-yes, Mr. Gomez, we’ll both do our best.” I told him enthusiastically before turning to look back at Mira. “Right?”

“Ugh, I guess so.” She responded while crossing her arms. “Not like I really have a choice in the matter…”

Her last words were under her breath, and I don’t think Mr. Gomez actually heard them as he continued on.

“Great then, here are your instructions.” He said while handing each of us a piece of paper. “You’ll have a whole month to work on this joint project, it's an important assignment that I’ll helpfully point out is worth almost a quarter of your final grade for the fall term.

I wasn’t worried about the actual schoolwork involved in the project, but working with this strange and chaotic girl though…

Mira quickly but deftly snatched the paper from Mr. Gomez’s outstretched hand and began reading over it, content to ignore whatever the teacher and I were doing or saying.

I took my offered paper of instructions more carefully and politely from him. “Um, thank you, Mr. Gomez. We’ll, uh, both do our best.”

Looking to Mira for confirmation then, I was only met by silence and a face that was turned away from me.

“Well, good luck then. I’m sure you’ll both do fine.” He said while quickly moving off to another group of students.

“So, do you want to work on this project, or would you prefer to interrogate me more?” Mira coolly asked.

I was tempted to just say yes. Part of me wanted to demand even more answers from her just so that I could get back at her for irritating me.

“No…I guess we should just focus on schoolwork for now.” I reluctantly decided.

“For now…?” She said, pointing out my qualifier. “So the interrogation will take place later on then?”

“You…are you purposefully trying to annoy me or something?” I asked, genuinely starting to believe she was acting this way on purpose.

“Why would I be trying to annoy someone who can arrest or kill me on a whim? That seems kinda dumb.” She said with a shrug while continuing to read the paper’s instructions.

“So then…gah, whatever.” I exclaimed in defeat, finally taking a seat at one of the currently empty desks adjacent to Mira’s. “Do you have any ideas on what we should do our project on?”

“Hmm, I have some, I guess. The paper says we should choose an early twentieth-century American dramatic play or musical to do our report about.” She calmly explained while still keeping her eyes glued to the piece of paper she was holding. “I’m guessing most of the other groups will pick the more popular and well-known plays, but we’d be better off picking something less well-known than fighting over what everyone else wants.”

I agreed with her reasoning, but also because I figured doing a report on something Mr. Gomez hasn’t already read about a hundred different times already will give us a better chance at getting a good grade on it.

“I think you’re right.” I responded to her. “So we should focus on finding a more obscure play and playwright to do our report about then?”

“Yeah, but we’ll probably have to go to the library or check on the internet to find something good that isn’t already well known.” She reasoned before finally looking back up and making eye contact with me. “I guess maybe we can each find some options and then compare the ones we each found?”

“Y-yeah, that sounds good. That works for me.” I replied back, a little surprised at the ease that our conversation was going all of a sudden now.

Before, it had been like walking on a floor of glass shards trying to talk to this girl, but now, working together on this project, everything seemed so much easier.

Maybe she isn’t completely terrible and awful after all.

“You okay?” She asked, seeming to genuinely ask out of concern. “Did you have another idea for the project, or were you still thinking about that veil stuff?”

She just brought it back up so casually, like it was just a regular topic of conversation. Maybe for her, it is, though, and she was offering me the chance to keep talking about it now.

That caused a flash of realization to happen in my brain then. I could talk with her about all this magic and monster stuff. I could, if I wanted, talk to this other girl in my class about all the crazy things I’ve experienced so far: what happened at the party, meeting the IDPA, all of it.

Maybe there was someone I could finally unburden my feelings with…

“You’re still not speaking. Have you finally decided on how you plan to kill me then?” Mira inquired emotionlessly.

Then again, maybe not…