No one expects their parents to change the world. Maybe as a little kid, you think they can do anything. The feeling passes. They fail. You see through Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Eventually, your parents become as human as anyone else. Doesn’t make them shitty parents or bad people. Most of us go through exactly the same thing ourselves. But what happens if your parents inadvertently change the course of life on Earth? They don’t mean to; they just do. Accidents happen every day, but ‘whoops’ doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost. In this case, what if your parents’ mistake leaves them the same: frail and normal, but you become something else entirely because of what they didn’t mean to do? What then?

When I was 13, my dad discovered the first of the Irin. Not a soul on Earth knew what to consider the being. The thing looked, for the most part, like a man. He, definitely male, actually looked like a freaking, honest-to-God angel, but no one wanted to go there. For almost a decade, the Irin was an oddity, a lifeform without a name. Years passed before a select few even had a hint what to call it, much less what all the rest meant.

Originally, The National Museum of Natural History named him the Ibitoupa Man after an early 18th-century, Native American tribe who were more a memory than anything else. The Ibitoupa lived somewhere along the Yazoo River near the remote site of Dad’s find. So, despite any actual evidence—how could you prove the identity of a naked dude with no artifacts nearby?—the anthropologists and historians titled him something closest to their guess.

If the whole damn circus stopped at headlines about archaeological discovery of the century and (not so) amazing trips to the Smithsonian, our lives, my life particularly, could have gone on with this one remarkable footnote. But that outcome was never in the casino much less the cards. Instead, the Irin changed everything we—the royal we—knew about life. Tens-of-thousands of years of evolution upended in relatively few years by the unhappy accident of a pulpwood farmer from Mississippi.

Most of what we believed then was a myth anyway. So much lay underneath the surface that—okay, a lot of people went to a lot of trouble to hide—we refused to see.

Now, everyone referred to Dad’s discovery as The Loosing. Rolled off the tongue. Easy to remember. Like anyone will forget. People might have named the Irin’s discovery after some unpronounceable, Icelandic volcano, and everyone would still spit it out with the same disgust as sour milk.

Some hated The Loosing and ‘supras,’ those of us changed by the event, out of envy. Others saw Lucifer making his last stand or the apocalyptical horsemen coming to judge us all when they considered our abilities. A few despised supras simply because someone else told them they should. Whether jealousy or faith or follow-the-leader, fear drove them.

But many years and a lot of pain passed to get to any of that and even more years and pain before we realized that fighting about the Irin didn’t mean a damn thing. The first thing to understand was The Loosing itself and how wickedly subtle it came about.

∞ ∞ ∞

Age 13 — Summer 2013

The Loosing occurred near Belzoni, Mississippi.

Two hours south of our home overlooking Quail Lake, the Delta widened into a menagerie of dense evergreens and tropical plants. The cotton and sugarcane fields yielded to swamp and forest. The place felt ancient and resistant to intrusion. Turned out for good reasons.

Dad took the small-scale clearing and reforesting of fifty-six acres because his cousin, who owned the patch of marsh, didn’t trust any bigger companies to do right by the land. No one wanted another patch of the Delta’s natural beauty disturbed any more than necessary. At least, Dad’s preservationist leanings won him fewer protests from conservation groups. Unfortunately, the best of humanity’s scientists wouldn’t know how much care was actually required. If they had, we might’ve buried the entire patch of forest under a nuclear winter.

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No matter how much Dad’s crew cleared, the indomitable forest pushed back. The pine and cypress kept their imposing, sentinel-like stand full of blockades and slowdowns. I imagined the place full of tree forts, places for Merry Men or Lost Boys.

When visiting, I ran to the tree line at least once a day and shouted, “Hello in there! Are you ready to play?”.

Though far too jammed together for an echo, if I listened closely enough, I swore someone called faint answers back. Kid stuff. An amusement to my parents. Until the bottom fell out of Pandora’s Box.

The day of The Loosing, Mom and I were onsite. We milled about in the air-conditioned chill of Dad’s single-wide foreman trailer. Dad left at dawn to recheck the final, marked trees for the job. He wanted to ensure not even one break of the state’s land boundaries. The base radio crackled now-and-then with updates from across the site. Mom had just set a pitcher of sun tea on the front deck when Dad’s voice crackled from the speakers.

“…southeast corner. Double time… Harvey.”

“Dennis? What we got? You’re breaking up.”

“No… …ure. Damndest thing… all my years.”

Excitement, shaded with something I’d never quite heard before, tinted Dad’s voice. A staticky pause filled the space.

“Gotcha,” Harvey responded. “On my way. Out.”

“Harvey,” Dad shot back, “bring …lla and Ki...”

Another heavy silence followed. None of the guys ever pulled their families beyond the trailers onto the active site. An active logging site was a potential death trap for anyone who didn’t know exactly where to be and when. No one wished that on their conscience or as Dad liked to joke, their insurance claim.

“Roger. Headed to your trailer, now.”

Mom stared at the radio for long seconds before turning to me and said through her amused smile, “Go get your shoes on, Honey.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Beyond the trailer’s walls, August’s liquid air created rivers of sweat the moment I stepped outside. Amongst the trees, the mercury dropped at least twenty degrees, but pelican-size mosquitos found us within seconds. Even covered with industrial repellent, they just sent weaker ones in to lick it off first.

Harvey drove us down the crew’s makeshift access road to Dad’s location. Mom and I walked behind Harvey. We found Dad squatting beside a massive sinkhole. He never looked up as we join. Whatever lay beyond the pit’s edge transfixed him.

“Never thought I’d see something like that,” he said with a general motion at the hole.

A surprised whistle issued from Harvey.

All I saw were felled trees and a pit big enough to swallow a house. More than impressive to an eighth grader. The scene was spooky enough to have my full attention, and I let Dad pull me to his side. He handed me a pair of binoculars and directed my attention to something deep within in the hole’s dark center.

My heart raced, and my brain scrambled to catch up with my eyes.

“Is that a mummy?” I managed; binoculars pressed tightly to my face.

Mummy wasn’t the right word. But it’s all I had. People wrapped mummies in bandages. They stuffed them in pyramids. More importantly, you knew they were dead.

In the dark of that hole stood a translucent rectangle. An impossible amber light radiated faintly from its surface. Encased within, a lean, scowling man, not much younger than Dad, remained absolutely preserved. Absolutely. Like balls and all.

I treaded closer to the edge, leaning in with the binoculars. A sharp cry from Mom reeled me around. The binos tumbled with me as a section of loose topsoil broke from the edge of the crater and plummeted me into the void. No life altering moments flashed in front of my eyes. Only roots and black earth.

I pitched, tumbled, rolled, and finally landed in a lump at the base of the unearthly tomb. Its eerie brownish-gold glow brightened in the gloom.

“Kian, don’t move! I’m coming down,” Dad’s warbled shout came from miles away, though I heard the dirt shuffling as he made his way carefully down the sinkhole’s side.

Rising on wobbly feet, my eyes took in the massive figure in front of me.

Up close, I saw the block encasing the figure extended into the soil, and from his back, wings folded like a bird’s in mid-stroke.

He didn’t move so much as an eyelash, but an intensity of emotion pulsed from him. I felt his unrest worming through the soil. Why I felt no fear I’ve wondered for years. Instead of backing away, instead of cowering, my hand floated from my side and pressed to the rectangle.

Earthen warmth met my fingers. I stared up into the ancient eyes, still open and whole. As I scanned his face, the faint voice from the forest said two words. Almost an echo, but distinct enough to send me fleeing into my father’s arms.

“I’m ready.”