Johnny had wanted to get back home as quickly as possible. He had to get back to his family.

He did wonder how he was going to make a living for himself and his family. The police probably weren’t too keen on seeing him return to town. Could he still catch rats? He would have to have a serious talk about that with his boss, old man Williams. (Or would Mr. Williams already have started to teach a new apprentice the trade?) He imagined himself continuing to work for Mr. Williams secretly. Johnny did most of the actual rat-catching after dark anyway, which was when the rats generally came out to feed. Perhaps old Williams, or a third person, could talk to the customers, inspect the premises and assess the job at hand, and Johnny could come out at night and do the work.

Mr. Williams had been a decent employer, and one of the very few humans that spoke to Johnny as a fellow man, but would he be as sympathetic when he could get in trouble with the authorities for employing Johnny? Perhaps moving North wasn’t that terrible an idea...

Still, Johnny had to leave these questions be for now, and turn his attention to the practical task at hand: getting home. He’d see about everything else after that.

He had first planned on hiding away on a freight train—having heard tales from older lemurians back home that this was how they used to travel (and also worrying about some of those tales telling of hounds being trained by the rail yard guards to sniff out lemurians, and having seen Dame Lydia, who had lost her tail to these bloodthirsty hounds).

Johnny had followed miles of railway track, knowing they would eventually lead him to some station, and they did—and he creeped around rows of train wagons, coupled and uncoupled, but there was absolutely no telling which way any of these trains would go.

He could tell by the sun (rising in the east, setting in the west, obviously) which way (roughly) his home was, but when he found several trains pointing that way—how was he to know if they would travel in a straight line, and not turn this way or that down the line? He could end up in, well, wherever, for all he knew.

He had stolen a bicycle during his second night from home, in a little town called Lamoni. He’d felt bad about it, but most lemurians would reach a point in their lives when they would rationalize: if laws didn’t apply to lemurians whenever this suited the humans, why would a lemurian still obey human laws, at all? Johnny had now reached that point.

He would cycle at night, under cover of darkness, and sleep during the day. He was now traveling through Missouri, and he knew a lemurian’s life was as perilous here as it was in his home state Texas. Luckily, lemurians could see very clearly in the dark.

Johnny’s ancestors, living in Madagascar, had lived much of their communal lives during the night, as daytime on large parts of the island were much too hot for serious exertion. Likewise, his much more distant ancestors, the lemurs wherefrom the lemurians descended, were nocturnal creatures.

He had ridden his bicycle on dark roads for two nights, when another practical matter couldn’t be ignored any longer: he was dying of hunger!

Spring had only just started so there was practically no fruit or berries to pick in the forests he came across. Early in the mornings he would hide his bike behind a bush, and scour the woods for something, anything, to eat.

There were probably plants and herbs here that he could digest, but he was never taught how to tell which was which. He sampled some plants, and anything that didn’t taste half bad, he cautiously ate.

Even though he was lost, lonely and hungry, the woods had a soothing effect on him. He remembered he used to have dreams about living in the woods when he was a boy, and those dreams had always been very peaceful.

On the third morning, having halfheartedly munched some leaves and stems, as he was about to look for a decent spot to sleep, a distant dog’s bark startled him. Most dogs really didn’t like lemurians. Johnny speculated this was perhaps because during the millions of years of evolution, dogs and their ancestors, the wolves, had never come across anything resembling a lemurian. They might be simply wary of what they didn’t understand.

The dog didn’t bark again, but before long he heard it approach him through the shrubbery. The dog had been downwind, so Johnny hadn't smelled it—which of course meant that Johnny was upwind and the dog smelled him just fine. A dog’s sense of smell was as keen as a lemurian’s.

Quickly, and as quietly as possible, Johnny scrambled through the woods, moving in a large half-circle, hoping to get on the other side of the dog, downwind.

This seemed to work, as he heard the dog bark again, nowhere near him. He was worried the dog might pick up his trail on the ground, so he kept moving. Then he heard voices, even before he smelled the men. Two unwashed men, gunpowder, grease: hunters. They weren’t hunting for lemurians, but Johnny knew nobody would give them any trouble if they did shoot one. So he kept moving, until he was sure they weren’t following him.

When it got dark again, he had quite some trouble locating his hidden bicycle. His stomach growled.

He couldn’t survive on these plants, most of which came out his other end undigested.

He had to venture into the next town he came across, and look for some real food.

He had a flat tire, and continued on foot. A full night and day later, he finally came to a town, half starved. He entered the town furtively around 11 PM. The streets were quiet, and he followed his nose. He didn’t want to risk getting caught breaking and entering, so, it had come to this: he was looking through garbage for food.

In the dumpster behind a bakery he found some crushed banana and coconut cakes, and he chomped them down gratefully, when around the corner a door opened and a gaggle of people poured out, loudly discussing Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. The late night picture show had ended.

Johnny pressed his body against the wall, as the noisy crowd passed the alley. Then, from among the potpourri of aromas they carried with them, one very particular smell made Johnny’s ears prick up. It was very faint, but unmistakable, from among the mob of people came the smell of a lemurian!

He dropped the clumps of cake his hands were still holding, and sneaked after the crowd, which was breaking up in smaller groups, and slowly dispersed. He kept low, walking on all fours, hiding behind parked cars. He breathed in the air, deep, through his nose, analyzing it… and there it was again.

He followed a group of seven men and women. Why did one of them smell like a lemurian? Did they have a lemurian at home in some capacity? Maybe a lemurian worked for them. If they were friendly with lemurians, then they could possibly help him get home safely.

Johnny got closer, dangerously close, wanting to determine which individual it was. Then he froze.

He first recognized the lush fluff of a lemurian tail, wrapped around the shoulders of a young blond woman, who now cackled with delight at something funny an older man said, his arm wrapped around the woman’s pelvis. Then Johnny saw the rest of the lemurian, or what was left of them. The woman wore a coat made from lemurian hide.

Johnny puked up large chunks of cake.

He had stolen another bicycle and wasn’t sure if he was still in Missouri or was now traveling through Kansas. It was the sixth night away from home… or was it the seventh?

He wasn’t riding very fast. He didn’t feel great. He had a hard time sleeping during the day, and the meager and irregular diet was dragging him down.

The sky was overcast tonight, and it was very dark indeed. He smelled them long before he could see them. A group of lemurians, perhaps a dozen, the scent of a wooden cart, two horses, and food, salted meat, the smell made Johnny’s mouth water. They had to be travelers in the night, like him. They were sure to help him. Johnny pushed down on his pedals.

He gained on them quickly, but once he could make out their shapes on the horizon, they seemed to pick up speed. He couldn’t quite make out what was happening in the group; he believed some lemurians were heaved onto the cart, while others helped push it.

Stolen story; please report.

As he kept pursuing them, he realized: they were running from him! He could smell their fear on the wind. Why would they fear him?

Johnny pushed on. He wasn’t somebody to fear, which he would explain once he caught up with them. Whoever they were, they were being foolish. Then, quite suddenly, he lost sight of them.

When he got to where he’d last seen them, he looked around. He still smelled them, but where— There they were, they’d gone off the road! About 500 yards from him, he could make out the cart and horses, left by a small clump of trees. He left his bike by the road and approached by foot. He could still smell them. Were they hiding behind the trees? Then he heard a choked whine coming from the cart. A baby! Had these folk left behind their baby?

Johnny couldn’t believe it. Lemurians treasured their children above all else. They were the future, and the present was nothing but a stepping stone for the future. Johnny wondered what kind of people these were, as he rushed over.

He located the squirming babe, wrapped in a shaggy blanket, no more than a few weeks old. It cried out as it saw Johnny, and as Johnny reached over, wanting to cradle it and calm it down—something dropped from the tree, hitting the ground right behind him. When he turned around, he was hit hard on the back of his head, his bones turned to jelly and he crumpled like a ragdoll.

He awoke laboriously, as if he had to struggle his way to the surface of a lake of black sludge. His head hurt. His hands were tied behind his back. His feet, too, were bound. They had put him in the cart. He was so close to the salted meat, he could taste it.

The night sky had cleared up, the moon was only a sliver but the stars shone brightly. Johnny shifted his body so he could peer over the sides of the cart. By the stars’ light he could clearly see the group of lemurians, sitting in a circle, silently as if they had dozed off.

“Rock, he’s awake!” a young lemurian boy yelled, who’d been sitting separate, closer to the cart. Some of the lemurians in the circle looked up, their mirror-like eyes lit up silvery in the dark night. One of them came over, unhurriedly, his tail proudly up in the air. And Johnny understood who these folk were.

They called themselves ‘Seers’ and claimed to live by the old ways of the ancient lemurians of Madagascar—or ‘Lemuria’ as they called it. They gave themselves names like ‘Rock’ and ‘River’ and they walked with their tails out (when there weren’t any humans around. When he was very young Johnny had once asked a human doctor, why he had to hide away his tail, and the doctor had snapped at him, “because they’re lewd, son. This isn’t Paris!”).

A group of Seers had come through Johnny’s hometown of Odessa about a year ago—looking to convert other lemurians and possibly happening on a truelove match. Johnny had very much wanted to talk these religious people, since he was passionately interested in lemurian tradition, history and mythology. They had given him the cold shoulder, called him a halfling and judged him an aberration. They had no time for someone who was born outside the Great Current.

Everything Johnny knew about Seers he had heard second hand. He didn’t believe their faith was a continuation of the ancient lemurian creed. Many original ideas had been swept up and lost by the waves of time, as had the original lemurian languages. Lemurians that had been brought to America many generations ago had been re-educated by Christian missionaries and teachers, aiming to ‘save their eternal souls’, while other factions of the Church maintained this was useless, since only humans had souls.

The Seers taught a peculiar blend of lemurian concepts and Christian apocalyptic ideas from the Book of Revelations. They believed the visions of John of Patmos would herald the end of the world of humanity, and the lemurians would inherit the Earth.

The lemurian that walked up to Johnny wore no clothes, though this didn’t quite make him naked. Full-blooded lemurians had fur all over, and, unless aroused, no sexual organs could be detected.

Seers preferred not wearing clothes, which were an unnatural human invention, yet Johnny could see some others in the group wore jackets, a dress, or a blanket over their shoulders. The night was chilly, and intolerant humans were never far away.

“So, cur,” the Seer said, looking Johnny sharply in the eye. Johnny felt tremendously helpless, tied up, his neck in a crick to look up at the man. “Which one of the Teixeira Brothers would you be?”

“Would I be who?” asked Johnny bewildered.

“See, Rock? I told you he wasn’t a Teixeira!” the boy lemurian said excitedly.

“I’m not, I don’t know who—my name’s Johnny!” said Johnny, and then wished he hadn’t. Traditionally, lemurians named their children when, during the pregnancy, they had a dream or a vision, in which the unborn child made it clear in some way what their name was to be. In lack of such a vision, children were expected to choose their own name, once they were old enough, which was common practice in modern times. These reactionary Seers wouldn’t look kindly on any lemurian who’d chosen such a very human name as “Johnny” for themselves, especially not when this Johnny also happened to be a vile halfling. Johnny was glad his hair was such a mess—they wouldn’t have approved.

“Why were you following us?” the lemurian called Rock asked sternly.

“I wasn’t—I, well, I was, because I was hungry… I still am, very much!”

Rock must have smelled Johnny’s anxiety, and must have concluded he was telling the truth, because now he told the boy to untie him, and to give him a few strips of meat and some water.

“We apologize for the bang on the head, but it was an honest mistake to make. We don’t get many halflings around here.”

“I’m not from around here. I’m from Texas, and I’m on my way home,” and Johnny explained how he had ended up so far from home (leaving out the role of the human girl), while the boy untied his hands, and then his feet. Johnny thanked the boy, and then thanked him again passionately for the strips of dried meat he was handed.

Rock left him chewing his meat, and joined his fellows sitting in the circle. The boy stayed with Johnny and told him they would be discussing what to do with him. Johnny asked the boy, who introduced himself as Dusk, who these Teixeira Brothers were.

“They are the meanest bastards around! They are bred in the stud farm of Mr. Teixeira. They are halflings like you, hybrids, half lemurian, half son-of-a-bitch! They hunt down runaway laborers, and are liable to take any other young lemurian they come across, to be put to work or to breed on Mr. Teixeira’s farm. They dress like humans, real slick and dandy, and I heard some even shave their bodies, so they look more human!”

Hearing this made Johnny feel very uncomfortable. If half-breeds behaved like that, how could he blame full-blooded lemurians for despising him? Most lemurians instinctively disliked half-breeds. They were taught how children set about effecting their own birth. It was the influence of the unborn child that brought the parents together. This belief became problematic in cases of rape and other unnatural couplings.

“Dusk, bring the halfling into the circle!” the voice of Rock commanded.

Johnny was led into the circle, and was sat down facing the wizened, gray leader of the group, the Judge.

In olden times the lemurian tribes weren’t ruled by kings or priests, but by judges. The wisest of judges would attract the largest amount of subjects.

“I’ve decided you are allowed to leave, but,” the gray Judge emphasized, “you are to tell no one of having met us here.”

“Yes, your honor, thank you, your honor!” What would they have done with him if he hadn’t been allowed to leave, Johnny wondered, but didn’t venture to ask. “Could you tell me how to get home? I need to get back to Odessa, Texas, my family is waiting for me, they need—”

“Leave the circle, you have been judged.”

“Yes, sir, your honor, sorry about that!” Johnny got up. The Judge had clearly wasted enough words on this lowly halfling. Rock stood up with him and led him back to the cart. There were a few other lemurians around who weren’t part of the circle. Johnny saw a young mother suckling the weeks old baby, which she clutched tightly when Johnny passed, as if he might steal it. Rock told the boy, Dusk, to wrap some food for Johnny and give him a bottle of water.

Johnny asked them if they knew where his bicycle was, and was told they waylaid him about five miles that way. And as Johnny bid them farewell, and thanked them earnestly for the food and water (for folk that despised him, they weren’t half bad, really), Rock took him by his shoulders and told him, “You’d be wise to take the long way home. Stay off the main roads in Kansas, and you’d best move round Oklahoma…” he told Dusk to get him a pencil and paper, and proceeded to draw a rudimentary map for Johnny. “Beware all human beings, white, black or brown, none will hesitate to sell you for a fistful of dollars. And stay away from other halflings as long as you’re in Kansas. Slavery is still very much part of this country, it’s just not called slavery anymore when it concerns us. We don’t count. Be warned, boy, and may the First Mother watch over you."