She gazed up at the stars and saw The Scattered Stars overhead. She wondered what she might say if they found any of these lost Shape shifters. If they still lived, they most certainly didn’t want to be found. Why should they help their distant cousins, the *proud* Werewolves? What had wolves ever done for hyenas? And what would their aid cost them? What if the asking price was too high? Would she give up her freedom for justice and revenge? The question lingered, echoing through her mind, as an endless wheel of pain and suffering until the blissful darkness of sleep finally took her.
The next morning, they erased all traces of their campsite. They buried the coals from the fire and moved the rock over the pit. They scattered the dirt where they slept carefully sculpting the dirt and fallen twigs from the tress to look as if wind blew it. Asclepius raised a leg next to a tree and commenced to water it. Aiman arched an eyebrow but said nothing. He knew that fresh animal piss would tell a tracker that humans would not have been able to use this particular place as a camp site, at least not recently.
Quietly they left their sterilized campsite in the predawn morning. They had to rely on Asclepius to guide them in the dark. The last thing they wanted was for one of them to twist an ankle or worse. Asclepius could heal them, the injury wasn’t the primary concern. It was the shocked cry of surprise and pain that even Aiman would utter into the quiet night air that would attract all the wrong kinds of attention. Soon however the light heralding the new dawn was enough to see by.
They trekked over a small rise as the sun finally rose over the horizon. The warmth from the sun immediately raised their spirits and they picked up their pace collectively. They didn’t really have any idea how far they had traveled the day prior, but they were sure they had a ways to go.
This day passed much as the previous one had. Walking around towns and villages as they came across them. Avoiding all notice if possible, if not smiling and waving like dumb American college students. They didn’t stand out as much as Acharya feared that they would, but he would not let them grow lax in their caution.
They camped in a similar copse of trees as they had the night before and like the night before they ate hot food from a tactical fire pit.
Malikah noticed how quiet everyone was. She was grateful for the silence. She watched the fire dance and whisper to her. Her people, the Persians, knew that the heart of fire was sustained by spirits, spirits that could mesmerize and sooth you into falling into the fire with them. It was relaxing and very calming to watch them dance.
Her green eyes reflected the fires dance and she hugged her knees to her chest. She looked down at herself. Once, in another lifetime, she had been so proud of the fake mounds that now hung there. Her family had come from Iran but somehow, they had become citizens in America and she had been born in Arizona of all places. The desert there was very much like home in many ways, at least that’s what her parents had told her, over and over again. She had grown so sick of hearing about ‘home’ and how great Iran was compared to America.
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She had been eighteen years old.
“Okay my lovely, kabutar” Malikah’s mother said, pulling her suitcase behind her and leaning it up against the hallway near the front door, “This is the last of your luggage. Are you sure you have enough? I can always ship you anything if you forgot something.” She smiled sweetly with love and adoration in her eyes.
Malikah smirked at her mother’s concern. “Maman, I am just going to college, you know the place that is only like three hours away. I’m not going into a war zone.”
Her mother hugger her tightly. “I know, let me worry a bit. You’re my precious bacce, let me worry over you for a few more years.”
Malikah ended the hug and for the first time in a long time she really looked at her mother. Her pale skin was worn and there were noticeable wrinkles around her eyes. Her once vibrant smile and smooth lips now had wrinkles at the edges of her mouth. When had her mother become so old? Malikah had her mother’s vibrant green eyes, but now those green orbs were not as sharp and clear as she remembered them. Looking at her mother as an aging middle aged woman made her pull back a little, at least mentally, in shock and horror. Malikah could think of no worse fate than getting old.
“I just wish you didn’t have to go,” her mother said. Tears welled up in her eyes but her lips curved upward into a smile. “Back home we had a college in the same city that your father and I lived in. If we lived there now, you wouldn’t have to leave home to finish your education.” She shook her head, “Things were just better back in Iran, I guess.”
Malikah’s temper flared and she barked out, “You know mom, if Iran is so great why don’t you go back there and leave me to fend for myself. If Iran was so great, why did you come to America in the first place?! I’m sorry I was born here. I must be such a disappointment to you and Baba! Sometimes I think it would have been better for you both if I had never been born! Then you would be free to go back to whatever hell hole the you crawled out of, to con your way into the country that has only let us live outside the rule of dictators and misogamy. But then again you always thought I was too ‘liberal’ didn’t you? I mean a girl wanting to think for herself without obeying the men in her life, how scandalous!”
Malikah’s mother stood still in shock as a pair of tears streamed down her face towards both corners of her lips.
Malikah immediately regretted saying that, especially the timing. But she wasn’t sorry for the sentiment and her mother deserved to hear it, and had deserved it for a long time.
“I have to go, mother. See you.” She hugged her mother one more time. Her mother barely lifted her arms to return the hug before she broke away from her mother. Then, without turning around, she grabbed her luggage and pulled it down the walkway towards the shuttle that would take her to her new life of excitement and freedom without the hovering guardianship of her parents.
Looking into the fire and seeing the embers rise, hit the rock overhead, and fall back down to the fire below all she could think of were those last two words she had said to her mother, “see you.” She didn’t sleep well that night. In truth her eyes never closed.
Early the next morning they packed their gear, sterilized the campsite, and headed north.
The sun rose as they traveled and soon, they climbed above a small ridge and looked out over the pristine calm waters of Lake Chad.