Smevy

3

Grya moved quickly, weaving through the families gathered like a river through boulders. Her focus was true, straight as an arrow, and nothing was about to stop her.

Me, on the other hand...not so much. I floundered through people, apologizing just in time to bump into somebody else. However, I stayed close enough to Grya to hear the comments made, and they caused my blood to boil.

"Who's that?"

"What's wrong with her?"

"Does she have a tail?!"

"We have enough of those kinds of people here, thank you very much!"

But Grya didn't even react. She ran straight to a tall, dark man with a happy face- Mr. Smith -and jumped into his legs, wrapping her arms around them as she swung to the side.

"Hi dad!" She exclaimed, sending him a beaming, somewhat malicious smile.

"Hi," he said, then his face lightened, turning almost white. "I mean..."

"I didn't know you had a daughter!" Said one of the dads he was talking to.

"I..." He swallowed, hard. The room had gone deathly still, and, on the other side, Mrs. Smith was staring daggers at her husband.

"Yyyyyyeeeeessssss," he drawled, wincing as if someone was digging into his side with a red-hot poker. "This is Grya."

"I had no idea you had Nekojin blood," said the same dad, blissfully unaware of the gathering darkness upon Mr. Smith's face. "You really dodged a bullet there, didn't you?"

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," said Mr. Smith through gritted teeth.

"I mean, imagine if you'd gotten it! No parties like this, that's for certain!"

"It's actually passed through my wife," said Mr. Smith, the aforementioned spouse biting her lip so hard I saw blood. "Only females can get it."

"And the rest of your kids are sons," said another dad. "Sorry dude, bad luck."

"Tell me about it." He glared down at Grya, then forced a smile. It looked like he needed to poop. "I thought I told you that it was your bedtime, sweetie."

She flinched, but hid it well. "I heard all of you outside and had to see what was going on," she said, her voice much higher and more childlike than before. "I just wanted to make some friends." Then her expression turned concerned. "You wouldn't keep me from making friends, right, Daddy?"

Now it was his turn to flinch. "Of course, my darling daughter," he spat, his nostrils flaring. A few adults shifted uncomfortably, their children peeking from around their legs or over their shoulders. I saw my siblings in a small knot and walked over. "Mom," I whispered, "She-"

"Not yet," my mom muttered. "Later."

I nodded and looked back. The two were still standing there, Mr. Smith clearly fighting to control his expression, Grya smiling sweetly up at him. Finally, he grimaced again and said, "Well, don't let this stop you! Go ahead and go back to what you were doing- I'm just going to have a little talk with Grya."

Everyone nodded or laughed uneasily, then returned to their conversations. I pulled my mom's sleeves until she followed me out the front door. I led her to where the horses were, then told her everything Grya had told me, along with my own suspicions.

"That's horrible," she said softly. "Though it does make a horrible kind of sense...the Smiths are very proud people, and the thought of having a morph in the family..."

I knew from Notch that a morph was someone with animal attributes, like Baritone. But I didn't understand why this was such a big deal, so I asked about it.

"It's...complicated," said my mom, smiling softly. "All you need to know is that there's nothing wrong with Baritone, or Grya, or Purplewing, or you, or anybody who just looks different." She frowned, resting a hand on my shoulder. "What Mr. and Mrs. Smith were doing was wrong. Very, very, very wrong."

"I know," I replied. "So what are we going to do?"

"In the old days, I would have called the police on them for child abuse," said mom. "But things have changed now, and... well, we can't do anything, I'm afraid." She glanced at the window, then back to me. "Send your father out, then enjoy the party. We're still stuck here for another few days, I'm afraid."

I spent the next few days with Grya, at first playing with her toys and chasing her around the yard while the adults stood back and muttered ominously. It only took half a day for this to get on our nerves, so I asked if I could go out and explore with one of the older kids. They said yes, and the last two days and a half were much happier, finding minnows and crawdads in the nearby creek.

On the last day, sitting in a grassy knoll under a soaring willow while our babysitters chatted a few yards away, I asked Grya how she was. She paused for a worryingly long second, then said, "Yeah. Mother and Father are still pretending I don't exist, and... they keep forgetting to feed me. They never did that before, no matter what I did." She looked down, watching the wind stirr long grasses. "It makes me wonder...I don't know."

"That maybe things would have been better if you'd never come out?"

"Yeah."

"Well I'm glad you did. You didn't deserve to be locked up like that."

"Thanks."

"It's the truth. And..." What I wanted to say hung heavy in my mind, but I wasn't sure if my parents would be okay with it. However, my mouth wasn't about to wait for my mind to figure itself out, and before I knew it, my mouth was saying, "If you don't feel safe, you can always feel free to come to my house."

"Ok." She beamed at me, wrapping one arm around my shoulders and leaning her head against my neck.

Neither of us spoke. The words hung over us like mist, like smoke, like a million dreams left undone and a symphony forever unfinished.