The Vaticinator

7. Dual The Threat

“Vince was pretty reluctant to travel this side.” Ethan tells me as we traverse the sparse woods, towards the beach end of the meadow. “He has never been an enthusiastic traveller.”

The wind has a chilly end to it making me curl my shoulders inward. Night times are usually colder, especially near the beach side. Ethan looks undisturbed with a thin t-shirt on. “To be honest,” I tell him, “even I am surprised that you guys have travelled to a different continent upon a request.”

Ethan chuckles, “Wouldn’t be the first time, Josh…you don’t mind if I call you ‘Josh’, do you?”

“No, no.” I say, “‘Josh’ is just fine.”

“Good. And you can call me Ethan.”

“Alright.” I chuckle. “Ethan.” I say testily. “What do you mean ‘it wouldn’t be the first time’?”

Ethan suspires heavily, “Well…I am naturally an explorer. I like travelling.” He shrugs, “Apart from that…our realm has quite a few specialties for which therians from all the other realms come for consultation to us.” He pauses as we break out of the trees. “Vince and I are amongst the head members of the council of our realm. So, it’s not unusual for us to travel abroad frequently for attention seizing situations in other realms. Vince despises it.” He chuckles.

I turn to look at him, “Uh…I am not quite acquainted with the…uh, traditions of the realms.”

“Ah,” he shrugs again, “It’s a shame. Nikolai did tell us that your family is here since almost twenty years now. There are families belonging to our realm who prefer to live separately from the realm too.” He turns and gives me an incredulous look, “You haven’t even visited your realm ever?”

I shake my head, not very comfortable at being interrogated about my lack of knowledge.

Ethan frowns, “Strange…I’d….” he trails off then abruptly shakes his head. “Anyway. Just know that it isn’t our first time being counselors for same gender partners.” He smirks.

“There are others?”

“Of course.” He uses the ‘duh’ tone. “Our realm, the First, is the one with the most same-sex partners. There are sixteen couples in my division alone.”

“Uh, I am sorry, division?”

Ethan gives me a comical exasperated look, “You must at least know of the realms, if not have visited one.”

“I know about the realms.” I say quickly, “Just not in very detail…I have just read certain books…” I shrug.

“So, you must know that the First Realm is the biggest?”

“Yes, I did read that somewhere. It was the Realm where therians were created, so naturally it expanded much more than any other Realm which got created due to migration.” I say, trying to recall the memory of my ‘curious’ years, when my incessant bugging had made father relent and allow me to read some of the books in his personal library.

“Yeah, so it’s enough big to be divided into sections which are called divisions. I live in the east Kansas division which is about only two percent of our total realm. And there are sixteen cases of same sex partners in my region alone.”

“…Okay. They are all…together as couples?”

“Yes.” He says proudly, “They face slight reluctance in the beginning, for obvious reasons, but they all are eventually happy together. Some of them have identified themselves as homosexuals beforehand, so they consider their partner of the same sex to be obvious. But most are straight. So they usually end up getting slightly shocked at the revelation. In fact, the very first case of same gender partners had risen in our realm itself, back in the seventies. And God knows there must have been cases before that, just not in writing. You can imagine their shock at that orthodox time.” Ethan smirks, “Those two ladies in my realm are still alive, reveling in their old age and happily living as a couple now.” Ethan grins.