Page 22 of Seer

I peered around, but no one was on the path, and I couldn’t see anyone among the trees.

“I think there’s a group doing a cleanup today,” the second voice said.

I heard her so clearly, I instinctively looked right at her.

In the tree.

Sitting on a branch.

There were two of them. Big black birds. Crows, maybe. I wasn’t an expert. But this time the second selves overlaid across their figures were humans. Women.

Holy shit. How many of these shifter-people were there?

“Hi, cutie!” the one on the right said. She’d been the first one I’d heard speaking. “Thanks for cleaning up the park!”

The other bird-woman laughed, but said, “Yes, thank you!”

Steve’s mom had always told me if I didn’t know what to say, I should just be polite.

“You’re welcome, ladies. I hope you’re having a good morning.”

They were silent, staring at me in shock with both their bird and human eyes. Which was a little disconcerting.

The one on the left recovered first. She cocked her head to the side. “You can understand us?”

I nodded. “My name is Cal.”

The one on the right said, “Cal! You’re the Cassandra!”

It was my turn to cock my head. “Uh, the what?”

“The baby Seer! It’s a nickname for people with magic who are born to NPC families.”

The bird-woman on the left leaned over and full-on pecked her friend in the neck. “Shh! The DM should be the one telling him this.”

The one on the right batted her away with a wing. “He’s obviously met shifters before. He’s not an NPC.”

The other one seemed like she was about to respond, but I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. Are you saying ‘NPC’ likenon-player character? And who’s the DM?”

They looked at each other and shuffled their feet on the branch nervously. The one on the left said, “Uh, we need to get going. Nice to meet you!” She leaped into the air and flew off, her friend right on her tail.

I stared after them for several minutes. Then I dropped my bags of trash to the ground and leaned against the nearest tree.

Somehow I managed to successfully get back to the truck, make several round-trips to the dump, and interact with my coworkers. Steve threw me a couple of concerned looks, but he was the only one who seemed to notice I wasn’t myself.

Normally after a day of hauling trash, I stopped at the car wash on the way home. Today I couldn’t be bothered. Sure the bed of the truck was littered with pieces of trash that had fallen out of the bags, but given how old the truck was, and the poorly-repaired and repainted rust spots all over the body, what difference did those bits of paper and plastic really make?

I got home and took the hottest shower I could stand. Then I threw on some sweats and a t-shirt that said, “English is important, but math is importanter”.

I went into the second bedroom, which I used as an office. My “desk” was a u-shape I’d made out of three rectangular folding tables. I had four monitors attached to a docking station for my laptop. The back wall of the room was covered in large whiteboards.

I sat down and the first thing I did was text Steve and Felix to meet me for brunch tomorrow. I needed to talk this out with someone, and those two could keep secrets.

I woke up my laptop. I’d briefly considered using the whiteboards for this, but somehow it felt too exposed.

I opened a new spreadsheet and started a list of what I knew so far.

Animal shifters were real