Call of the Water (COMPLETE)

29. BLUE IRISES

In a quiet corner of the garden, stood an unlikely group - a werewolf whose sense of smell got attacked each time a representative of a water race would come near, and not one, but two Aquantiens.

Secrets were revealed and there wasn't any doubt left; Mathias found out that I know Professor Cyan was the same race as I was. He found out that I didn't keep a promise I gave him and I was sure he would...

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" It took me some time, but eventually the words Mathias and Ms. Cyan exchanged reached my brain. "Do you mean to say that she knows that you know!?" I threw my question in his face.

"Of course I know that he knows," Ms. Cyan responded instead of him. Her expression led me to believe that she was amused by my confusion. She glanced at Mathias and smiled crookedly. "I can still remember his first Literature class. The moment I walked into the classroom he jumped off his chair, knocking it to the floor in the process. I swear, if the windows had been open, he would have jumped right out. I sent for the headmaster, he escorted Mathias out and after that I did not see him for a month. It was the potion that enabled him to join his classmates in my class again," she said as if she were describing a fond memory.

Mathias crossed his arms and looked away. "I don't like to be reminded of that," he said, but his voice wasn't gruff.

"I never saw anything like that." Professor Cyan decided to sit on the bench again. "His behavior petrified me."

Mathias shrugged his shoulders. "Aquatic races. What can I do?"

"Smell us from afar," I replied with a smile.

Just a second later, his narrowed eyes were on me and his index finger lifted in my direction. "Don't!" he warned me.

"Mathias," Professor Cyan intervened, "she means nothing malevolent by it."

He looked at her. "I know." When he returned his eyes on me, his stare was softened. "I'm sorry."

Wait, did I hear it right? Did he just say that he's sorry? If that 'Hell' humans often talk about truly does exist, it was now frozen.

I wanted to thank Ms. Cyan for preventing a possible argue, but when I looked at her, she was facing away from us. I followed her stare and saw that she was observing freshly bloomed flowers.

"Blue irises," I whispered.

Thanks to Lissa, I could name most of the flowers in the school gardens. Irises had very delicate petals. Three larger sepals had tips that fell gracefully backwards and three smaller that stood up straight in the middle of the flower, looking like a crown.

The irises truly were magnificent. And they came in so many colors; yellow, white, red, purple, blue...

Of course, when Lissa spoke of them, she liked to use more exotic expressions to name their colors. That's why I knew what it meant when she said that we have ivory irises, coral irises, lilac irises, magenta irises, cyan irises...

Cyan irises. Of course! How did I not see it before?

Blue irises.

Iris Cyan.

"Professor Cyan?" I took a few steps closer to her. "May I ask you something?"

She either didn't hear me or didn't want to answer me.

I leaned in, so I was in her field of vision before trying again. "Professor Cyan, did you choose to be named after flowers like these?"

I knew that many representatives of the hidden races choose to bear human names. I was sure she did the same. There were no irises in the depths of the ocean.