Shifted

18. Kalaya

"I'll hang around. I got a new partner in crime who is young enough looking they won't send her to the fields to work just yet." Snakegirl was perfect for helping me because if a guard saw her he would just keep on walking. If you were too old or a child, you weren't required to work and so guards would overlook her during the raid. It was normal for children to wander around during the day while their parents and neighbors were off doing free labor.
"Wow; using children, have we really gotten so desperate?" When I raised an eyebrow he laughed.
"Just fuckin with ya," he clapped me on the back. "Stay safe." I nodded and repeated the words back at him before we went out separate ways.

And now the day of the raid, I snuck around and caught sight of Josalena, of all people, here in my humble home. I was so caught up in her, it wasn't until after she left that I looked around and felt embarrassed? Could I feel shame and embarrassment? I don't know, but I felt self conscious of the fact that we've been in each other's homes, in each other beds. And she was probably thinking her lucky stars tonight while she was in her framed, raised, soft feathery filled bed, in her own room in her big warm home that had a fireplace in each room, that she didn't have to live here, with me, on my hard mat in a cold hut that didn't even have a proper door.
I wish she could stay, but there was no way she'd willingly leave the comfort of her own house, for my sorry excuse for one.
My heart twisted as I thought of that vacant look in her eyes when I had left her home. Of how cruel her father was. Of sounds of him hitting someone. Her? A shifted?
Maybe her home was comfortable but she lived with a monster. And that wasn't worth a fireplace or a feather filled comforter. Maybe when I figured out how to leave this place, I'd be brave enough to ask her to come with me.
"Kalaya!" Snakegirl panted as she ran up to me, tears in her eyes. "They are lining a few shifted up! Calling them useless!" She grabbed my arm and tugged and I let her drag me a few steps before stopping.
Bending down I pulled Snakegirl to a stop and closer to me as I looked into her eyes. "Snakegirl, I need you to go back to the hut. My books are uncovered and I could get in trouble," I said knowing she'd hate me if I told her she was small and probably shouldn't see what was about to go down, "please guard my stuff, I'll go see to this." When she nodded slowly at me and whispered, "okay." I sighed in relief and set off towards the fields.

Sure enough a crowd of shifted was gathered, guards were surrounded on the other side, Josalena next to her father and it made me feel sick to see but I knew she couldn't help it. She had made an excuse to come see me, she had to be here. As the general did his usual speech about how useless workers were no good to him and needed to be taught a lesson, indicating to a group of unlucky shifted, about eight of them, I thought back.
Josalena hadn't exactly said why she had come. Was it for me? As the general pulled out rope, making my stomach lurch as Josalena looked on with a stony expression.
She hadn't told me why she came. She hadn't told me she risked it all to just come see me for a second.
She just said she had come with her father. She was surprised to see me, it was by chance I found her in my hut. Of course it was, how would she know?
All the words she spoke to me during our brief meeting came back to me.
Her questions on how I knew the raid was coming. Me answering honestly. Luckily, I didn't give names. But I gave information.
As she stood still and watched as the general did what we all knew what he would, as he had guards toss rope over the large tree they hung many of my people for this very dumb excuse to give us motivation to work hard, as they dragged the right close and tied the nooses around their throats and she stood silently watching as if she too weren't surprised. As if she was numb to it and accepted it already.
She was one of them. And I had given her too much information. Telling her about the lazy guards who didn't search well enough of the ones that gave us help.
"I'm far from clean now," she had said. And I should have believed her. Because when someone tells you who they are, you have to believe them.
But I hadn't want to believe someone so kind and in innocent as her was capable of doing anything bad against my people. Not when I saw how much she went out of her way to help us.
She was different. I had believed that.
But right before my eyes, she was changing.
Because she watched, and didn't even beg her dad to stop as he ordered the eight shifted to hang. All the humans beside her watched, always watching. Always allowing it to happen.
They had power and privileges, why would they give that up for those they saw as dirty animals?
"Work harder halfbreeds!" The general yelled. "I'm tired of wasting food and supplies on the likes of useless halfbreeds."

I felt the walls around my heart build back up, furious that I even allowed it to crack for her. Rage replaced the pain that twisted my insides.
She promised she would return to see me. Good. From now on, her well-being be damned, I would use her, the generals daughter and I would free my people. I don't know what Josalena's end game with me was. Maybe she was infatuated with me. Maybe she had a cat fetish. Maybe she had a shifted fetish. Maybe she was experimenting with someone who she knew didn't have a place to judge or could tell on her.
I burned up as I remember Tama. How she fell in love with a damn human. How she fed him information and even helped him betray her own kind. How he silently watched and looked away as she had been murdered right before his eyes.
Had I been heading down that road? And only after a few stolen kisses?
When Josalena's eyes met mine. She grimaced and looked away. But not before I saw it.
The guilt that lived there. Josalena was one of them. Of course she was. Mother was wrong. There were no good humans.
Because no good person could stand by and watch a bad person do bad things,  their people, and not even utter a word of protest and still remain a good person.
All humans were bad. All humans were to blame. All of them were the enemy.
And I need to never forget that. And all of us shifted would have to become the ruthless unfeeling animals they believed us to be, in order to escape this prison.