When Tara neared Allie Jo, sensations flooded her—kindness, strength, loyalty, and another one, a kind of loneliness. Why did humans suffer so? She’d felt similar vibrations from the one she later learned was called Chase, except his vibes leaped through her system like electrical charges. Wave upon wave crashed within her—his fierce loyalty, boldness, and wisdom, and under it, intense currents of sadness, loneliness.
She’d begun to feel these things too. She tried to close her ears, shut these sensations out, but it didn’t work. How did they live with this noise in their souls? At times, she thought she might not bear it, that she might crumble under the weight of it.
She sat in this room, lush with green plants and other living things. The jinx slept. She reached over to the bowl and finished off the tuna.
The old ones warned them of others who had never returned. She and her friends listened with big, brown eyes, but after the elders slipped away, she and her friends giggled at the stories, throwing their heads back until every word of warning floated away on bubbles of laughter.
Would now that she’d heeded the words of the old ones.