Even though the Legres were becoming smaller and smaller as we ran away but for some reason I knew the Ursidae was looking right at me. The other Legres began to look around themselves, appeared to be confused with as the leader of the Ursidae who just narrowed its eyes and looked around. The Legres suddenly stopped looking around and began fighting each other and the remaining Ursidae let out an earth-shattering roar before tearing its glance away from me grudgingly to help his pack.

My heart began to beat faster and faster in my chest as I accessed the situation, all the while too afraid to stop running. The look on the Ursidae’s face was etched in my mind; that moment seemed so human that it was scarying me. He seemed to blame me for what was happening but why? Did I actually do it?

My mind floated back to those thoughts that I was projecting just before the packs turned on each other. Surely? I mean, I have heard of manipulating of other human mind, but never ever that of any Legre’s. Suddenly a distant flash back of Fred’s out-of-control behaviour in POE Academy that seemed an age ago came up; didn’t I do something similar there? Could it be that Mr. Andrewson was right, that I really had all the powers of a Mentalist?

“They are fighting.” Emily came to a halt and said, causing everyone else to stop and turned around too. I looked at the fighting Legres and tried to pick out the Ursidae leader, who seemed to be trying to keep his pack from being injured. Fight harder I thought, trying to see if it was really me who caused the outbreak. The moment I thought it I could feel the Ursidae’s eyes on me again and I shivered, maybe I should restrict this to the Felixia pack? The Ursidae seemed too high class to fall for this.

Just as I was contemplating what to do I felt an unfamiliar mind that was very angry, but I couldn’t get any words from it. With a jolt I realised it was coming from the Ursidae; how was this possible? Is it trying to communicate with me?

Startled but curious, I tried to extend a cease-fire indication to the Ursidae, who seemed to get angrier but then quietened down, as if it was considering it. I truly could not believe this, but then it occurred to me that if this was happening right now, then surely at some point in the Legre-POE history someone would have done it too. Maybe not quite the same way as I was, but there are higher class Legres out there, ones that are as intelligent as human. Could it be that they could openly communicate with POEs through mind, or even directly? The possibility overwhelmed me and I felt like everything I ever knew was being turned upside down. We were always taught that we are far superior to these creatures, but if they develop the same level of intelligence as we do, surely that means that we are equal?

Finally, the Ursidae seemed to have decided and sent a friendly signal and I told the other Legres to stop and to my relieve they did. Some were looking around as if wondering what had happened, but both side backing down away from each other with a ten meter gap.

“What is happening?” I heard Tom asked beside me but I was concentrating too hard to answer him. Trying to translate we-mean-no-harm-please-let-us-go to the Ursidae, the latter suddenly stood up on its hind legs and very, very humanly wave its forearm at us, as if asking us to just leave.

This time I wasn’t the only one who saw it; a collective of gasping sounded next to me and I nodded my head appreciatively at the Ursidae before tugging Tom’s sleeves and telling everyone to just go.

“Did the Ursidae just waves at us to go?” Jeremy asked incredulously. We were all running at a much more leisurely speed with no danger facing us and everyone had a dazed expression on their face as if they couldn’t quite believe what just happened. Neither could I to be honest.

Tom’s suspicious glance at me let me know that he was onto something; he was always observant of my power, even when we were kind of unfriendly back in POE Academy.

I debated whether or not I should tell them; but I see no other way but to let them know. Mr. Andrewson’s warning was the foremost in my mind; I directed us towards a Legre-free zone westward approaching the end of the Felixia’s territory.

Out of breath, we all stopped next to a small creek after I made sure the coast was clear. Panting hard I doubled over trying to ease my breathing rhythm. I still hadn’t decided what to say; I didn’t want to lie but if we made it out alive I would be in huge trouble. Although I was still under my disguise, but that doesn’t reassured me too much.

Biting my tongue I kept quiet as my fellow refugees debated on what had happened as we rested and clean ourselves up after an exhausting morning. I was relieved to hear from their tone that they didn’t really care about what was the reason behind the two packs suddenly turning on each other. Of course, all except Emily and Tom.

I still couldn’t fathom what Emily had against me; it seemed that she had dislike me ever since we first set eyes on each other. The suspicious glances she kept throwing my way was making me edgy, however it seemed to lack the usual hostility.

After this incident, we became even more careful than before. I will scout the area several times before we continue that way and now each watch consist of two people. The weather grew steadily worst the further north we travel; and the landscape more barren and bleak. If it wasn’t for the fire Tom created every night we sure as heck would have died of hypothermia already.

Through this bleakness, however we had all bonded with each other. Even the quiet Steven had become a closer friend. I came to realised that Emily wasn’t really the girl she pretend to be; in fact, she appeared to be very knowledgeable in almost every field from wilderness survival to POE powers. I didn’t know if the constant flirting was a front she put up against the world or there was a deeper secret with it and I wasn’t interested in knowing. Everyone has their own secrets.

 Steven had a little device that he kept checking day and night and Jeremy learned that it was a communication device between Ho and him. Every time I see he pull out that thing my heart clutched a little; even if Ho, Vladimir and John managed to survive they would be very far away from us and the device would hardly work over the mountainous terrain. Besides, Ho’s one could easily be destroyed or lost during the battle. Turning it on is a great risk in itself, but no one had the heart to stop Steven.

The lucky thing was that the device also has an inbuilt GPS allowing us to know exactly where we are. Our plan were to heading due north through the mountains then go west to one of the training camp of Ganesh’s family and inform them of what has transpired.

So far, we had travelled a staggering quarter of the journey. Note the sarcasm. As POEs we could have travelled at a much faster pace if we put our mind to it; but the lack of rest and over-usage of our power slowed us down severely.

We were now reaching the top of the Himalayas, having travelled more north-west than we anticipated avoiding Legres as well as natural barrier. This meant that we had travelled deep into the central portion of the mountain chains, having to avoid the POE-infested area as well. We had to pass two easy exits south to the Ganesh family base. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the way there will be filled of traps and ambush.

I had been extremely anxious the whole way since the last Legre attack. I was dreading and hoping for another one to see if it really was me who was responsible for the fight between them; on the other hand if it wasn’t me, we were unlikely to survive another attack given the current situations. We were probably worst off than when we ran off from the test; god that seemed like an age ago. At least then the forest we ran into had lower classification Legres as well as Evanna and Owen to share my burden.

I am not saying that my current teammates are useless, Amelia’s addition is a great help especially when we couldn’t find any source of fresh water; and Emily made sure that we always have something poison-free to eat. I could occasionally (not intentionally) hear the negative thoughts from Kailey and Jeremy, who think that they are useless here; I sighed at the thought. What could I possibly do to soothe them? It wasn’t like I could just bring the subject right up.

Finally stopping for a rest I sat down next to Tom, who gave me a smile; our relationship had definitely stepped outside the friend zone but neither of us had addressed the issues to one another. Now wasn’t the time for this, maybe when we get out of the wild we could face this properly.

Everyone else had sort of realised our relationship too; Emily narrowed her eyes at us every time we were together and Amelia would smile and move away. Jeremy and Kailey just give me creepy smile whilst Steven just treated us normal, which was a relief.

“A stream!” Amelia suddenly exclaimed and darted off to the right, startling everyone. Emily and Kailey’s face lit up as well, as did mine; we hadn’t had a shower for god-knows-how-long, and fresh water taste a lot better than the synthetic water Amelia made. Those taste like the forest.

Which is why minutes later we were all knee deep in the water, drinking and laughing. I wondered briefly how I didn’t spot this before when I searched the area and shook my head; maybe I was just too tired.

Tom was hovering by the bank of the river and I gestured for him to come in the river and join us. He shook his head at me and smiled a little, suppressing a full out grin. I splashed some water towards him and he evaporated them with ease and shook his head at me again. I stuck my tongue out at him childishly and looked up at the clear blue sky. I hadn’t felt so relaxed for a while now.

“Hey.” Emily called out in a voice that I recognised now as the one she used when she had a request. She turned towards the guys, who were both on the bank except Jeremy. “We kind of need a shower, do you mind if you give us some space?”

Jeremy’s face flamed red and stuttered something incoherent whilst hastily retreating from the river. Tom’s ears turned red as well and I stiffened a laugh; Steven ducked away as soon as Emily mentioned the word shower.

“We er, will stand guard.” Tom said, looking increasingly flustered and joined Jeremy at where Steven had disappeared off to, both fumbling to get away into the shrubs and away from us.

Amelia laughed heartily as both Emily and she went to the bank began to take their clothes off. I looked down at my grubby hands and went off the bank where I left my shoes to take my clothes off as well.

“Don’t look at me!” I called out, flinging my top aside and submerged myself in the water. I shuddered a little as my skin came into contact with the freezing water and I was digusted by how dirty I was. I heard giggling behind me and turned my head to see the three girls splashing each other. I cringed a little and turned back around; I would really rather not see any of them naked.

Closing my eyes I sank into the water, dipping my head in. I enjoyed the moment of peace as I watched my hair swirled around me in the water. Until a current came in and pulled me towards them; I squealed as my head finally broke out of the surface again and tried to cover myself up, causing the other three girls to laugh.

“Amelia!” I scolded and the girl laughed at me, I could hear a few cursed words that sounded suspiciously like French from afar and couldn’t help but giggled as well.

“We should hurry; we have spent too long here already.” I said after we splashed around for a while, suddenly feeling a little uneasy.

“Girls, watch this.” Amelia said after we all swam back to the bank. The three of us turned to look at her to see what she was up to. She then proceeded to waved her right hand dramatically and excess water clinging to us was all expelled and form a ball of water hanging in the air. With a second wave she sent the water ball back into the river.

“That was awesome!” Kailey sqwarted. Amelia smirked again and wave her hand. A jet of water rushed up from the river and engulfed our clothings. We all gasped and watched as the clothings churned inside the water and murky brown liquid appeared and disappeared, letting us know how dirty our clothing was.

“Yurk.” Emily commented as we watched Amelia continued to clean our clothings. She added new water into the hovering volume of water and removed the disgusting brown liquid back to the river. When the water turned clear she let all the water drop back into the river and dried the clothes.

“That’s awesome.” I whispered, before realising that we were all standing naked at the bank where the boys could come any moment and see us.

I immediately grabbed my clothings and started pulling them all, accidentally ending up with Kailey’s set which caused a major confusion that had us scurrying around for an extra minute.

“What has taken you so long?” Tom grumbled and I noticed the root of his ears were still red. Jeremy didn’t look very comfortable either; he kept scratching his neck almost to the point where his skin was starting to peel.

“Let’s go!” Emily said, ignoring Tom’s question completely and made her way forward towards Steven, who had already started walking. Kailey caught up with Jeremy, quickly followed by Amelia as the two of them began to tease the poor fellow with suggestive questions. I smiled and peeked at Tom, who was still looking quite uncomfortable and flustered.

“So, you didn’t peek, did you?” I asked and he grew even redder. This was definitely a side of Tom that I hadn’t seen before. He began to mumble to himself in a low voice and I caught a few word. “Are you bad mouthing me in French?” I asked and he raised his eyes towards me, startled.

“No.” He said, before looking straight ahead avoiding eye contact with me. I realised the boys hadn’t washed yet and saw that Tom’s hair was damp.

“Did you guys go up river?” I asked, he finally looked at me briefly only to turn back away and nodded.

“Did you hear that?” Kailey suddenly said, clutching onto Jeremy’s arms as all of us came to a halt at her words. In a mad panic I projected my mind out, completely forgotten about keeping watch after the wash. For a second all I could hear was the chiming of insects and birds but as my mind reached further I found a group of Lupa a mere mile away from us.

My face paled at the memory of the last encounter with them; the time when Owen was nearly killed. they were heading our way, chasing a flock of Leporids, a Class E hybrid Legre of rabbit and hare that’s famous for being fast and sell for a high price in markets as they meat are very tasty.

“We should avoid them.” Steven said and everyone agreed eagerly. Setting off into a run immediately the seven of us headed west perpendicularly away from the predator-prey.

When we were closest to the group I sensed a small group had detached themselves from the main body and headed towards us. This was the perfect opportunity to see if my skill work. I would alert them if this doesn’t and we could still fight them off; with easier prey in front they wouldn’t waste too much time of us once they realised we are a tougher group. Hopefully.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I sent out a thought wave out asking them to divert, that we mean no harm. For a few heart-wrenching seconds nothing happened; but slowly, the Lupas slowed down and looked around, slightly confused.

The Legres began walking towards us slowly, a few at the back began howling as if trying to get some response. I sent the message again, making sure that it’s extra friendly; it wasn’t until Tom started tugging me by my arm that I realised I had come to a stop.

“Gail, what are you doing?” Tom whispered furiously pulling me along. The Lupa at the front growled and I could sense an alien thought around. I was so shocked that I stopped again.

“Gail, what’s wrong?” Tom asked, grabbing me by my shoulders. The other had stopped too and started to make their way back towards us.

“The, the Legre.” I stuttered, my mind trying to process what just happened. I mean, I sort of expected I could communicate with them, but not this way.

“What about them?” Tom asked, shaking me by my shoulder as if he could jostle an answer out of me this way.

“It communicated with me.” I said in a ghost of a whisper and Tom’s brow furrowed together, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what I just said.

“What do you mean?” He asked, having a hard time processing the information. “That it talked to you?”

“No.” I said, as the strange signal became a recognisable sound in my head.

Who are you? How could you speak with us?  The Lupa’s thoughts echoed in my mind, blowing everything I knew about Legre out of the window. You are a human.

-----------

Merry belated christmas :) I hope everyone had a great holiday!

My christmas have been centered around revision but I had christmas dinner with my family friends (since my family are not in London - evil). Now I am back to revision, and writing of course. How is everyone finding this new stage of relationship with Gail and Tom? And what do you make of her new power?

Hope you guys enjoy this chapter - I will try and upload another by new year - as a gift to you guys. I really hope to finish this by march and get After Death edited and up on wattpad <3

comment and vote - consider this your christmas presents to me ;D