Now I am human again, born in the infancy of the Age of Aquarius, at the conception of the Information Age.
A little over eight years ago in this reality, many of our souls existed like subliminal messages in our minds, just waiting to be brought into conscious thought. I was in seventh grade, the age where you're bound to have your first crush at any moment. My moment came towards the end of the year, when I started to have feelings for my friend Victor. Being only thirteen and not really knowing any better or worse, I pulled Victor aside one day and told him I liked him. It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life so far. Just as I didn't know better than to keep my mouth shut and pine for him from a comfortable distance, he didn't know how to react to what I'd said, and blurted it out to everyone in the other room. Luckily it was June and school was over in a month, or we would have suffered the embarrassment from our friends longer. There were times, however, during that month when it seemed something might happen between us, and other times when the opposite was true. There was one day when, for various reasons, I was left alone in our usual lunch hangout, then halfway through the lunch period Victor joined me (I considered it good fortune that we were still friends after what had gone on in the beginning of the month). We sat silently, each flipping through a magazine, and I happened to be sitting with my back to him. Then I asked him why he was just sitting there watching me turn the pages. He commented on the fact that I knew exactly what he was doing even without turning around to see him. During the last week of school I asked Victor (as if confirming) what school he would be going to in the 8th grade, and he'd said the same school. I was glad that we would be able to remain friends, and hoped that if I didn't push anything further something might develop on its own.
The system at our school was that there were posted lists with the names of each student next to the room number of their new homeroom. The first day of eighth grade I went to the lists, but within 10 feet of them I began to feel uneasy. Then suddenly I knew, Victor would not be there. Before even looking for my own name, I looked for his, and sure enough it wasn't there. I was not a crier, but right then I almost burst into tears in the middle of the school. Did he lie to me? Did he forget to mention the change? Wasn't he my friend, what kind of friend does this? These questions plagued me for the remainder of the year, indeed for the next three years they would sit in the back of my mind, along with the dreams I would have of him, once a month or so, until around the middle of tenth grade, when the dreams abruptly stopped.
It was sometime in this time period that most of the souls began awakening within their human hosts. Some said the awakening was only for those who needed it to be, and others said it was for the small group of friends who were now united in the awakening (most of them moonchildren). But one thing for sure, it gave us all new perspectives on things. These souls in these humans would go on to call themselves the Great Family, or their spiritual Family. I met Karla and Beth, went through the standard transition from an unsure preteen to the more melancholy version, gained a manner all my own. Beth taught me to write, and poems and stories began to flow from my pen, the margins of my school notes becoming cluttered with one liners, and doodles of wings and eyes. Somewhere in all this, I recognized her as friend-bat, and she saw in me the changeling cat from the beach.
With aid from the newly awakened winged cat within me, I spent the three years pondering, the questions and the dreams, existence in general. Up to a point, all the storyteller could remember of the man-hawk was that they'd met in the sky. Slowly I began remembering more and more of the first story. I suspected that the hawk had somehow crossed over and now existed within Victor. I thought that perhaps the dreams were some sort of link between us. I also thought that it might be my fault that he was here, supposedly against his will, that because of my love I took a piece of him with me when I crossed over, but taking a piece was impossible and so he wound up being dragged along. Friend-bat told me that, if he was here or not, to quit blaming myself. Then the dreams stopped, and I worried that something had happened to Victor.