Bad joke
Elara
Sad enough to see he did not get my joke, but it was enough to be expected. They had everything so differently around here, starting from their lore to their favorite authors, it was as though they were living in a reality of their own. I chuckled at the bottom of that. Of course, some things were hard and fast true, such as gravity, but everything else aside from that was effectively wrong.
They had no Hitler, they had no World War II, well, then again, most of them were on our Earth during World War II, but that’s to say they didn’t experience it the way humans did.
To them, everything was flipped upside down and then painted white and blue, with dots of yellow and sprinkles of colors that made absolutely no sense. Basically, to them, I might as well have said the Earth was flat and they would believe it.
“The Earth isn’t flat, little human. You know, it’s things like this that make me wonder just what exactly you were being taught.”
I rolled my eyes.
“The Earth isn’t flat,” he said, gazing rather strangely at me.
“No, I was just—” I shook my head. “You know what, forget it,” I mumbled.
He shrugged and then began to write something on the board.
“Your plane of existence is not the only one. There are multiple. We just happened to find a crack and slipped through. Call it mirror dimensions or what have you, different realities blended into one but existing at the same time. That’s where we are,” he explained.
I frowned.
“We are at the tip of a blade, as they say.” He smiled. “At the moment your spoon is about to hit your plate, that’s where we exist too. It’ll take quite a lot to see it, but only those with the sight can actually touch it, which is strange enough that humans like you tend to slip through the ground.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes as though it was a tedious task for him.
“As for our systems, well, in many ways they are similar to humans—at least human systems from a hundred years ago, when you actually made things work.”
He rolled his eyes again.
“A hundred years ago?” I frowned, sitting back in my chair and folding my arms across my chest. “You mean when we had kings and queens and dictators that could do whatever the hell they wanted to their population? I mean, there are people that still do it, but it still doesn’t change anything. You’re practically condoning dictatorship.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m saying that there were times within your history when you had the right rulers. You see, leadership, in as much as it is learned, is also in the blood. I believe strongly in bloodlines, and that has seen our packs move from one level to the other. Yes, we live relatively long lives, but that doesn’t mean we live forever. In fact, if anything, you humans should accomplish far more than we do just by thinking about it, but you don’t. You would think that by virtue of your short lives, you should, to some extent, make more. Instead, you are so keen on structure.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, we are,” I said. “Humans, because of our short-lived lives, tend to spontaneously combust if we think about it. Tell me something I don’t know.” I tapped my hand impatiently on the table.
“The pack system is not flawed,” he said. “It is a perfect, perfect, representation of our hierarchical society.” He smiled.
He seemed in instances like this like one of those mindless drones that would happily follow anything their leader gave them. At the top, we have the Alpha, who is, for all intents and purposes, the supreme ruler of any pack. What he says is law, what he does is law; if he breathes, it is law.
“And then standing on equal footing—if only it was,” he mumbled under his breath, which, strangely, I could hear. “His Luna. She might seem like his wife, but the bond is deeper, the bond is wider, the bond is just different. Alphas and Lunas can feel what either of them feels, they see what either of them sees, they feel what they feel. Their pain is shared, their joy is shared. In fact, that is the beautiful place of matehood in general. The concept is just so strange that humans could hardly recognize it or understand it, which is why I seem to understand why you are like this—so eager to leave, even though he is your destined one.”
“I don’t believe in destiny,” I said a little too harshly.
“Moving on. So what makes this king-and-queen duo the best thing there is?”
“Alphas are the sharp edges,” he mused, looking up to the ceiling. “Lunas, you see, are the ones that help to polish out their significant others. Partnered in destiny, always time and time again. A perfect blend of milk and coffee.” He smiled, proud of himself.
“So do you mean to say that there’s never once been an Alpha who didn’t love his mate? That they weren’t the best team?” I asked.
“Oh, there have been times,” he said. “There have been times when it was obvious the Alpha hated the one destined to him. This has happened before, and it is happening again. Heck, I have seen it. Not so much that I am surprised, just mostly understanding fully well that it is the way of man. The man in us that does foolish things such as this.”
He smiled. “But no one is perfect, are they? You’re not, and neither is the Alpha a perfect man or perfect creature.”
He smiled again. “As you, I think you can be better—a little more and a little less.” He made a face both times.
“A little more what? Werewolf and a little less human?”
He smiled. “If only that were a reality, my dear.”
He went on to talk about the other forms of hierarchy within the pack. He mentioned who stood at second position by the Alpha, the Beta, he called it.
“Betas are their Alpha’s caution,” he said. “They do not exist as merely their cheerleaders,” he said, spitting out the word in a manner that nearly made no sense to me. “They are mostly the Alpha’s second, for all intents and purposes.”
I rolled my eyes. The way this old man spoke in circles made me genuinely have brain aneurysms.
“For fuck’s sake, Uncle, you’re confusing her.”
I turned to the door. One more time, I didn’t hear her approach—heck, I didn’t even know when she got into the room.
“I’ll take it from here. You weren’t really much of a teacher anyway,” she chuckled and walked right in.
The old man left eventually, mumbling something about how the education that he knew and the education of now was so different it was appalling.
“Yeah, cry me a river,” she said with a plastered smile. She then turned to me.