Of Monsters and Humanity: The Genesis

Chapter 70 - Terra

Two days after....

"My name is Alexander Cheveyo, and I'm a wendigo. Nice to meet you."

I stared at his palm open and prepared for a handshake. The skin on his hand looked different than it did before--it appeared more thin and shallow than I had seen before. While he had darker skin than I, his complexion had a slightly greying, pale tone to it. I realized that I could see the faintest evidence of black veins under his complex, seemingly frail skin. While his fingernails were short then, I remembered how they could grow. I let my eyes trail up his black sleeve and follow up to his own eyes. He was smirking with that nearly iconic, cynical, crooked smile that he always wore. His brown eyes were darkened under thick brows and dark circles.

They weren't black in his sockets.

I reached my hand up and slowly wrapped my fingers around his.

In surprise, he looked down and watched as I shook his hand.

His black eyebrows furrowed as he pulled his hand away to rest on the steering wheel. He looked bothered.

"I think I've heard of wendigos before," I whispered, looking out of the window at the passing world around us. The name truly rang a bell, but Xander didn't seem pleased with me. "Maybe somewhere in a storybook." I was nearly talking aloud at that point as I wracked my brain for any notion that I had heard of that word before.

"We were found first by the Algonquins," Xander said.

"How did they...figure out?"

"We," he corrected, giving me a brief look. "We found out. I am native."

My eyes widened. It made sense, with his skin tone and features. The high cheekbones, deep eyes, and wide, full lips on Xander's face were evidence. I felt stupid for not realizing before, though the sickly pale nearly grey filter over his skin threw me off.

"You're Native American," I repeated. I was in awe of my oblivion. I felt like I was just meeting Xander for the first time. No wonder he shook my hand and made that joke--he felt it, too. There was so much about him that I didn't know. Xander was so complex--way more complex than I thought him to be.

I felt guilty. Maybe I truly saw him as the man in the Pit, lamenting around and throwing insults at me constantly. I didn't realize that he had a name, or a past, or a family, or friends. Project X dehumanized him so much that I never saw any of those things.

I was silent, but he didn't seem to mind. He continued as he passed a silver Tesla in front of us. "I wasn't alive during the time that the secretive life of the wendigo was exploited," he started, then lowered his head and continued darkly, "but the story goes that some members of an Algonquian tribe in the north caught a member of their group dining on human flesh. They not only realized that this was not just a cannibalistic person, but a monster out to consume human flesh. That story became folklore and wendigos were a source of ignorance and terror entertainment for humans."

"So...you aren't human." I wanted to confirm.

"We all started as human."

"'We all'?"

Xander took a deep breath. "As humans evolved to become the things that they are today--that you are today--the Gods realized that sin ruled them. A lot of deorum, including myself, personify the Gods--also known as the sin. They're The Septem Peccatis, more commonly known as The Seven Sins."

"Like from the Bible."

He nodded.

I was never much of a religious person, but I picked up a few things when my grandparents took me to church when I was younger. "Deorum?" I suddenly asked. The word didn't feel foreign to my lips as much as it felt sacred. It felt like a word with power. The word stuck out to me, though. It was strange.... Otherworldly.