Page 10 of The Griffin, the Tiger, and Their House Cat Omega

After the plane ride, I felt slightly disoriented. I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and went for a walk in the sand, letting the softness of it press between my toes. There was a little breeze, not too hot, not too cold. Perfect.

When I got back to my little patio, I dropped and did some push-ups, sit-ups and then lay back in the shade on one of the lounge chairs and let myself just drift.

Let’s fly.

My griffin was restless.

“We can’t right now. This is far too public. But I promise I’ll find us a private place to go either later today or tomorrow.”

Is our fated mate here in San Diego?

My beast wasn’t usually so inquisitive about our surroundings. To be fair, I rarely left our mountain-pack town.

“I wouldn’t know that. But I am putting myself out here. Maybe fate will draw him here as well. If he exists.”

The mate exists.

“Glad to hear you have confidence in that.”

The mate exists for everyone. But not in the mountains.

“Now how would you know that?”

I am griffin.

“I know that. A beautiful griffin, too.”

Too many griffins sleep. I am awake now. The mate exists.

The words sounded sad. Griffin-speech was often vague and dreamlike. They spoke poetically. And rarely. They had contexts that went beyond human knowledge. A lot of us kept journals of their words but could do no more with them than perhaps write a poem.

Once my own griffin said, in the middle of the night, interrupting my sleep,Mages live in the clouds.

I had no idea what he’d meant.

I found out early in life that stuff like that happened to every griffin shifter. It was another thing that made us unique and different. And perhaps paranoid.

My beast went silent, and I took a short nap. When I woke, the sun was low. My stomach growled.

I got up, showered, and changed into new clothes I’d bought for the trip. The bright pink shirt and black blazer set off my honey skin tones and dark hair. I put on a gold chain necklace Dad had given me when I turned twenty-one. I added a couple of gold rings. This was not to show off. For griffins, gold had a sacred meaning and brought security. In the myths, griffins guarded, even hoarded gold. They would fight to the death to protect their nuggets. It was a part of them, like some sort of nesting instinct. In modern times, we trimmed it all in gold if we could afford it.

When I felt most anxious or alone, I would go to my jewelry box and put all my jewelry on at once and lie back on my bed feeling the heavy weight of it calm me.

Now that I was going out tonight in a strange new town, I didn’t want to overdo it. But it was fine. The weight of the jewelry I now wore made me feel confident and ready to face the unknown.

In the lobby, I asked for a car to be called. They asked me where I wanted to go.

Now or never, I thought. “Is Animals far from here?”

“I’ve never been,” the girl behind the counter said. She tapped a few things on her computer and looked up. “About twenty minutes away, maybe a little more due to traffic.”

“I’d like to go there.”

She booked me an Uber.

The place was even more beautiful than their web page photography showed. The sun was setting in the western sky, turning it pink and orange. The nightclub building sat gleaming in the golden light at the top of the hill.

The Uber let me off right at the entrance where a short line of people waited to get in. My griffin’s talons poked at the tipsof my fingers. Impatient. That rarely happened. Uncontrolled shifting would be the death of us.

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