1 Prologue

I remember my mother's warm embrace before I left home, and how everything was that day. The only thing I can't remember is the words that came out of her bloody mouth.

The house was made out of simple lumber from the nearby oak trees in the forest, the floor the grass beneath our feet. Recently at the time, there were happy bright sunflowers sprouting besides small and puffy purple mushrooms that made our home smell like caramel. We worked so hard to make furniture work for us, but I could never find or make a good chair that I could fit in. So instead, we threw and drowned our rooms with hay! The tables in the kitchen was made out of 'ol gravel, and was also the straw that triggered our whole herd.

Why? Er.... "Outside sources"

You see, they called us hooman lovers, but I only knew them from the tales of our mother and the elders. These peep-olls lived on THE OTHER SIDE and they liked odd things like talking rocks, wide hips, a US and A, and were riddled with idols and war. These hoomans had such a bizarre and weird life!

My mother was in love with that culture, and even had knick knacks from when the two worlds were connected - but I thought she was crazy until I asked her why she was so into those things. It wasn't because of their enhanced flight machines, not the flyer space kabobs, nah. It wasn't even the peep-oll that wore a lot of powder! Why she truly loved them was because of my father, Harris.

I've never met the man, but that day she said we were going to, and I couldn't of been more nervous to meet the man that shared the title of a dad- like, a biological dad. My dad!

According to her, he had a thin frame and his ribs stuck out - messy hair that was curly, long, and orange; blue oceany eyes that flooded a lot when she had to go. Only way she could see his eyes was when his hair hit his sharp nose that always pointed to the stars.

"He has your oval eyes"

"He's like a cat!"

"His skin is as smooth as yours"

I could only imagine what he looked like according to my mom - and she's been with a lot of men before and after him. Only Gitze, Hanto's father, is a step-dad that occasionally comes to see us, but the rest are never spoken of. Our house was pretty weird- was filled with culture I guess because of it.

There were six of us:

>THE YOUNGEST, Hanto the Slime Girl

If you never seen a horse give birth to a slime, consider yourself blessed by the gods. Then again, it just looked like a gooey pink pile. At first everyone in the village thought that our mother was possessed and the thing that came out was the spirit of the demon, but our mother knew immediately it was just a newborn slime.

According to her, it was an egg inside of her or something,

but just thinking about it is really weird and scary so I kind of erased it from my mind.

By the time she was two weeks old, Hanto learned to speak and began mocking me whenever I would trot around the house, and even tried to absorb me to get a mold of me! Rude kid - she's two months now and she took the form of a humanoid with two huge pigtails and hoo-man looking clothes, and even gave herself more detailed eyes and a mouth and neck. If it wasn't for the goo or her color, I'm pretty sure that would be what a hoo-man would look like. Apparently she took this form because our mom's stories.

>ME! Behko the Centaur

I'm your ordinary centaur, happy and friendly, loving music. On my arm I got the mark of misfortune according to the herd, but I always thought it was for curiosity. I have black medium hair with bangs that hide one of my eyes, since I was only born with one, and I got a great tan coat and a long awesome tail to match. Katia made me wrist bands and a choker necklace from her vines, so I wear those too~ I think I'm the most normal out of the gang here, but my "human blood" apparently makes me cursed. Weird.

>THE SHY GIRL Katia the Plant Girl

Ever since our mom told her about what, Japanese peep-olls, Katia allowed her bright purple and white petals growing to make.. what, key mono? Mom said they were traditional wear, I don't get it.

But! Katia loved how it looked, and stuck with it to hide the fact she looked more like a Scylla than a plant girl if you looked under her dress. She has orange hair and blue eyes, just like our father, and even seemed to like cats a lot. Everyone in the herd actually liked her because she was able to help the farmers and plantations with her remarkable abilities to communicate and empower other plants and crops, so everyone was super nice to her.

And, last but not least:

>THE TRIPLETS Hutoko, Zane, and Luka - the Mutts

Now, they're so weird that chimeras would look at them and go "how did you get so wrong?" They're the oldest three, so we never really saw them as anything other than what they mostly looked like.

Hutoko looked like a fairy, but if you looked underneath the mask he always wore, you would only see a mouth splitting his head. He's really small, can fit on my shoulder, but boyo when he gets mad he gets SCARY! He has black curly hair and well, no eyes, just really, really nice blade teeth.

Zane is a.... ghost? Demon? Fairy... Demon ghost thing?

Again, you just look at these three and you go "how" "just how."

He's got awesome big claws and a curly ghost tail - mom said its because he died and looked just like Hutoko, just with yellow eyes but they both got that spooky mouth. Zane's also a bit bigger, but we think he's just making himself taller because he can manipulate his size now.

And then there's Luka. She looks like a centaur like me from the belly down, but once you see those big 'ol hands and claws, bigger than your face, you just kinda go "oh." She has brown curly long hair and a really tough voice. She's the biggest centaur in the herd, but also she has a tiny tail. A very tiny tail. The three combined were called the discord squad, mostly because of how... uncanny they all kinda looked to everyone else.

I ... really don't understand the biology and genetics you had to have to have such a difference in triplets, but sometimes ignorance is the best thing to have with situations like that. The oldest three couldn't of been explained by an elder, which proved to everyone kind of how... lusty my mom was for anything.

And those are all of us... here. Our mom told us that we could meet the others one day and that apparently we have even more people like that. It's pretty wild, but we never were treated differently or favorited. All of us were a happy family, even if the whole herd hated the lot of us. Her eyes always seemed to say that she was somewhere else though, probably thinking about that man....

Why that hooman?

Why did she want to see him -

Heck, why on this green plane did she want me specifically to meet him!?

I thought it was because of the obsession- I mean, love - for the culture, but you could see it in her eyes every time she spoke about him.

Love.

No matter how much they gouged her left eye out,

No matter how many times they beat and cut her,

No matter how long they ridiculed and laughed at her,

She got back up and mentioned something about Harris.

And on that day,

In that house,

She was convicted of murder and everyone believed in a lie from a stupid foal.

She knew she was going to die, and even gave us a game plan on where to hide and where to leave, and contacted Gitze earlier in hopes that he would come in time.

But, not in time for her. Time was running out for, and you could hear the herd trotting closer to our home. I insisted I would take them on, or buy some more time, but she simply hugged me with that warm embrace, walked to the door, waited for me to hide. When they knocked, she opened the door and her eyes smiled.

"Are you a friend of Harris?" She asked.