Chapter 2: The Party

Chapter 2: The Party

Kaplan

Kaplan was annoyed that his conversation with Lila was cut short.  His mind was swirling with questions and strategies to get accepted the Harappa field program.  He didn’t know why, but every fiber of his being knew that he had to go. 

Kaplan was adopted as an infant by a middle-class family in Ohio. His adoptive parents, both educators, provided a stable and loving home but never had answers about his birth parents. Growing up, Kaplan always sensed a subtle disconnect — fleeting moments where he felt instinctively attuned to animals or nature in ways that didn’t quite fit ordinary childhood behavior. He would mimic animals’ movements, read encyclopedias about predators, and dream vividly of running through forests or jungles — though his family assumed it was an overactive imagination.

As a teenager, Kaplan excelled in sports, particularly track, swimming, and martial arts, excelling at activities that required a harmony of body and instinct. Academically, he gravitated toward history, archaeology, and mythology. He found himself inexplicably drawn to stories of shapeshifters, animal spirits, and guardian deities. While his friends dismissed his fascination as nerdy obsession, Kaplan felt a deeper pull — something resonant, like a memory half-remembered.

Kaplan ran his fingers over the small tiger pendant hanging from the chain around his neck. It was the only thing he had from his birth parents — a simple, weathered charm with eyes so green, so impossibly like his own, that he sometimes felt they were staring back at him, seeing things he couldn’t. He didn’t know why he kept it close, why the weight against his chest felt like a heartbeat syncing with his own.

He had always been drawn to stories of shapeshifters, of humans who could take the form of beasts, of animal spirits inhabiting flesh. Most people called it obsession. He called it fascination. But lately… lately it felt more like memory. Not memory of this life, not something he had learned — something he had always known.

There were moments — brief, almost imperceptible — when he felt the tiger stir beneath the skin. A flicker of restlessness, a tightening of muscle, a flash of something wild in his mind. It came when he ran through the woods behind his childhood home, when he moved without thinking on the climbing wall, when he read the carved images of ancient gods. Always subtle, never loud enough to scare him. Yet persistent, as if the pendant pulsed in time with it.

He shook the thought away, blaming imagination, longing, a subconscious connection to some myth he’d read too many times. And yet, even as he sat cross-legged in his shared apartment preparing for the interview, poring over sketches of goddesses astride tigers, he felt the pull again. A whisper at the edges of his mind, a heat under his skin, a promise that whatever this was — it had been waiting for him all along.

And somewhere deep inside, behind the layers of student, athlete, and orphan, he felt it: the call to Harappa, to see the land of extinct tigers and warrior goddesses.  He suddenly felt like a foreigner in his own home.

Kaplan, lost in his own thought with the tiger pendant resting against his chest, eyes fixed on the worn carpet as though it held the answers to questions he couldn’t yet articulate traced invisible patterns in the air, mimicking the curves of goddess carvings he had been sketching in his notebook earlier. A distant hum of thought vibrated through him, a pulse he couldn’t name.

“Yo, what’s good?”

The voice snapped him out of his trance. Kaplan blinked up at Ethan, his roommate, who leaned casually against the doorframe, a half-empty backpack slung over one shoulder. Ethan’s hair was perpetually messy, a streak of grease on his sleeve from whatever project he’d been tinkering with in the lab. In contrast to Kaplan’s still, introspective energy, Ethan radiated motion — a man on a mission, even in casual idleness.

Kaplan forced a smile. “Hey… just thinking.”

Ethan pushed off the frame and dropped onto the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table. “About what? Ancient animal spirits, or are we back to your Indus Valley obsession?” His grin was teasing but warm, and his blue eyes — sharp, alert — took in Kaplan like he was both an enigma and a puzzle waiting to be solved.

“Something like that,” Kaplan admitted, tugging at the pendant. “I don’t know… sometimes I feel like there’s more out there than what we see. Patterns, maybe. Or… memories I shouldn’t have.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Memories you shouldn’t have? Man, you really need to stop reading those mythology blogs before bed.”

Kaplan chuckled softly but didn’t shake the unease. Ethan, on the other hand, thrived in logic and construction. He fiddled with the edge of a pen, as if assessing whether it could be optimized, redesigned, or repurposed — a habit of someone who saw the world as a series of levers and gears to be understood and improved.

“So, what’s your plan?” Ethan asked, breaking into his usual pragmatic tone. “You gonna solve the mystery of the universe tonight, or do we hit the lab and I show you the latest prototype for my energy-efficient water pump?”

Kaplan’s eyes flicked toward him, an amused but distant gaze. “Maybe a little of both,” he said, almost to himself. “Somehow, they feel… connected.”

Ethan laughed, shaking his head. “Man, only you could find a way to connect ancient tiger goddesses to water pumps.” He swung his legs off the table and leaned forward, curious despite himself. “Alright, I’ll bite. Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours before it starts scaring me.”

Kaplan smiled faintly, the pendant pressing into his chest. Something deep and restless stirred inside him, just beneath awareness. He didn’t say anything more — not yet — but in the silence, Ethan felt it too, the faint pulse of something older, wilder, waiting.

There was a playful knock at the door.  Before Kaplan could respond, the door burst open again, this time with a flurry of energy. Diego leaned in, grinning like mischief incarnate, a skateboard tucked under one arm and a backpack slung crookedly over the other.

“Gentlemen of the living room,” he announced dramatically, “your evening of brooding and… whatever it is you do is officially canceled!”

Kaplan looked up, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Diego. I think we’re fine.”

“Fine?” Diego scoffed, tossing the skateboard onto the floor. “You call sitting here staring at the carpet ‘fine’? Bro, the party of the semester is happening in, like, forty-five minutes. And you’re both missing it!”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, arms crossed. “I’m good. Got lab work to finish.”

Diego waved a dismissive hand, pacing into the center of the room like a tiny whirlwind. “Lab work! Mythical animal obsessions! You guys are like a walking punchline. Come on, live a little!” He jabbed a finger at Kaplan, whose hand unconsciously brushed the pendant. “Especially you, brooding student of ancient civilizations. You need to get out, maybe meet a goddess of the party kind instead of the stone-carved kind.”

Kaplan shook his head, a chuckle escaping him. “I don’t think that’s really my scene.”

Diego didn’t falter. He bounded over, plopping down next to Ethan on the couch. “You say that now, but I guarantee you’ll thank me later. Trust me — a night off, some music, some people, and maybe… just maybe, you’ll stop staring at your pendant like it’s whispering secrets.”

Ethan smirked, clearly amused despite himself. “You really know how to sell it, don’t you?”

Diego winked. “It’s a gift, my friend. Now, come on! The party awaits! And Kaplan…” He leaned close with a conspiratorial grin, “I promise no ancient spirits, just real-life ones. Probably.”

Kaplan sighed, tugging at the chain again. “Maybe…”

Diego clapped both of them on the shoulders. “That’s the spirit! Adventure waits for no one, boys — especially not the brooding type.