I walked through the Ruins. I regretted running away just because my mom's personality had clashed with mine. I now noticed a few things- primarily that she no longer checked for humans every day. I looked down at my furry, pale-blue hands- no idea where the blue came from. I had been hiding out in parts of the sprawling cave system for a long time.

And then I saw it.

There was a girl- a human girl- lying on the floor. She was rather beat-up and didn't seem to be living. I should have known better than to approach the collapsed girl with a teal glow starting to flow like a heavy gas, or like ink in water, from her chest. As I approached, what I had thought was blue blood started to pulse with light and then vanished. I panicked, and ran towards the body, tripping over my own feet.

I kneeled next to it. There were no signs that she was, or ever had been, alive. I filled with sorrow. If I hadn't run away, this could've been prevented. My mom would've seen her and taken her in. Even though I felt painful surges of what I had thought was sympathy rushing though me, I leaned down and put my hands on her chest. She could've been breathing really shallowly. But as soon as I had touched her, I blacked out.

I woke what could've been five minutes or years later. I was in the same room and there were no signs of dilapidation- or even anyone noticing me- so my guess was on the low side of that. My vision was tinted ever-so-slightly aquamarine, but I dismissed it as an aftereffect of the likely head impact from when I fell. I noticed that the girl's body had gone pale and the glow had vanished, but I just pictured that as her having been dead for a bit longer. I only started to get confused when I got up and was, although able to breathe, able to move almost as if I was wading through water that was up to my neck.

Not only was I swaying as if pushed by currents and trudging slowly with an unexpected amount of fluid friction from the air, but when I jumped, I could float.

I looked down at my hands- they glowed teal. I felt my head, where the hair on my scalp had grown at least half an inch. The tattered purple robe that had been my only possession ever since I ran away had vanished, replaced with a flowing, floor-skirting teal gown. I took another step forward, and saw as a slim foot -within a formal-looking violet shoe- much unlike my fuzzy bare ones- pushed beyond the boundary of the cloth that covered me.

It didn't help my worry when a voice that was much prettier than what mine has been described as to me issued from my mouth when I cried quietly for help. And then a thought passed through my mind in that same voice, not a thought of my own- "Where am I?"