How to Become Lost With the Fairies.
She couldn't believe how angry she was, and because of that, more so than anything else, she just wanted to get away. So that was exactly what she did. It wasn't long before she really didn't know where she was anymore.
She realized she had been panicking. Did it really bother her that much that he was willing to make light of such a traumatic experience? Clearly it did. Was that how he tried to get over things? Did other humans do that? She couldn't remember anymore. It had been so long since she was alive and felt things the way they did.
Her only options really were to push it aside and forget that it had happened, or dwell on it until she went mad. There really wasn't a lot of middle ground.
She leaned against a tree and sighed. The sunlight was filtering through the leaves and branches in a way that would set a photographer's passion aflame, but it did nothing to inspire her. She ran her hand through her hair, and then looked it over slowly.
It was definitely bad. Her skin was cracked and peeling and she was bleeding a little. That was a very bad sign. Her body only had a small amount of blood within it, and to lose any of it at all weakened her. She pulled her glove back on and turned her hand covered hand over slowly, barring her fangs at the cross shaped burn in her right glove.
She hated that welt more than anything else in the world.
She wasn't vain, and had never been before, but the idea that that was the only real imperfection on her body rankled in the worst way. It had been put there against her will, and was apparently the subject of humor to Ulrich.
She clenched her fist, savoring the feeling of her claws sliding out. Someone was nearby; she could smell them upwind of her. She did not want to be disturbed.
Her keen eyes picked out a flash of color. She wasn't entirely certain what to make of it. There was bright pink in the middle of the trees not far out from where she was.
What on earth would be pink here? She thought, now more intrigued then she was angry. Moving silently, and ignoring the throb in her arm she picked her way through the trees. She poked her head through the tree line and into the clearing where she was sure she had seen the flash of pink.
On the other side of the clearing was a girl, maybe a few years younger than she looked, wearing purple clothes and sporting, of all things, bright pink hair. Yumi had absolutely no idea what to make of that at all.
Stranger still the girl was spinning slowly in place, her arms out and her head thrown back, looking up past the trees. She was humming a tuneless song to herself, something that reminded Yumi of breezy autumn nights and cool spring mornings at the same time. It awoke something primal in her, and she wanted to run out and dance with this strange girl.
No sooner had the thought possessed her was she breaking from the tree line and out to the girl, hands outstretched and a smile on her face. Right into the sunlight.
Her glove still covered one hand and wrist, but the one that she had already burned was still exposed, and in an instant she retreated away with a hiss, the skin was almost dead looking, the sunlight worsening her burn.
She had to bight her lip hard to keep from swearing. She looked up at the sun, careful not to actually look into it, and then back at the young girl. She had long pointed ears, like the elves in children's stories. The girl had stopped spinning.
"Hello?"
Yumi didn't want to startle her, but wasn't entirely certain what to do.
The girl turned to face her, a look of surprise evident on her sharp features. Yumi was surprised how she looked so otherworldly. It was entrancing.
"Hi?" her voice was quite, and maybe more than a little musical. To Yumi's superior hearing it sounded like so many different things all at once. The sound of the breeze rushing through trees and raindrops falling and birds singing and she couldn't even work it anything past that anymore.
She realized she was starring and had to bit her tongue to snap herself out of whatever it was that had clouded her mind.
"Who are you?" she finally managed, acutely aware of how her own voice sounded so harsh when compared to this girls.
"I'm Aelita." The strange girl actually curtsied to her. Yumi had absolutely no idea how to process any of this.
"Why is your hair pink?" she finally blurted. Realizing both that it was a rude question to ask, and that the gulf of time between the girl speaking and her responding was growing ever wider. She pinched herself, digging her nails into the nasty burn on her forearm to shock herself into paying attention.
Aeilta shrugged, and pranced closer to her, smiling disarmingly. "Do you go to kadic? I've just been added in. enrolled is the word I think."
Yumi nodded dumbly.
"You aren't the same as the other people there though, are you?" she leaned in, peering closer at Yumi, succeeding brilliantly at making her feel uncomfortable. "Your skin isn't the same color as the others." Yumi's mouth dropped open in shock. But before she could do anything other than that the girl continued on unabated;
"You don't go out in the sun, you're so pale."
A breath Yumi didn't know she had been holding left her. She took a step back and tried to open a greater distance between her and this very strange girl.
"That's above my bend. I just have to live with it." Deciding to fight back, and to try and wrong foot this girl she fired back a personal question of her own; "What possessed you to dye your hair pink?"
Aelita blinked at her in confusion. "Dye my hair? I don't understand? How do you kill hair?"
Now Yumi was every kind of wrong footed. "You're not from around here, are you?" by now she was hoping this was all a language barrier thing and she could just leave and find a bench or something.
Aelita shook her head. "I'm from kadic." She said it so matter of factly, like there was no other place she could be from in the first place, that Yumi couldn't have stopped the next question if she had wanted to.
"Where were you before kadic?"
Aelita's face fell, for the first time the elfin features became saddened. It was like the light had suddenly gone from the world around them. Yumi actually felt sad too.
"I don't remember."
The words were softly spoken, and a normal person might not have even heard them, but Yumi not only heard them but the fear and regret that was contained within. Without thinking, she put her hand on the girls shoulder, uncertain how exactly to proceed, but certainly unwilling to leave someone like this alone for the time being. Aelita looked up at her and smiled again.
"But no need to worry. Jeremy is going to figure out a way, he's extremely intelligent." Aelita's eyes fell to Yumi's hand, and she gasped and dropped away from her.
"What happened to you? Is that normal?"
Yumi looked at her hand, and mentally berated herself. "Yeah, I'll be fine. I have psoriasis. It's why I don't go in the sun."
Aelita took her forearm, and turned it over, leaning in to inspect the damaged skin, muttering to herself all the while. For a second yumi didn't know what she was saying, but then she keyed into it. This girl was muttering to herself an encyclopedic definition of psoriasis and its effects on human tissue.
"Psoriasis occurs when the immune system mistakes a normal skin cell for a pathogen, and sends out faulty signals that cause overproduction of new skin cells. Psoriasis is not contagious. The cause of psoriasis is not fully understood, but it is believed to have a genetic component and local psoriatic changes can be triggered by an injury to the skin known as the Koebner phenomenon. Various environmental factors have been suggested as aggravating to psoriasis, including oxidative stress, stress, withdrawal of systemic corticosteroid, as well as other environmental factors, but few have shown statistical significance. There are five types of psoriasis: plaque, guttate, inverse, pustular, and erythrodermic. The most common form, plaque psoriasis, is commonly seen as red and white hues of scaly patches appearing on the top first layer of the epidermis." She let go of Yumi's arm. "This isn't psoriasis, this looks more like an acute and extreme exothermic burn. Certainly first degree, possibly second with permanent epidermal damage and zero chance of healing fully without graft or extensive scarring. Why aren't you suffering debilitating pain?"
Yumi starred at her dumbly. This girl had no idea where she was before she arrived at kadic, but could quote verbatim from medical encyclopedia and diagnose injuries like a trained medical technician. Curiosity and maybe more than a little anger fueled her next decision. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she pushed into aelita's mind.
That was certainly a mistake. It was like nothing she had ever felt or experienced before, where she could deal with and sort through a humans thoughts, aelita's were an order of magnitude more complex. There were eight, nine, eleven things on her mind all at once. She was in so many places that Yumi was actually feeling like she didn't know where to go, or even how to get out again. She was so overwhelmed it took her several long moments to realize she was back in her body.
Resting herself against a tree, panting she looked Aelita in the eye. "What are you?"
"You first."
Yumi bit her lip.
"I don't trust you."
"Well I don't trust you either; you were just invading my mind."
"You knew?"
"I could feel you in there. I pushed you out. I didn't think vampires were real."
"I didn't think you could remember things."
"Oh, I know all kinds of things; I just don't know my past. I think I died."
Despite herself Yumi could feel a half grin growing. "I know what that's like."
"Do you remember it?"
"That's personal."
"You were in my head."
"I still don't know what you are though."
"Did you think that's because I can't remember?"
Yumi wet her lips. Her arm was starting to ache now. "maybe we got off on the wrong foot, and should try again?"
Aelita eyed her for a long time, what was going on in that complex mind of hers Yumi had no idea. Finally she shrugged.
"okay, I don't see why not."