Disclaimer:I do not own X-Men, only Karine is my creation.

Bold is thoughts sent telepathically

Italics is thoughts

"Quotations are spoken out loud"

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Floating through the mountain's open meadows on the first warm day of spring as a sylph, Karine danced on the wings of the wind through the budding flowers. Shifting back into human, she sat down an a slight mound in the center of the meadow laughing softly to herself. She leaned back until her head and back rested on the ground and looked at the robin's egg blue sky. Nary a wisp of cloud was in sight. Calming down she thought of when she had left her family in West Virginia and traveled north through the mountains, and finding her mountain, her oak, and new home one year before.

-Flashback-

Walking up the steep mountain side Karine gazed about herself at all the colors of spring, the bright green of tender new shoots popping out of the ground, the bright splash of the yellow daffodils amidst all the green. Stepping around a stand of pines into a oak grove, she saw it. Saw it and knew. Knew she had found her new home. Staring at the white oak in the exact center of the tiny grove, a giant amongst its brothers, its crown brushing the sky swayed softly in the wind, and Karine fell in love. Karine stepped under its enormous branches and stepped up to its trunk. Placing her cheek up against its rough bark and breathed, just breathed in its wondrous scent.

-Flashback-

Following the path of a bird as it flitted across the sky, Karine murmured to herself, " Thank God the town was tolerant".

-Flashback-

A week after discovering her tree, Karine decided she had enough of exploring the the mountain side surrounding her tree, and that she was tired of eating just berries and fish, so she headed down the west side to find the closest town.

Since her only physical mutation, at the moment, was her rainbow hair she walked down the main street looking for a library. She wanted a library for two reasons, A) she wanted to look up more mythological beings and beast to shift into and B) she loved to read. Seeing the library she trotted up its stairs and pulled open the door, which had a help wanted sign on it.

Thinking, Now theres a job I could enjoy, Karine strolled into the library and headed for the information desk at the back. Asking the old bespectacled lady there, " Is the job position still open here?"

"Of course it is" the lady replied, "We don't get many people in here at all, much less any willing to be an employee here."

-End Flashback-

And that was how Karine had gotten a job working in the town library. Either the people in the town didn't notice or didn't care about her mutation, but no one said a word about it. The library itself was not very popular as a whole except as a student research center, so Karine just read all day and was payed for it. Most of her money was spent on food and books. The rest of the cash earned was put carefully in a plastic bag, placed in a metal coffee can and hidden in a tree trunk. The can was metal so squirrels couldn't get to it, they would eat through plastic or anything else softer.

-Flashback-

She read everything the library had on mythology, which was a surprisingly large amount, small though the the library was. When she had finished reading everything on mythology it was almost winter and it was getting too chilly to just be in jeans and a sweatshirt Karine wondered what she was going to do about winter. She pondered the question so long that that day a t work she didn't read at all.

Floating up the mountain as a sylph after work, Karine had a brilliant idea. She already slept as a dryad in a her tree, well if you could call it sleeping that is. Trees really didn't sleep, not like animals or people did anyway, so neither did dryads. So she would hibernate when the animals and plants did too.

-End Flashback-

Thats exactly what she had done except for once or twice she had stepped out of the oak and watched the snow. She had shifted during those times in the winter into a phoenix and had been perfectly fine despite the below freezing temperatures and falling snow from an iron gray sky of clouds.

That had been over two months ago and now look at the weather, it was sunny and warm. Standing up, she shifted into a tiny flower fairy that looked almost like a miniature butterfly. Roughly the size of a fingernail, she danced among the open buds of the meadow, absorbed in all the colors she could see.

She beat her tiny butterfly wings against the wind and took off from an open buttercup petal and circled the meadow, just enjoying the wind and warm spring day. Jumping from open flower tip to open flower tip she felt a sudden increase in the wind speed. Dancing with it she crossed the meadow.

Skipping in the moving air in a random pattern, she hummed mindlessly to herself. Hit suddenly with a large gust of wind she was flattened against the earth. After being hit with the gust she was nicked in the side by an enormous pair of feet. Looking up she cried shrilly, "Watch where you land feather boy!".

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If I need to include a description of what she shifts into please tell me. Sorry there is not much plot I'm sort of just introducing her as a person.

Cookies those who review, please and thank you.