"But still we laugh, we cry, we fall, we get high.

Just like we were kids, just like we were kids.

And when I'm feeling small, you get me through it all.

Just like we were kids, just like we were kids again."

~ Artist and Poet

(also note: the song—"Kids Again"—is 100% the theme song for Marelda and Luca)

Chapter 14—(75)

Before leaving the cafe with Selene, Klaus slipped Philyra a bag a coins and a whisper to have fun. It was unexpected. She knew Klaus liked her well enough, but not enough to just give her spending money. She was pretty sure, from the weight of the bag, that it held more money than she'd ever handled. Not that she'd ever handled much money in the first place. But still.

She was just thankful that Katalina was a talkative girl. It meant she didn't have to talk, just nod occasionally. Yukiya tailed the two, his wolf next to him. Regis kept himself firmly perched on her shoulders, giving the wolf distrustful looks until he eventually slipped away, privately (to Philyra alone) claiming Katalina talked way too much for him to want to stick around. Philyra wasn't sure why Regis was so suspicious of the wolf, and he wouldn't tell her.

"I absolutely love your hair, Philyra. It's so pretty! And I've never seen haircut like this, all different lengths. It's really cool. I don't have the nerve to cut my hair, which is why it's so long. But Selene's hair! It's so short! I've never seen such short hair on a girl, but it actually really suits her. I guess she's cut it more recently, because when Elias described her, he said her hair was long and blonde. Now it's short, with this bronzish sheen. I guess that's because of Angel, maybe. Either way, it's really cool."

And so on and so forth. Yukiya pointed out little stores and stands he recommended, and Katalina pulled them to all sorts of places. The girl was so high energy, it made Philyra dizzy. She was used to Selene's randomness, but Selene didn't chatter so much or run around so erratically.

While Katalina was ogling some shiny things in a window display, Yukiya tapped Philyra's shoulder, making her jump. She glanced up through her bangs at him.

"You're tired," he said quietly.

Her eyes widened slightly. How did he know? She knew she was really good at appearing better than she felt…but how?

"You're starting to trail behind more. And drag your feet." And yet Yukiya said his observations as if they were obvious. "We can go back, I'm tired, too. Are you okay with going back?"

She nodded, still unsure of how to react to his perception. Selene had told her he was really good at seeing things as they are, but she didn't expect this.

He nodded in reply. "Katalina."

The girl turned back to her darker haired companions. "Yeah?"

"Time to go back."

"Oh. Okay. Can we at least get ice cream at Iceia's before we go? Elias mentioned it and I really want to try."

Yukiya looked at Philyra, who just tilted her head in confusion.

"Do you know what it is?" Yukiya asked, seeming unsurprised when she shook her head. "Thought not. Selene doesn't like it." Meaning Selene probably wouldn't have ever brought it up. "It's frozen, flavored cream. It's good."

Philyra nodded.

"This'll be so much fun! Oo, I wonder what kind of flavor you'll like best! I wonder what flavors they have. Probably all the standard ones, but what interesting ones? My favorite at the shop back home was called 'Strawberry Switch', and it had little chunks of strawberry and caramel. You seem like a caramel kind of girl, Philyra. I don't know though. What do you like best Yukiya? Elias said he liked the brownie one best."

"Caramel Apple Pie."

"Oo, that sounds really yummy. There it is!" Katalina ran excitedly into the ice cream shop. Yukiya help the door open for Philyra, walking in behind her.

They ordered, Yukiya ordering the one Philyra guestured at for her (she ended up choosing what Yukiya got), and then he paid for all three of them before they could do it themselves. "My treat." was all he said.

Philyra got the little bowl, with it's little spoon. She tried a little bit of it, and it was cold. But it tasted so good. She ate it in little bites, glad she got a bowl instead of the "cone" Katalina had. Even in the cool air, it started dripping onto her hand as the brunette frantically tried to keep up with it.

It was a bit chilly out, but it wasn't terrible. Philyra wasn't nearly so sensitive to the cold as Selene. She quite liked it, she found. A lot more than she used to. It was a lot colder back in Liloorlie.

She cringed slightly. Why did that always that place have to pop up everytime she was happy? It always brought back a slew of awful things.

There was a tap on her shoulder, making her jump. But it was only Yukiya, and her pulse slowed.

"What's wrong?" he asked. All he got was a shrug. He seemed to sense she didn't want to talk about it and let it drop.

She'd noticed this about him. Philyra didn't have to say a word to him, but he usually seemed to be able to tell what she "said," noticing the smallest of details. It was so easy to be around him, almost easier than Selene.

She pushed away that thought. Selene was better than anyone else, always.

But, even this soon, Yukiya might be a close second.

The next week was lots of work. More work than she'd ever had to do before. While Selene was mostly independant in her "game of catch-up," Klaus was instructing Philyra personally on various subjects, in particular, her writing and reading. She liked the reading well enough but the writing was just so hard. Philyra's favorite part was the maths. Numbers made more sense than the letters (she chose to ignore Selene when she piped up to say that advanced maths was more letters than numbers, because she was pretty sure Selene was just joking). And when they finished with maths, Klaus would teach her about magic.

This part made her squirm inside, but she didn't want to make Klaus mad by not paying attention. He took so much time to be teaching her, she didn't want him to think she took it for granted. It got easier as the days went on. After all, the theory seemed to be okay, and he wasn't actually making her do magic (he said that the actual teachers would help her with that when school started again, which she wasn't at all looking forward to).

What scared her more than that was Selene's frustration with her magic. She was struggling too much with her wind and fire. Klaus told her that Selene used to have unbelievable control over fire, more than anyone Klaus had ever seen previously, and that her wind used to be decently easy for her to manage. Now, she had to keep intense focus to do simple things. Not because the magic wasn't there, but because if she wasn't extremely careful, she'd lose control.

Philyra saw it happen a few times over the course of a week with Selene's wind. The older girl refused to use her fire unless at least a few adults and Klaus were there to stop it from spreading too far if she lost control of it—if the wind was difficult to contain, Selene commented, the fire was near impossible. It'd been easier in Terra, she said, when there wasn't so much natural magic to feed it. In Terra the wind listened, the fire behaved if you kept a very close eye on it. That wasn't the case in Myula.

As for the rest of Selene's magic? Not working at all. Without the seal that her old wand had, Klaus theorized, the elemental magic was overwhelming the human magic, preventing Selene from using it. All this just further implanted the idea that magic was nothing but trouble into Philyra's subconscious.

On another note, Katalina, for whatever reason, seemed to really like Philyra. She appeared with Yukiya to pull her away for lunch most days. Philyra ate breakfast with Selene (who was an early riser), lunch with the aforementioned two, and dinner with everyone. She quite liked these parts. Mostly, they all let her just listen to the conversations, and only rarely made her join. Normally, if she had to say more than a few words, Regis would convey them for her, which was really nice of him. Philyra was pretty sure the biggest reason he did it is because she'd sneak him bits of her food, but either way it was appreciated.

"Philyra!" Katalina knocked on the open door of Klaus' office. "Mr. Prefect, sir, can we kidnap her for lunch? Yukiya is making something, and while he hasn't told me what it is, it's bound to be good because he's really good with food."

Klaus sighed. "I suppose. Selene should be finishing up soon, so I'll probably be taking her to get lunch, so keep Philyra a little longer today. We can work on lessons again tomorrow."

Katalina beamed. "Sweet! Come on, Lyra!"

She cleaned up her papers before nodding to Klaus as she headed to the door. As Philyra followed, the brunette chattered on about everything that had happened since dinner. Apparently she actually finished her homework, and gotten a letter from Elias, Klaus' younger brother and Katalina's buddy. She was super excited about that, and told Philyra of all the things he'd written. While Katalina had a tendency to talk so fast Philyra's head spun, she enjoyed listening to the girl. Before Katalina, she'd never once interacted with a girl her own age, at least, not in a positive way.

The girls back in Liloorlie tended to mock and say quite nasty things about Philyra when ever she was spotted. They were far meaner than any of the boys, though the boys tended to be more vulgar. The girls were harder to ignore, and more creative with their taunts.

"I love it when Yukiya cooks! It's always sooooo yummy!" Katalina gushed. "I mean, even Elias admits it, and he's 'emotionally constipated' half the time, to quote Luca." The girl giggled. "He's honestly not a bad guy, though he likes to play-pretend he is. Oh, do you know who Luca is? I don't know if Selene's told you about him or not."

Philyra nodded.

"Well, Luca's been showing up to class a lot more. I think it's because his buddy makes him. It's really interesting, having a buddy. I asked him about her once, the other week. I haven't seen her, but apparently she's a redhead of sorts, really tall, and training to be a warrior. Luca says she's great, but not someone to mess with. I'm not sure if he's telling the truth about this, but he claims he once did something really stupid and she punched him so hard he was knocked unconscious. I mean, he didn't have a black eye or anything on his face, but he could've gone to the nurse. But then again, the nurse prefers to let things heal naturally when they can so I don't know why she would've completely healed it. Either way, anyone who can whip Luca into shape is impressive. I mean, I don't think he missed a single class the last week of school! Not even Selene, according to Elias, could wrangle him into going to every class. I both want to meet her, and don't. I don't know. I suppose I shouldn't form opinions until I meet someone. Elias says that's not good. Which is hypocritical of him since he does it, but he's also trying to work on not doing that so I suppose he's right."

Katalina could talk until the world ended, Philyra thought. She didn't mind it much, though.

Lunch was amazing, and afterwards, Selene showed up singing and dancing, clearly excited about having caught up with school and other things she wasn't going to elaborating upon. In tow was the youngest of her older brothers, Merlin. After Eric, Merlin was probably Philyra's favorite of Selene's brothers.

Philyra most certainly considered Selene her older sister, but she had a hard time thinking of Selene's older brothers as anything but Selene's older brothers. Not hers. They were all very kind and welcoming, but Philyra just…couldn't. She couldn't even think of a reason, she just couldn't. It didn't make sense, but she couldn't bring herself to include any people in her true circle. It consisted of Selene and Regis. There were several in the outer circle, like Selene's brothers, Katalina, Yukiya, and Klaus—but only her sister and Regis were in her family.

Selene wrangled Philyra, Yukiya, and Katalina into making Cherry Pie Cookies with her. Half the time she was talking to Merlin in English, but it was okay. Philyra was happy about learning the recipe, particularly with Yukiya helping her and keeping her from messing up too much. She tried one of these kind of cookies back in Terra, and she adored them. Now, she knew how to make them and it was wonderful.

No reviews for last chapter, but there is a little authors note. Just generally, I'm struggling with this story. I don't know if it'll get easier as the story goes on, but generally this third person thing is killing me. I am incredibly sorry if this story gets dull and seems really repetitive of Elemental.