Frisk asked. "So, you really think you saw someone in the rain?"
"Yeah." Aliza replied. "You didn't...see her?"
Aliza didn't like to feel like she was crazy. Though, the way people talked about her sometimes. Maybe she was. She wasn't sure how someone crazy would even know they were crazy. But she tried not to dwell on it.
Today was a special day. Today, the sky was filled with rain. Pouring down from high above, accompanied by angry winds, that whipped through the city. Howling like hungry wolves. Making the rain fall in a slant. This was the perfect day, to try and prove she wasn't mad.
The orange eyed girl watched it, sitting inside one of the concrete cylinders. It wasn't the main one, but she wasn't going to move the tarps on that. She didn't want the cats to get cold.
Besides, this was...her spot. Her little location away from the others. She didn't want to be alone often...but recently, the desire had become something palpable.
She fumbled with something, wrapping a piece of tape around some paper. Before setting down the mostly spent roll. Sliding what she'd made, around her neck. While drawing the hood of her yellow raincoat up.
Scooting out, she stood up, and stepped out into the rain. The wind nearly knocking her down, before she caught herself. Looking around, she had expected Frisk to be present. But, Frisk slept well during storms. So probably not.
Aliza snickered some, her hands dripping with a few loose red beads of blood. Slipping alongside the rain, to the puddles below. Coming from little cuts, in her palms, from her crafting.
Her head shook some, an unintentional thing, as she stepped further into the rain. It was warm today, even the rain was. And she was reminded of the feeling of melted plastic. She wondered, if maybe, that's what rain was? Not water, but melted plastic?
Her hand went to the thing around her neck. A necklace made of string, and loose paper, taped together. With a strange construct of glass shards, and metal pieces hanging from it. Covered in a purple paint, made to resemble a star. Jagged, and dangerous looking, her hand trembling as she grasped it. Feeling it dig into the cuts, her teeth clenching.
Aliza had attempted to tell the cats about her strange encounter. Valérie had been more concerned with the cut on her leg. And Pablo was rather insistent that she not attempt to invoke this being again, suggesting it was her imagination. She was certain they were mistaken. That they just...didn't understand.
"I'll...show them." She grasped the item. "They'll...understand."
The pain made her shiver, and in the rain, there was something. It was there. Just where she couldn't quite see it. But she felt it. Heard it. The whispers of it. The feeling of being watched. Being seen, in a way she didn't understand. Squeezing just a bit tighter, the pain helping make it clear, for just a moment. More beads of blood falling alongside the rain, as her eyes closed.
The feeling got closer, and closer. Until she felt something there. Just before her. Felt it, and then, she heard something breaking. Her eyes opening.
There were crystals, decorating parts of the area. Adorning the space she had come to know as home. These phantasmal things flickering, in and out of existence. Like a dream, or a memory that had been superimposed over her waking moments. The construction site warped, in the same fashion. The pouring rain making them hard to see, when melded by the flickering it did.
Aliza felt cold air, and turned around. There was a girl there. A girl in the rain, blurry, but near her. The feeling of vindication mixed with pain. Overwrote it. She had been right.
The girl in the rain had muted purple eyes, she could barely make out. With some sort of black hooded jacket. The hood fur-lined. She had on a muted green sweatshirt of some kind. And dark pants.
"Hi. Y-you're here." Aliza noted, smiling, and turned. "Frisk!" She turned, and called out. "Sh-she's real!"
When she turned back, the girl in the rain was closer, prompting her to take a small step back. Before noticing the strange being was whispering something. Raising a brow, Aliza took a step nearer, and listened. Noticing the girl in the rain was holding two things out.
"Huh, oh...a gift?" Aliza asked, confused, carefully taking one, as the other was kept by the phantasmal girl. "So, it's one for each of us."
The girl, grey in the rain before her, smiled. Speaking words she couldn't hear.
She tried to listen, tried to understand. The object, it seemed was a purple star-shaped crystal. Not unlike the facsimile she was clutching so tightly. But it felt brighter, warmer. She felt like there was something she had forgotten. The thought, itself, distressing.
There was something that came next. Something she needed to say. Something she needed to do. But she couldn't grasp it.
"I don't know what to do." She told the girl in the rain. "I...what do you...want me to do?"
The girl in the rain remained silent before shifting her posture. Aliza noticed her hair moving enough for a purple, dim, and muted eye to become visible. It looked like an empty, glassy thing, as though it was already dead.
"Aliza," the girl in the rain said, reaching out her hand. "Let go."
The girl in the rain felt cold. Colder than everything else. Grasping the hand, still bleeding from the facsimile. Softly starting to pry it open.
"W-what?" Aliza asked, confused. "N-no, i-if the pain stops, you disappear." She tried to pull her hand away, but couldn't. "Please...j-just come to the others. We can help you."
The girl in the rain frowned. "You can't save me... Aliza. We can't stop him."
"Him?" Aliza asked, confused.
As she spoke, a shadow seemed to stretch. Darker than the rest of the barren shade, somehow. Bits of rain, becoming ice, in its presence.
Aliza began to shiver, stepping back to observe the growing shadow inching closer to her. Her heart raced as she accidentally hit a patch of mud and slipped. Her hand released the false-star around her neck as she fell to the ground, splashing warm water and mud across her. She huffed, pressing her bloodied hands against the mud as she got back up and stared at where the girl in the rain had been.
There was nothing there now. No shadow, no girl. Aliza felt a wave of dread wash over her as she held her hands out, letting the rain wash away the mud. The crystal given to her, gone. Leaving only the facsimile. She tried to grasp it again, but the wound turned cold. As she clenched it, something became visible to her.
Something staring down at her, prompting a cry of fear, while she stepped back. Before stopping, digging in her heel. She couldn't run, she knew that. But more than that, she didn't want to. She wouldn't let herself.
"I...I won't," she muttered. "I won't be afraid." Clenching her fists, she yelled, "You don't scare me!"
Her defiant cry echoed in the empty air, a challenge to an entity she didn't understand. The chill flushing across her, like ice through her blood. As she fell limp to the ground. Unconscious in the rain, and mud.
Frisk had been waiting, debating her own thoughts. Aliza sometimes liked to sit in the rain. To feel it. That wasn't a shared desire however. In her opinion, being soaked to the bone was a fairly awful experience.
But time was ticking, and she continued to glance at the entrance to the cylinder. The cats waiting within, with a glowstick sitting in the center. Giving the space a faint red glow. The girl impatiently tapping her foot.
It was about then that she heard something. It was heavily muffled, but she thought she heard someone yell. The cats ears perking, at this too. A sense of alarm filled her, and she scurried out, and into the rain. Hearing lightning crash in the sky above.
Shielding her eyes for a moment, she looked around. Before spotting the yellow raincoat, on the ground.
"Aliza!" Frisk yelled, while jogging over.
The mud splashing as she got near. The temperature in the air, plummeting as she approached. The rain feeling more like...ice. She wasn't concerned about that however. She found Aliza passed out in the mud, her hand bleeding pretty badly.
"Aliza...what did you do?" Frisk asked, while looking over the blood stained fake star around the girls neck.
Yanking that off, she tossed it into the mud, and picked the other girl up. Hearing a mewing noise, as the cats had seemingly made their way out. The path back was slick, but she was determined, and didn't let that stop her. Trudging along, while cursing herself. She had felt like something was wrong, and just ignored it.
Frisk swore she wouldn't...couldn't make that mistake again. As she set about getting one of her only friends out of the rain. The girl briefly noting this thought, wondering about it. Friends? Did she have another? She shook it off, and got inside, to patch Aliza up