As they continued, Ami focused entirely on unlocking the key to the language while Rei and Mamoru helped guide the girl. It was agreed that Alejandro would lead their way out since he had the most knowledge of the jungle, and didn't know English well enough to help teach the strange girl.
Ami was having difficulty focusing on the task at hand though. She had so many questions about the girl, and even a twinge of morbid curiosity about the extent of her healing capabilities. The magnitude of her knowledge made her especially wary of Mamoru and the others, lest they realize the same thing she had.
And considering that the girl's energy seemed to be increasing by the hour, instead of decreasing like anyone else with the kind of injuries she'd endured, it would only be a matter of time before someone noticed the abnormality.
"DON'T MOVE!" Rei yelled, out of nowhere. Everyone froze except the girl, who took a fumbling step forward and then fell back again when Mamoru's hand pulled her backwards.
Pulled out of her thoughts, Ami looked up from the text. "What is it?"
"Alejandro, step back," Rei ordered, eyes fixed on the ground.
"Wout?"
"You're about to step on a nest of Bullet Ants!" She explained, pointing to the small hill in the dirt, obscured by fallen leaves and grasses.
"Ah, es el diablo!" He mocked. Scooping up a handful of the ants, he winced as they stung his hand. "Es only bug. Es nout bad."
The girl moved forward, bending over to pick up an ant herself. Ami held her breath, praying the other's wouldn't pay it any undue attention.
Curious, Mamoru stepped forward to examine the arthropods. "He's right, they're just bu-HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS!" Smashing the ant into oblivion, he threw it onto the ground, digging his heel into it.
"Mamoru!" Ami said, aghast at the behavior.
"Son of a bitch those things burn!" He looked over to Alejandro, who was gently letting down each ant that he'd cupped in his hand. "How are you doing that?"
"Es ecustum tu wearr ant esleebes." He put the last ant back down, looking over the small bite marks rising on his palm.
The girl put her ant down too, turning around and holding a hand out expectantly.
"Jeesh, she's like a little kid," Mamoru complained, giving her the hand that wasn't going partially numb from the ant's toxin.
Rei heaved an exasperated sigh. "You two are the kids. Sticking your hands into the hornet's nest," she tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Let's just keep going already. We need to find a place to set up camp soon before we lose the daylight."
"I've translated a few of the words she was saying earlier," Ami said, looking over her many notes and scribbles. "Luckily whatever language she speaks is syllabic, like Japanese, so once I figure out all of the basic syllables then I just have to figure out what the combinations of them mean."
"We should set up camp over there," Mamoru suggested, pointing to a cluster of fern-like plants. "Its far enough away from the ants that our food stores should be safe, but its got plenty of tree cover from scavengers too."
"It'll do." Rei let her bag fall to the ground unceremoniously while she undid the straps. Pulling out the tent tarp she set up the poles on either side of it, drawing the tarp across them. The silver haired girl seemed oddly fascinated by the procedure, watching with rapt focus while Rei finished securing the supports on either side of her tent.
The others set up their tents as well, Ami unfolding her tent from its compressed form, while Mamoru and Alejandro pinned more tarp across wooden poles they bore into the ground.
"Let me guess, your dinner will be tuna?" Mamoru teased while he rolled out his sleeping bag next to Rei.
"No." Rei folded her arms in front of herself. "Tonight I'm not hungry."
"Is that so Well then you won't mind if I help myself to the last can of tuna..." Mamoru pulled out the can, popping open the lid before she could object.
"HEY!" She loomed over him, grabbing the can from his fingers. "You have no manners do you? Eating someone else's food is rude!"
"But you just said-"
"I said I wasn't hungry right now. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have eaten it later..." Rei looked down at the meat. "I wouldn't want it to go to waste though..."
"Do what you want," Mamoru turned his back to her, throwing his sleeping bag into the freshly made tent.
"I will," She huffed, pulling out two pieces of bread from the cooler.
A few feet away, Ami was sitting with the strange girl, showing her various objects and telling her the words for them. Rei wandered over, curious how the translation was coming along.
"-Food," Ami said, holding out a piece of bread for the girl to see. "Food," she repeated as she lifted the bread up to the girl's mouth to eat. "Water," she held out a bottle of water for her to see, holding the girl's hand out to feel the liquid as she poured a bit of it sideways. "Bottle," she wrapped the girl's fingers around the plastic.
"Don't push her too hard," Rei sat down by them, assembling her sandwich. "She can't retain the whole language in a day."
"Kanasi," the girl said, tipping the water into Ami's hand. Ami smiled, writing the word down on her notepad. "Wa-ter."
"Prove me wrong why don't you," Rei complained, taking a hearty bite out of her dinner.
"She's learning English very well, I'm impressed with her progress. I think when we find her family we should suggest they give her English lessons. She's an adept."
"Great plan," Rei said with heavy sarcasm. "Except, we're not going to be the ones finding her family. We're going to be the ones handing her over to the police so they can deal with her. She isn't our responsibility Ami, and she's been nothing but a problem since we first found her."
Ami frowned. Rei had always been small on her love for humans, but the idea of handing over a blind, unidentified, and possibly underage stranger to a police from a foreign government should have curbed even her misanthropic tendencies. "I think maybe we should wait on that."
"For how long," Rei asked, giving Ami a dubious look.
"Just until we're sure she has recovered enough to take care of herself. We don't have a flight scheduled back to Japan for another week anyways, we could always use the time to try and find her relatives since we've already gathered enough artifacts from the survey." When she saw the cynical expression on Rei's face she hurried to continue. "We don't have to decide now though, let's wait until we're at least out of the jungle. I'll have the language translated a bit more by then, hopefully enough for us to be able to understand what she was trying to tell us when we first found her."
Rei gave another laborious sigh, "If you weren't my best friend " she teased.
"You'd live a cold, empty life searching for someone else who has the patience to deal with your foul temper," Mamoru finished for her as he came up beside the others.
"Oh shut up, Mamoru. Like you're any better." Rei stood, moving towards her own tent. The dark-haired man sat down where she'd been resting, stretching out his arms above his head.
"What a day. How is she?" He tipped his chin to the silver-haired girl.
"She's doing great, I was just telling Rei how impressed I am with her ability to pick up English, and none of her wounds are infected so far," Ami supplied. She bit her tongue before she could let anything else about the mysterious vanishing puncture wounds slip.
"I know we got off to a bad start," Mamoru said, leaning forward towards the girl. "But I'm Mamoru." He raised a hand to point at his face, keeping it there a few extra seconds in case she couldn't see. Before the conversation could get any further, he shot up out of his position. "Ami!"
"What is it?" Ami felt trepidation crawling up the hairs on her arms. Could he have seen beneath a bandage to the uninjured skin?
"Her eyes," He said, incredulous. "They're blue."
"Really?" Ami leaned in to see the girl's eyes for herself. Tilting the girl's face towards herself, Ami confirmed that they were in fact now a cornflower blue, at least two shades darker than they had been that morning. Putting her finger up in front of the girl's face, she shifted it from left to right, astounded when the pupils smoothly followed the movements.
"Mamoru, I think you should sit down," Ami tried to keep her tone neutral.
"Why? What kind of person has eyes that change colors?"
Ami weighed her options, resigning herself to the fact that she couldn't keep this one a secret. "The kind of person who is no longer blind."
"What?" Mamoru stood dumbfounded for several seconds before the words registered. "She's not blind?" Ami shook her head. "How is that even possible, she was DEFINITELY blind when we found her."
"Keep your voice down," Ami advised, looking sideways to where Rei and Alejandro were chatting a few yards away. "I don't know how it's possible, but she was blind, and she isn't anymore."
"Just what exactly do we know about this girl?" Mamoru asked, giving the girl a suspicious once over. She looked back at him oblivious, mirroring the appraisal. He took his seat again, turning to Ami for answers.
"I haven't been able to translate much of anything she said during the first day," the petite girl confessed. "I did manage to translate the first thing she said to us, though, when we initially dug her out, while she could barely speak."
"What was she saying?" Mamoru didn't know if he actually wanted to know or not, but curiosity won out.
"'Please, stop.' Or maybe closer to 'leave me be' or 'don't come near.'" Ami licked her lips, wringing her hands. "Whatever the exact phrasing translated to though, the general gist was the same." She looked Mamoru dead in the eyes.
"I don't think she wanted to be found."
AN: sailormama, inspiration comes at predawn hours for me. So, 4 am, and suddenly I get a worthy thought for a story(its 5:43 a.m. as I write this now). markus, her name will get revealed within the next 3 chapters. What she is, that will take a few more chapters. :3 Thank you everyone else who has reviewed, I really do appreciate it. Another big thank you to MGray for beta-reading this chapter.