Elora takes a deep breath as she stands in front of the mirror.
She thought she would have Krista over to her place and see how she can help with her confidence. Of course, she can always go to Hunter and Spyro for it, but she figured she would spend some time with Krista since they never got to know each other that well. Plus it won't hurt to try her ideas first, see what she has in mind. Aside from, well, what Krista's currently doing.
Elora tries to turn her head to look at the other faun, but Krista immediately stops her and keeps her facing straight ahead. Her hands go back to Elora's red hair.
"Stay still, I can't do braids when you're moving your head everywhere!" Krista says as she smiles.
Elora's eyebrow rises. "And this is supposed to help me how?"
The blue faun stops what she's doing. One of her ears twitch as she stands there, presumably thinking of an answer. In the end, she shrugs before continuing braiding her hair.
"Dunno, thought maybe a new look might help some?" Krista somewhat answers. "I'm not sure how exactly someone would gain confidence, especially not from… Y'know…"
She nervously laughs, with it fading into a sigh seconds later. She finishes up on the last braid, tying the end of it with the last green hair tie she has. Krista takes a few steps back to give Elora enough space. Elora looks at her hair fully in the mirror, turning her head to see the sides. She grabs one of the braids and brings it forward to see it in front of her. It's not something she'd call her style, rather maybe a small braid or two would suit her better if she has to have braids at all, but she has to admit Krista did well on them. The red faun looks behind her, seeing Krista smile at her.
Elora returns the smile, albeit nervously. "They're nice, but I don't know if they're really 'me' per se."
"Oh!" Krista starts. "That's fine! You can take them out whenever, but if you want wavy hair then keep them in for a few hours and then undo them! Good if you do it all night while you sleep and undo them after you wake up too."
"Okay, I'll keep that in mind." Elora says, even if her doing so is unlikely.
All of a sudden, Krista's ears perk straight up and her eyes begin to shine like stars in the night sky. Her lips reach halfway to her ears on both sides of her face. Elora can only guess what's running through her mind, though she's unable to make a single guess that could be correct. As she keeps trying to reach the most likely conclusion, Krista goes back up to her side. Both of her hands rest upon the red faun's shoulders.
"I just remembered, I think there's one thing you can try to raise your confidence!" She leans closer to Elora's face. "Positivity!"
"What?" Elora responds as her ears drop down and her eyebrow raises.
"Positivity, as in naming the positive things about yourself that you like! Same with what you've done in the past, like your achievements! Sure, you wanna work on stuff you don't like, but you gotta take it one step at a time."
Elora opens her mouth, but pauses herself as she looks at herself in the mirror. That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea thinking about it. The only problem she can think of with that idea was exactly where to start, with accomplishments or positive qualities. Aside from that, she might actually be able to do it, even if it takes a while.
"We could start with, I dunno, maybe a recent achievement?"
Krista's smile grows wide, though Elora can see she's trying her best to be subtle when it's as clear as day. It was kinda adorable seeing her try. Regardless of that, it seems like Krista already picked out what she can start on first, not that it was a bad thing of course. Elora just didn't expect her to choose for her.
"Well, I suppose I am kinda proud of helping Spyro defeat Ripto and giving him some knowledge about the orbs."
"And?"
It takes Elora a second to respond. "And I guess if it wasn't for me, he might've not been able to get rid of Ripto? I mean I'm sure he could've done it without my help- Ow!"
She instantly puts her hand on her arm where Krista punched. She's sure it wasn't intentional for it to be that hard, but despite the intentions the area on her arm starts hurting. Her ears lower down as a result.
"You're supposed to praise yourself, not be all like 'but I probably didn't do as much for this to happen as I think I did'- No, show you're proud of yourself!" Krista pumps her fists as she tries to encourage her.
Elora can only half-heartedly chuckle. "I don't think you're supposed to punch someone's arm, though."
Krista's head tilts slightly to the side as her eyebrows furrow. Her right ear twitches, only adding more to her expression. It's almost like she's a computer trying to compute what's being said, except there's no reasonable answer she's finding as her gaze lays on the floor. After a minute, she looks back up at Elora. Her eyebrows stay the same while her ears rise up high above her head.
"...I'm not? Then how come Lila always did that?" Krista whispers that question to herself as she lays her index finger right above her upper lip.
Yet despite her attempts, the red faun hears what she asks herself anyways. Elora's lips slightly part, but nothing slips from her mind to out of her mouth. It's times like this that make her wonder how they treated her before, wonder if she's just had enough of them overall aside from a couple days ago. It's something that plaques her mind, however no questions or thoughts in relation to it ever comes up.
Snapping her out of her train of thought, Krista grabs Elora's hands and tugs her. As she's pulling her along the blue faun kicks the door open and the two exit the house with the door closing behind them. Krista eventually turns around, holding only one of Elora's hands now instead of both. She pulls her to almost right out of the forest. Elora looks at her confused; Krista slightly moves her head as her eyes point towards a certain direction. The red faun looks that way, seeing kids from different worlds and places playing with one another. She hasn't seen that since she was little, much less getting along that well. Her face softens and the ends of her lips slightly curl up as she watches them smile and laugh.
The next thing she knows, Krista wraps her arm around Elora's waist. Elora looks back at her, who has the biggest smile on her face. She looks between the kids and Krista.
"You helped with this!" Krista says, her voice laced with joy and enthusiasm. "If it wasn't for you helping Spyro, who knows how different this could be!"
That's certainly one way of putting it, but Elora knows that she does have a point. Even if she feels she didn't do much, the smallest things can change everything despite what one would think, that she knows quite well. She runs through everything she can possibly think of in her head that could've been different and what could've been the same, aside from the first thought she had. It's not something that seems like one would think of to help another, but it's not like she can complain really.
"I suppose you're right." Elora finally replies.
"I am! You gotta compliment yourself more often!" Krista's smile grows wider as she's starting to bounce. "Ooh! What are some things you wanna do? We should make a list!"
Elora chuckles nervously. "Well, I'm not that interested in skateboarding but I wouldn't mind trying it. We should slow down though- Whoa!"
Krista grabs her wrist and starts sprinting to the nearest skate park.
"Man, how do you keep getting better scores than me?"
"Easy, pussy cat," Spyro starts, "it's because I'm so awesome."
"And I'm not?" Hunter smirks.
"Of course! ...But not as awesome as me."
Hunter playfully punches Spyro as the two laugh. They lay their skateboards down right where they found them before the two sit down on the bench. The dragon slouches, close to falling off the bench if the end of his feet weren't already touching the ground. On the other hand, Hunter stretches his arms and legs.
"You know what would be nice?"
Spyro looks in Hunter's direction. "What? A rematch?"
"I was gonna say lunch, but that too."
"Aww, and we just got here too!"
Spyro and Hunter look at each other before looking ahead of them. Spyro sits up correctly as they see Krista and Elora coming their way, with the former still holding the latter's wrist. Upon seeing the two fauns, Hunter looks between them and Spyro as his facial expression becomes one of confusion. He gets up and walks towards Elora.
"Elora? What are you doin' here?"
Krista lets go of Elora and she takes a few steps back, watching her footing as she does so. Elora looks at her briefly before placing her full attention on Hunter.
"Well, uh, I guess I'm trying out skateboarding." She says. "Mainly because Krista already dragged me all the way out here."
"I thought maybe trying something new would help?" Krista says as she shrugs.
Hunter looks at Spyro and they look at him back. The dragon shrugs and nods, silently giving him what they think. His eyebrows don't relax, but Hunter nods back before looking back at Elora.
"That's actually not a bad idea, not that I thought I'd ever hear her say that though." Hunter starts. "Uh here, lemme grab my skateboard and help you out."
He runs to grab his board, but before he can, Elora grabs it and she takes a helmet in the process. She straps the helmet on nice and firm.
"It can't be that hard right?" Elora puts her hoof on the board. "It's just like riding a bike right?"
Hunter grabs another skateboard. "Elora, it's not that- and she's gone."
"Well, she's fucked." Spyro sips his milkshake.
"When did you get that?" Hunter asks them before shaking his head. "Nevermind."
He gets on the skateboard immediately and goes after her. Hunter is able to catch up to speed with her, who managed to make a few turns. The cheetah quietly sighs in relief. Krista puts on roller skates and goes after them as well. Spyro, on the other hand, watches them from where he's at. Hunter looks ahead then at Elora.
"Hey, uh, you might wanna slow down some."
She smirks. "Why, am I going too fast?"
"That and…" He points ahead.
Elora looks in front of her, seeing a steep ramp in front of her. Her ears drop and her smirk fades. She tries to slow down and turn around, but it fails as she falls down to the bottom of the ramp face first into the concrete. The skateboard itself keeps rolling. She lets out an audible 'ow' as she puts one of her hands up to her face. The skateboard she had goes up into the air, but it soon falls back down and one end comes close to her face, almost bouncing as soon as it hits the ground. It stops moving and lands onto its side. Hunter and Krista get down there while Spyro instantly runs at the sound of the skateboard hitting the ground.
Hunter grabs Elora's arm and helps her get up. Krista grabs the vacant skateboard, putting it elsewhere and away from the warm-colored faun. Despite the pain, Elora removes her hand from her mouth. Her eyes widen as she looks at her hand. Blood's all over her palm and she feels some of it going from her mouth and down her lower lip. In an instant, she turns her head and spits to her side. Her blood spitting causes Hunter to jump back, letting go of her in the process.
"Are you okay, Elora?" Krista asks.
"Ah think sho," Elora replies before spitting more blood out of her mouth.
She only does that twice, seeing there's no point in spitting it all out at once. Spyro finally arrives and sees the blood. They rush down to her.
"Are you alright?! What happened?"
"Ah didn' slow down an' ah didn' see the ramp un'il i' was too late."
"You should've let Hunter help, you dummy!" Krista replies.
"Pha' ah know now." Elora says. "Ah'm very confiden pha' ah ain' doin this again fo' awhile."
Hunter puts one of his fingers on her face, gently pulling upwards to see her teeth. She opens her mouth wide enough. More blood drips out of her mouth, running down her chin. From what he sees, nothing's missing.
"Aside from the blood, she seems to be good." He reports. "Either way, Krista and I are gonna get a first aid kit just in case."
Krista's face remains the same and follows Hunter when he walks away. Spyro stays by Elora as she sits down on the ground. They sigh before looking at her.
"Next time, after your mouth gets better, I'm gonna take over."
Elora nods in acknowledgement.
She sits there on her bed as she watches Krista pace back and forth.
Krista stares at the purple and yellow tarot cards in her hands as she paces. Elora's eyes follow her, mainly resting upon the sight of the blue faun's tense face. Ever since the two got back to Elora's house, all Krista has been doing was this, with neither of them saying a single word to each other. If anything, Elora thought she would've said something by now. Not that she'd force her to speak, though. It feels like it's been almost an hour just watching her go back and forth in the room.
Her ears perk up when Krista sighs and puts her cards together into a small block of tarot cards before resting them into their box that has the same design as the back of the cards. Krista falls onto her knees, not lifting up or moving her head in the process. As Krista's ears go back, Elora hears the pack of cards slide onto the wooden floor.
Krista sighs. "Sorry about earlier. That wasn't a great idea, huh?" When she says that, her head moves just slightly towards Elora's direction and her irises dart towards her.
"Krista, you don't have to apologize, it's okay." Elora reassures. "Plus, it was… My fault I ended up like this." Elora laughs as she points at her mouth. "I'm surprised my nose didn't bleed too. I did hit my face pretty hard there."
Krista's face remains the same. No smile, no laughter, nothing on her face changed. Elora's laughing dies down, seeing no reaction on her face. She gets off the bed and bends down to Krista's level, putting her hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, I really appreciate you trying to help." Elora says.
Krista finally looks at her directly. "Really?"
"Really." She repeats. "Let's just try to do things one at a time, okay?"
The blue faun takes a moment before nodding. She smiles, grabs her card pack from the floor, then stands back up. She helps Elora stand up in case she falls back as she gets up. After helping her, Krista puts the card pack away. When Krista looks back at Elora, the latter is stuffing tons of tissues into the chest area of her dress. Elora looks up and stops what she's doing as the two stare at one another.
With the speed of a glacier, Elora goes to grab another tissue. Krista throws her arm up against Elora's chest without hurting her, causing her to yelp from how unexpected that was and all of the tissue to come flying out. Just as Krista's about to open her mouth, Elora starts laughing which she notices that it catches the blue faun off guard. After a few seconds Krista begins to laugh as well, assuming she's realizing what Elora was trying to do there.
"That's so dumb!"
"I know!" Elora snorts. "But it worked!"
Krista keeps laughing until she coughs. When she stops coughing, she clears her throat. She looks around the room.
"When's the last time you properly cleaned the place?"
At first, Elora's confident she can answer, but the question truly sinks in as she takes a minute to think about it, resting her hand on her chin. In all actuality, she doesn't know either, even asking herself that question. She knows it wasn't anytime recent that she did something about the paint job and how the place looked, yet it wasn't like she didn't sweep and dusted the place when Hunter wasn't doing it. Elora looks at the room; she did have to admit the floors could look nicer and the old paint could be taken off and have a new coat on with possibly a different color than the one that was there now.
Her mom would've had a new look to the place to spice things up at least every once in a while, once remembering she did that a year or two before they met Hunter, and remembered how she mentioned wanting to do that again before she passed away. How her mom wanted to do it though, Elora couldn't remember, but now she would be able to redecorate how she'd want to.
"Regardless, we're gonna do this as if Kulap was here!" Krista interrupts her train of thought.
Elora winces and the entirety of her body tenses up as her ears fall to the back at the mere mention of her mom's name. It takes Krista a moment before realizing why Elora is in that state and gasps.
"Oh my stars, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to-"
"No no, it's fine!" Elora quickly responds. "I'm just… Not used to hearing that quite yet."
Krista slightly opens her mouth, only to close it seconds later and nod in sympathy. She puts her hand in Elora's, causing Elora to automatically relax.
"We're here if you wanna talk about it."
Elora smiles. "Thanks. We should get to redecorating; it's been a while since this place had something new."
Krista returns the smile before shooting her eyes across the room. She turns her head a few times as her eyes are darting around. In the meantime, the second half of her tail wags like a happy little pet following their owner. Even if it's not currently shown on Krista's face, Elora could tell she was excited to do this. Her heart melts at the sight; it's nice to see her get like this in the short amount of time they became friends. All of a sudden, Krista slams her closed hand onto her open one before looking at Elora.
"I know exactly how we could do this! I just need to get the paints!" She exclaims. "I'll be right back, okay?"
Elora nods and Krista runs out. As she leaves, Hunter comes inside as he stays out of Krista's way. He crosses his arms and smirks, looking in Elora's direction.
"What's she planning on doing this time?" He asks in a light-hearted tone
"Nothing that I can get hurt with this time, unless she's being clumsy." She jokingly answers. "Not that I would put it against her. She just wants to be helpful and it's sweet."
Hunter chuckles. "I know, but a bro gotta watch out for his little sister, y'know?"
Elora rolls her eyes. "I'm not that little, ya dork. I can take care of myself."
"Says the girl who forgets to eat sometimes."
"Key word being 'sometimes'! Try reading a book every once in a while, you might get sucked into it and I'm sure you'll see why."
"I wanna be able to go home, thanks."
They start laughing at the same time. After a minute, Elora stops laughing and clears her throat.
"So how does… How does redecorating the place sound?"
Hunter's eyes shoot wide open and his ears perk up. He looks around him, as if wondering if she means this place, this house. He looks back at her.
"You mean… Without Mom?"
She nods. "I… Need to move on, and the house doesn't look that nice anymore, so…"
Hunter eventually nods. Elora feels her face turn a reddish color. Before she knows it, Hunter pulls her into a hug.
She firmly hugs him back.
Krista skips and hums, keeping the paint cans, brushes, and other materials steady so nothing would escape her.
She lays her chin on the brushes that lay on top of one of the paint cans as her hooves go through the leaves under her. Resting upon her face was a big ole smile, one that couldn't be blown away by almost anything. Seeing a bird from up above, she twirls as her eyes follow it fly by. After that she faces ahead once again to keep her focus on the road. Despite that, however, she ends up tripping and the two cans of paint she held end up flying ahead along with the packaged brushes. Her body lands on the leaf-covered ground. Krista immediately lifts her head up with her heart beating fast. She sighs in relief seeing the cans and the brushes were okay, thankful that they weren't damaged in some way.
She gets up, but before she can get to the paints and brushes, she feels her arm being grabbed from behind. Not knowing who it is, she instantly pulls away and Krista turns around as she backs up. Her heart sinks down to her stomach as it races faster than ever. Her eyes dart between the three fauns she's come to know over the years.
Lila, Spinner, and Sheila.
Krista clenches her fists and tries not to show how she's feeling on the inside. Looking at them makes her question why they're here, what they're here for. Spinner walks up to her with a smirk on her face, as if she's planning something mischievous.
"Why if it isn't Krista, the freak lover." Spinner says.
"What are you guys here for?" Krista questions. "I just want to get my paints and my brushes and go help Elora redecorate her home."
Lila snorts. "Ha! Like your help would be appreciated by her. I'm surprised she even has a home still."
"Yeah, I thought she'd be homeless with her mother gone." Sheila adds.
Krista's ears drop down as her eyebrows furrow. "Why do you guys hate her anyways? She can't help being intersex."
Krista turns around and grabs what she dropped. In the middle of doing so, one of the girls grabs her tail and yanks on it. As an instinct, Krista turns around with her leg up and kicks Spinner down, resting her hoof upon her chest. Spinner's face is drained of any color and her eyes are widened. It hurts Krista seeing her so frightened, but it won't stop her from standing up to them.
"You know I hate being grabbed by my tail." She says, her voice cracking as she says so. Krista looks at the other two. "And you guys would just abandon someone at a drop of a hat if they don't agree with you and you wanna know what? I hate that."
She removes her hoof off of Spinner, who lets out a breath and sighs in relief. Krista successfully picks everything up without interruption. She walks off but then she looks back at them.
"Oh, and by the way? Don't speak to me nor my friends ever again unless you guys decide to change your attitudes." Krista states.
She looks ahead before she can see their expressions. Krista smiles to herself, just liking to think that their jaws are dropping and wanting to say or do something about what she said but they're unable to. Her tail swings left and right to reflect her current emotions.
Soon after that, she returns to the house and, when she gets inside, places the cans of paint down and rests the paint brushes on them so anyone could take whatever. Krista will have to bring more stuff, but for the time being this should be good. It'll take a few days for the whole house to like how Elora would want it to look, but it'll be worth it to see their work pay off.
All three of them take a can of paint to their respective areas and they start getting to work.
After a couple days full of work, Elora sits down on her bed.
Everything looks so much better with the walls having a new color and carpets being laid down on the wooden floors, and old paint being replaced with new paint. If her mom was around to see this now, Elora thinks she'd be proud of her. In fact, she's proud of herself being able to make the place feel brand new again, with some help of course. She even went inside her mom's old room and redecorated it too, putting in another bed in there as well in case someone wanted to sleep over and Hunter didn't feel like sleeping with her for the night. Redoing her room was actually Hunter's idea, thinking it would be good for the both of them.
She chuckles; it's amazing how she's come this far, and she has everyone to thank for that. The idea of getting close to others still freaks her out, but she's trying what she can and that's what matters. Elora looks over to Krista and Hunter, who're sleeping close to each other. She can't help but smile at them. They got tired so they were going to take a break, but they ended up being there for the past hour or so which caused Elora to be the only one doing the rest of the work. Not that she minds though, it's nice doing a bit of work by herself.
Thinking of which, she almost forgot to put up that picture onto her end table. She opens the drawer and pulls out a framed picture of her, her mom, and Hunter, all back when they were young kids hanging out with their mom. Elora remembers how it took a few attempts to actually get a good picture from something covering the lens to something getting in the way of the picture. Oh how the Professor got so annoyed at that, even her mom couldn't help but laugh at how they were going. She wasn't even upset with how it was going, she was just happy she was with her and Hunter like she always was. Elora looks out the window in front of her, out into the orange sunset sky. She wonders if her mom's watching her from up there and what she's thinking about if she is up there.
Elora then sets the picture down, having it face towards the bed, that way she can look at it when she wakes up and she doesn't have to do much for the first few minutes just to look at the picture. Her eyes then shift up to the small mirror above the end table. Krista put that there earlier so Elora could look at herself in the mirror so she didn't have to keep going from room to room for that. One thing she has to admit about Krista is that she's really thoughtful, and it's very sweet. She appreciates what she's been doing that week. She smiles at her reflection.
Not only is she appreciating and proud of them all, she's becoming more proud of the girl in the mirror.