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Post by Aegle Vitus on Aug 25, 2016 18:39:39 GMT -6
The punching bag was surprisingly cool to the touch. Even the spots she'd so recently struck, and been striking, were surprisingly devoid of heat. Aegle wondered idly about that as she slid her finger tips, the only parts of her hands which were not bandaged up tightly, across the bags stiff leather covering. Things like thermodynamics and the transference of heat were essentially mysteries to her, so she really had no reason to expect the bag should have grown any warmer even after an hour of being wailed on. She just sorta felt like it should be. Breathing out quietly, the small girl straightened up as far as she was able and lightly rubbed one of her shoulder. She'd favored her right hand today, even though she'd tried to split her attention evenly between regular and southpaw, and she could feel her favoritism in the tightness that as working its way down her side and across her back. Aegle no longer had a preferred stance when it came to combat. Years of exhaustive training had rendered any inclinations, towards one hand over another, wholly situational, and she was as capable of leading with her right as she was with her left. Yet still she found, after slipping into the flow of training and combat, that she would still favor one hand over the other. If the problem had been a consistent one she could have focused on training the complementary stance, but the hand she favored seemed to change at complete random. Aegle dropped her arms and curled both hands into fists. She wasn't a thoughtful fighter, she didn't employ tactics and she didn't try to predict what her opponents would do. She wasn't nearly smart enough nor quick witted enough for that sort of thing, and it was a limitation she was well aware of. So instead, she constructed her style on learned reactions, muscle memory and practice. Lots and lots of practice. Not only did the practice keep her active, something she would need to be till the day she died, it also let her lose herself in the flow of combat. She didn't think when she fought, because thinking slowed her down, and while the speed this bypass of thought afforded her could help win some battles, it left her particularly vulnerable to people who did think tactically and thoughtfully in a fight. Most Grimm weren't smart enough for that sort of thing, of course, but all of Aegle's opponents were not Grimm, and those who weren't also tended to be the predictive sort. Aegle relaxed her fists and slowly exhaled. Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly as she let go of her desire to 'even herself out', which would have meant slugging away with her left hand until the tension in her left shoulder matched that in her right. It was a terrible habit, one the doctors had specifically warned her against the last time she'd collapsed after training, and, while Aegle didn't like holding back because someone else told her to, she didn't want to go back to getting bi-weekly checkups either. No, the best option was to settle down, let her body recover, and make sure she lead with her left hand tomorrow. It was with this surprisingly reasonable thought that Aegle turned her attention towards the rest of the evening. She wasn't sure what time it was, but her stomach told her that it was past dinner, which probably meant that the cafeteria was reasonably empty by now. Donning her usual smile, Aegle turned for the door, intent on making for the showers and, then, Vytal Hall. She wondered, as she collected her belongings from their spot on the floor, what was on the menu tonight. -------------------------------------
As Aegle had suspected, it was after dinner time by the time she got out of the showers and crossed the campus to Vytal Hall. This suited her just fine; Aegle loathed waiting in lines, so waiting till the bulk of the student body had eaten was her way of avoiding it. She still ended up having to wait for her food, in so far as she arrived at the cafeteria long after most students had already left for their evening's activities, but she at least got to be doing something in the interim. If it was ever an option, Aegle would rather be doing anything rather than doing nothing. Making her way into the cafeteria, Aegle gave the large dining hall's scarcely scattering of inhabitants only the most cursory of glances. She was not, as a general rule, the most observant person in Remnant, and she was presently far more interested in the meaty scent drifting from the dining counter. Her grin redoubled in size. If there was anything she loved to eat after a workout, it was heaps upon unhealthily large heaps of protein.
Aegle arrived at the counter in short order, moving quickly and easily despite the slight hunch in her shoulders and pigeon toed quality of her gait. While she was not what anyone would ever call graceful, she brought a certain self assurance to her steps which made up for any inherent short comings where her physiology was concerned. Hers were well practiced, confident steps, even if some were much shorter than others. She got her supper in short order, opting for a plate of the daily special, which happened to be a thick cut of meat, dripping in some delicious smelling, unhealthy looking gravy, with a side of mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. She stopped before making her way to a seat, and quickly scanned the hall with renewed interest, if only to see if there was anyone still present whom she knew...
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Post by lilywilde on Aug 25, 2016 21:16:21 GMT -6
As Aegle scans the cafeteria, she does not see anyone who is too familiar to her however, out of a nearby window, she might catch a glance of a certain cat faunus stealthily stalking an innocent bird. Claws out, and ready to pounce, she leaps forth with a burst of insane speed. The bird never stood a chance. She brings it over to a nearby pile of similarly caught birds.
She begins plucking the feathers of each bird, placing them on the ground when she's done, a determined look in her eyes. She had a small pile of sticks there ready to ignite. She had been walking by this building when the smells of roasting meat reached her nose, driving her hunger into over drive. She had no clue that if she were to go in and ask that she would simply be given food, that was not a world she had ever been a part of. She got the fire going easily, she was happy that she needed not worry about attracting grim here on the school campus, and could start fires without worry here. In fact, ever since she'd gotten here, she was learning to let her guard down a little. Not by much, but once in a while she found herself actually relaxing. As she sat in front of the fire, skewering her freshly caught birds and driving the sticks into the ground to roast, she found that she was indeed relaxed. She hadn't seen a Grimm in a while, and there were people stronger than her keeping watch for them. She hadn't ever been a part of a tribe like this, it would have been easy to forget about the world outside, the wilds that she came from, if not for her ambition to one day return and save all of those people who could not save themselves.
She sighed contentedly as she added a few small twigs to the fire. She was drawing concerned glances from some nearby students, but no teachers were present to tell her to extinguish her fire. A lesson she might have to learn one day, but it seemed that this day, she'd get away with it.
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Aug 25, 2016 23:29:02 GMT -6
Aegle didn't notice Lily on her way towards her table. Given that her perfunctory scan of the room's inhabitants had been of those actually within the room, she didn't see the faunus girl drawing a great deal of attention outside. Or, more accurately, she was not the first person in the room to see her.
"Whaat the fuuu..." one of the students, seated beside one of the walls, said. She drew out each syllable and loudly enunciated them in her husky voice, evidently wanting to draw the attention of others. A few other diners, Aegle among them, turned towards her to see what all the fuss was about. The huntress in question had long raven hair, and had shaved one side of her head close to the scalp, which gave her hairstyle a lopsided, not altogether unpleasant asymmetry. Her broad face was a mask of disgust however, and her olive skin tinted in a strangely green hue. Aegle had looked at the young woman first, and remained altogether oblivious about the source of her disgust as a direct result, but she was in the minority where that was concerned.
"What is she doing?" Another student, a blonde boy about Aegle's age, dressed in a monochromatic jacket and shirt combo, exhaled disbelievingly as he approached the windows.
"Are those pigeons?" A third voice asked, though Aegle didn't manage to spot its owner. Half a dozen people were converging on the windows by that point, each wearing some variation of disgusted fascination on their paling faces. Aegle impaled what was left of her meat on the end of her fork, then hopped lightly away from her table. The press of people had grown too tight for her to make out what they were all looking at, and she was naturally too short to peer over anyone else's shoulders.
"What's goin' on?" She asked, her shrill voice difficult for those gathered around the windows to ignore.
"Some faunus has lit a fire on the green." One of the students, the blonde boy she thought, answered without turning back to look at her.
"Filthy bloody animal." Another added harshly, in tones which they had, no doubt, intended to be much quieter than they were. Aegle's eyes widened, and she loped over to the collection of students and tried to push through them for a look of her own.
"Is she going to cook them?" the pigeon voice asked, horror evident in her faint voice.
"Where did she get all of them from?" another asked, his voice quite a bit deeper, and carrying easily through the gathered crowd.
"Lemme see." Aegle demanded, before she stuffed her fork into her mouth and grabbed a hold of the edge of one student's belt and another's shoulder in a vain attempt to pull them out of the way and free up some space. Her efforts freed up a small gap in the press, which she immediately thrust herself bodily into. Her vantage point wasn't the best but it was good enough to make out the hunched shape on the other side of the glass, beside which the glow of a fire could be seen.
"We should tell someone!" The pigeon girl protested.
"How could they let it into the school?" Another voice hissed, the same who'd previously referred to the faunus girl as an animal.
"Disgusting, isn't it?" A new voice asked, though it was unclear whether or not its owner was agreeing with the previous speaker, or just asking a rhetorical question.
Aegle jockeyed for a better look and tried to shove her neighbor aside, but the taller student held his ground. With her meat still in her mouth, all she could do after that was growl in frustration. Finally, she simply forced herself away from the group and made for the door. She was gonna get a better look, even if it meant going outside to do it.
Aegle burst out through the cafeteria doors, yanked her fork out of her mouth and determinedly chewed the final morsel which had been pierced upon it. She marched to the edge of the building and rounded the corner towards where the faunus was camped. Then she stopped, pretty much the exact second she saw who the faunus was.
"Lily?" Aegle asked, her tone and expression suddenly filled to capacity with her usual friendliness. "Oh wow, that is you, in't it?"
Prancing closer, her initial objective forgotten, the orange haired girl made to investigate what her newest friend was up to. Only when she saw the fire and the pile of plucked pigeons did she remember why she'd come outside in the first place.
"Oh shoot." The small huntress breathed, her tone and attitude changing drastically over the course of those two words. While it wasn't such a huge stretch to make, it really was to Aegle's credit that she made the connection as quickly as she did. Usually she required far more in the way of objective facts, slapping her in the face, before things slid into place as neatly in her brain as they just had. Aegle's prancing approach slowed before coming to a complete stop just a few feet from where Lily had lit her fire.
"Oooooh shoot..." the diminutive girl sighed, at a rare loss for words as the sheer strangeness of the situation struck her. "You're the faunus who's cookin' birds."
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Post by lilywilde on Aug 26, 2016 0:11:01 GMT -6
Lily looked up at Aegle, and smiled as one of the only people she recognized at the school so far made her way over. "Oh, hey Aegle!" She said with a grin. "You want some? I think I made more than I actually need..." She shrugs though, turning some of the cooking birds for a more even roast. She was blissfully unaware of the taboo that she was committing, and of the throng of students inside the cafeteria who were currently gawking at her. She had, for perhaps the first time in the previous three years, let her guard down. She wasn't obsessing over every passing person, she wasn't scanning the world around her in a constant search for threats, and she wasn't worried about being murdered. She saw the merits of city life. She squatted by the fire, letting the warm glow bask over her and sighing.
"Y'know, I really like this place Aegle. I know I'm super new here, and I know that I've got tons to learn, but I really think there's something special about all of this. You..." She felt herself tearing up slightly, and stopped herself from saying the rest. She wanted to tell her that she had no idea what life could have been.
She thought of her life up until this point, of the people she'd lost, the hardships she'd endured, and the troubles she had to overcome. She was glad that it was all finally over. At least, over for now. One day she would have to return to that world, but for now she would be safe and sheltered.
She didn't know why, she had an urge to tell this girl about the hell that she had lived. About what life outside of the walls and away from guardians entailed, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. This kind of dampened her mood a little bit. She'd never had trouble telling her parents anything.
She grew distant, introspective. She grabbed one of the birds and began munching on it. It wasn't fully cooked, but she'd eaten them raw before when circumstances required it. This wasn't so bad. It was still mostly cooked at the very least. By the time she finished, the next one would be fully cooked. Despite the warmth of the fire she felt a bit cold. As she took a few more bites of the bird, she almost forgot about Aegle's presence. She wasn't used to having people around, and she wasn't used to keeping them entertained. She didn't really know what was socially expected in a situation like this, so she said nothing, and kept eating. Trying not to betray her thoughts too plainly in her face, and failing to do so.
With a sigh, she took another bite out of the bird and looked back to Aegle. "Y'don't need to stand y'know, sit down by the fire where it's warm."
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Aug 26, 2016 0:51:46 GMT -6
As anyone who'd met the orange haired girl could doubtlessly attest, Aegle was not the sort of person who would ever be described with words like observant, insightful or smart. She was a simple creature, one who traipsed blithely through life on instinct and impulse, subject only to the whims of her easily distracted personality. So when she saw the way Lily smiled at her, she wanted to smile too. She didn't notice the relaxed body language, nor observe the lack of guarded behavior from when she'd previously spoken with the strange faunus girl. These things were too minute and subtle for Aegle to consciously pick up on. Still, she knew enough to know that the faunus girl was happy, and that was a pleasant change from the behavior which had characterized their initial meeting.
"No thanks; Just ate..." Aegle answered in response to Lily's offer to share her catch and, to her credit, she managed to keep any sign of revulsion out of her voice, though her face briefly flashed her discomfort at the idea of eating a city bird. While she might not have been renowned for her forethought, Aegle knew enough about pigeons to know they were only slightly better than pests, and that eating one was probably a really bad idea. She didn't know why it was a bad idea though, and only had the vaguest notion that it would probably make her sick. Before she could say as much, or anything else for that matter, Aegle was forestalled by Lily's strangely candid comments about being new to the school.
"Heh..." Aegle grinned and hunkered down before Lily, in a pose reminiscent of the first time they had met, her body emitting a low mechanical whirring as she did so.
"I know whatcha mean..." she confessed, already growing distracted from her initial reasons for approaching the faunus girl. "Same thing sorta happened to me when I started school again."
Her smile grew faintly nostalgic as she recollected her first years in Vytal and how overwhelming it had all seemed. She didn't notice the darkening of Lily's mood. Not immediately at least. By the time she had, the faunus girl was already turning away, focusing her attention on her recently roasted catch. Aegle winced visibly at the first bite which Lily took. The offer to move a bit closer was met with equal misgivings, as Aegle distantly recalled that lighting fires on campus was frowned upon by the general staff.
"Nah, thanks... I'm wearin' my hoodie; M'plenty warm."
A couple of moments passed before Aegle spoke up again. She wasn't good at these sorts of things, things which required more than brute force and determination, and she knew it. Being tactful was not one of Aegle's strong suits, least of all when she was stuck into a situation she'd never been in before. Trying to carefully and delicately inform someone less socially capable than she was that what they were doing was a bit weird, all without hurting their feelings, was certainly not something she'd ever done before.
"I was actually gonna go for a walk." Aegle finally said. "Burn off dinner, ya know what I mean?" a more attentive person would have been able to guess that Lily likely had no idea what she meant. A more attentive person might also have noted that, of any of Aegle's potential shortcomings, a need to burn off recently consumed calories was not among them.
"D'ya wanna come with? You can bring your birds if you like..." tactless and inexperienced though she was, Aegle did at least recognize that the best solution to the situation surely started with getting Lily away from the scene of the crime. "We'd have to put out your fire though..."
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Post by lilywilde on Aug 26, 2016 1:42:12 GMT -6
Lily nodded, these birds didn't taste the same as the ones she usually had, but they weren't all that bad. She took another bite, before plucking the other two birds from their positions next to the fire and standing up. She activated her semblance, and ran through the fire. Once, twice, three times. By the third pass, the fire was reduced to embers. The flame itself extinguished due to her speed sapping the oxygen from the fire. Once it was just embers, she took one of the sticks she'd skewered a bird through, and poked the embers so they'd be arranged in a way that was the least likely to reignite. Finally, she kicked at the grass until a bit of dirt was freed, and kicked it onto the embers to further extinguish the fire. Her first bird has been basically stripped of meat at this point, but she still crunches down on a bone. Miraculously, the other two birds she was holding on to while using her semblance are still present and stable on their roasting sticks.
"Got anywhere specific in mind?" She asked looking around. For the first time, she noticed the throng of people looking at them from the nearby window. Her blood runs cold. There is no doubt in her mind that each and every one of them is staring directly at her. She looks to Aegle, a hurt look on her face. "What's going on Aegle?" She asked looking back to the faces in the window. Some seemed disgusted. Others seemed angry, and others still seemed to be taking some gleeful enjoyment from the spectacle. "I... I did something dumb didn't I?" She asked. Her head drooped as she averted her eyes to look away from the faces and their judgmental stares. She stood there quietly for some time, clutching her kills and replaying the events of that evening. Nothing she'd done seemed out of place. She looked up again, still met with the eyes of people who seemed to have such low opinions of her already, she clutched tightly the sticks which held her prize, and vanished in a blur of white light. she sped away faster than eyes were likely able to see. She used to the full speed allowed by her semblance, a neck breaking Mach 2, to dash away from the greens, and away from prying eyes.
She ran until her Aura gave out, and searched for the nearest dark space. She found a gap in between buildings that suited her purposes, and squatted there, her eyes running over with tears. "C'mon idiot, can't you just not screwthings up for ten minutes?" She asked herself. The tears rolling down her cheeks were still lit briefly by the afterglow of her semblance which still hung in the air nearby. She'd let her guard down. If she hadn't, maybe she would have noticed the people gathering. Maybe she would have been able to figure out what she'd done wrong. Maybe she wouldn't have felt like such a loser.
She punched the wall she was leaning against, leaving a small crack. "Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid..." She sobbed, unsure why she was so defeated by this. She had been alone for so long, she didn't need the approval of strangers, but for some reason,she wanted it. She wanted to belong, to fit in, to be a real person in this real socieity. She felt cold and distant as the tears washed over her. She buried her head in her knees, trying but utterly failing to muffle the sobs that she was letting out.
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Aug 26, 2016 23:56:14 GMT -6
Quite literally about to suggest 'anywhere but here', in those exact words, Aegle was just a touch too slow, and Lily had already begun to notice her audience .
"Aw, don't worry about them..." she started to say, but even the orange haired girl could tell she was too late. Lily's sudden anguish was painted across her face in strokes so broad, they colored the world around her as well. Very little in her life had actually prepared Aegle for what came next. Aegle had never had very many friends. Sure, she'd had people she called friends, whom she cared about and like spending time around, and sometimes they even returned those feelings, but she'd never really had a connection with someone else who wasn't a member of her family. And while this curiosity didn't directly detract from her life, it did mean she had missed out on certain experiences which others might consider ubiquitous. Experiences such as needing to console someone through an upsetting experience, or keep them from from losing their cool. That Aegle had never had to deal with either situation, meant she was wholly unprepared when Lily, overwhelmed by the understanding of what she had just done and what was happening around her, bolted away like a streak of quicksilver. In the moments that followed, Aegle was simply stuck there, rooted in place, beside Lily's smothered campfire, her eyes wide and her face slack. Ironic that she could react to an incoming attack faster than most people could blink, and yet she was dumbfounded by something so mundane as an upset acquaintance. It was a wholly unflattering few seconds. Only as her brain sluggishly caught up with recent events did she realize what had happened, and understand that she needed to act.
"Crud..." Aegle hissed in mild expletive as she lurched to her feet in a manner reminiscent of a malfunctioning wind up toy. "Lily, come back!"
Aegle was not slow by any means; Even while geared for combat, her speed and maneuverability had surprised many an opponent. Yet she was also not especially fast. Years of training and more than a little mechanical enhancement had let her overcome the crueler nature of her physiology, but that physiology still establish a glass ceiling which forever kept her from being considered a quick, at least by huntsman standards. She had scarcely traveled further than fifty feet by the time Lily's trail began to fade, and it was fading far faster than she could chase it. Between the great disparity in their comparative speed, and the precious seconds she'd wasted gawking when she should have been moving, it was clear to Aegle that she was going to lose sight of Lily's path before she actually found where the faunus girl had gone. Not that knowing that kept Aegle from running. As exhaustive as her evening's exercises had been, they were not up to the task of slowing her down, and she sprinted in her strange, loping, limping way till Lily's trail finally vanished out of sight.
"Lily!?" Aegle yelled out, paying little attention to where she'd wound up and merely listening and looking for any sign of her lost friend. "Lily!? Don't worry 'bout it. Come on. S'not a big deal." She shouted. Between her shrill voice and her truly impressive capacity for volume, she earned more than a couple appraising looks. A few of the people she passed by as she shouted even looked convinced that she'd lost her mind.
"Lily?"
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Post by lilywilde on Aug 27, 2016 0:25:47 GMT -6
Lily could feel herself getting lost in the sorrow. This was supposed to be the easy part. This was supposed to be when things got happy, she got stronger, and everything started going alright. Instead, she was making herself a freak in the eyes of everyone. She still didn't fully understand what she'd done wrong, but if she had to guess, it was that she didn't get food from the building that smelled like food. Or maybe it was the fire? She hadn't seen any fires since she'd been here.
At any rate she had screwed up and screwed up big. She would't be able to show her face, or at the very least she would have to deal with people who'd seen her spreading rumors. She was slumped against the wall and wallowing in self pity when she heard someone crying out for her. It was distant at first, but before long the cries grew close. They passed her by and continued on. She almost let them go, but it was Aegle. The nice girl who had been the first to greet her. The closes thing she'd had to a friend since her arrival. She tried to wipe the tears from her face when she stood up. She called out to Aegle weakly.
"I-I'm sorry that I ran," she said weakly, almost inaudibly when Aegle was about twenty feet past her. She sniffled, trying to clear her breathing passage so she cloud speak a little louder.
"I just... I panicked. I do that a lot around here," she said feeling very small and insignificant in that moment. "I'm... I'm not from around here, I'm not used to people, or how to be around them." She wanted to go on, but she still wasn't sure how. Maybe she'd be able to though.
"Aegle, I'm not... I'm not like everyone here. I don't really belong." She said hugging herself more tightly. Her cheeks were red, both from the tears that were still streaming down, and from the embarrassment and vulnerability she felt bringing this up like this. "Can you just... Can we not talk about this here? In the open?" She said gesturing around them where some students were there gawking. Some staring at the skewered roast birds that Lily had with her still, some just at the tears streaming down her face, and others were still hanging around after seeing her show up in a blur of white light.
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Aug 29, 2016 0:43:24 GMT -6
Aegle, in her haste to find Lily, nearly passed the feline faunus by entirely; A circumstance where the irony of such a situation would have been wholly eclipsed by its tragedy. But Aegle, defying all expectation, actually managed to notice the furtive voice from the alley where in Lily had secretted herself. Slowing down was an awkward enterprise for Aegle, but she somehow accomplished it and turned back the way she had come.
"Lily?" She asked with uncharacteristic care as she neared the mouth of the side street.
"I-I'm sorry that I ran," answered a quiet voice from within, causing Aegle to slow even more. The exact tone and the quiet sniffling which accompanied those words struck the orange haired girl. Not because she had expected Lily to be anything other than sad or embarrassed, but rather because they let her know just how out of her depth she was. The truth was that Aegle hadn't really had any expectations on what she might find when she tracked Lily down. What she did possess was the keen understanding that she wasn't really equipped to console someone who was sad or embarrassed on the level which Lily undoubtedly was. The fact of the matter was that she simply lacked the necessary tools for comforting someone who'd just made a huge fool out of themselves.
"S'alright..." Aegle replied, non-committally, as she came closer to the curled up faunus, tucked unobtrusively against the alley wall. It was a narrow space, one which Aegle, with her awkward hunch and difficult steps, could not easily navigate, but she managed well enough and plopped heavily down across from Lily in a half crouch, half sit.
"I just... I panicked." the small faunus said, starting before the human girl had quite settled herself. "I do that a lot around here." Lily shifted minutely as she sat, radiating discomfort and frustration atop her embarrassment. Not that Aegle noticed. All she saw was the scrunched up, knee hugging ball that Lily had curled into, which she recognized as a somewhat universal sign of distress.
"I'm... I'm not from around here, I'm not used to people, or how to be around them."
Like the finer points of Lily's body language, which undoubtedly said a great deal about the exact tone and scope of her feelings at that moment, there was a lot to unpack in the words which the faunus girl chose. And much like reports of her body language, most of Lily's words flew right over Aegle's head. The flowed into her, were heard and understood, but paid very little thought in the process. Such that Aegle didn't even consider the more complex, fish out of water nature of Lily's plight. She just understood that the faunus girl had done something stupid and panicked when she thought someone was going to get mad. To her credit, she wasn't terribly far off the mark either.
Given that her tool kit for dealing with sadness and embarrassment was somewhat more lighter than usual, Aegle didn't have a response ready for the short pause in Lily's words. She might have consoled Lily, or told her it wasn't a bit deal, or empathized with her fear. Instead, Aegle simply stared at the curled up cat-girl, as a feeling of sour impotence cloyed at her guts.
"Aegle," Lily broke in before Aegle could come to a decision on what to say. "I'm not... I'm not like everyone here. I don't really belong."
Again, Lily's words flowed through Aegle, heard but scarcely understood, only to rushed out by the words that followed.
"Can you just... Can we not talk about this here? In the open?"
It took a moment for Aegle to realize she was expected to answer, and it was only Lily's glance around and gesturing towards those watching them which alighted her upon that realization. Aegle bristled at the staring faces, her own impotence suddenly transmuted into a deep sense of protective aggression. She really looked quite ridiculous as she shot more than one student, many of which were at least a foot taller than she, a look that was clearly meant to be intimidating. None of them paid her any mind.
"Don't worry 'bout them." Aegle finally said, before she turned her emerald eyes upon Lily once more. Then, as though to punctuate her instruction, she reached out and patted the faunus girl on one of her arms where it was looped around her knees. Her hand was bandaged, as it had been the day they had met, but her grip was surprisingly gentle.
"And don'tcha go talkin' 'bout where you do and don't belong." She moved a little closer, subconsciously trying to put herself between Lily and the prying eyes of those whose own discretion and decency had been outweighed by their curiosity. "Just cause you're different don't mean you don't get to be here."
To her credit, Aegle had decided to tackle the one thing which Lily had said which she thought she could actually understand. After all, anyone who knew anything about Aegle would know she wasn't exactly ideal huntsman material either. Conversely, she also might have picked a better point to lead on, but Aegle's grasp of the situation and its underlying complexity was limited at best.
Adjusting her seat a bit, Aegle settled in beside Lily and reached across the faunus girl's shoulders with one bony arm. Hugging her in what she no doubt thought was a reassuring fashion, Aegle said, "So far as first impressions go, ya sorta blew it back there... I dunno why ya didn't just come into the caff with the rest of us if you were so hungry, but I guess that doesn't really matter right now."
After a couple of moments, she pulled back and patted Lily on the shoulder.
"Come on." Aegle then said, before she pushed herself awkwardly off the ground. For as much practiced ease she had when moving while upright, she certainly didn't have an easy time getting onto her feet. "We can go talk in my dorm if ya like..." Finally upright, she held her hand out to Lily and put on a broad, stupid grin.
"Or you can cry without some bunch of jerks watchin' ya do it. Don't matter to me."
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Post by lilywilde on Aug 29, 2016 16:49:08 GMT -6
Lily was focused on Aegle now, and not those people around that were still gawking. When Aegle touched her arm, and when she hugged her, Lily tensed at first. She wasn't used to any sort of close contact, and she wasn't totally comfortable with it. However, it was still kind of nice, just as a declaration of closeness. She said nothing to stop her from touching her again. Nobody else had taken such an interest in Lily yet, and if this girl was going to be a friend, well, she could do worse.
"Don't worry 'bout them. And don'tcha go talkin' 'bout where you do and don't belong. Don't worry 'bout them.Just cause you're different don't mean you don't get to be here."
That thought, Lily knew those words would likely stick with her forever. Simple, but kind. She wiped away a few tears as she smiled despite herself. Something that Aegle said next caught her attention, and she raised an eyebrow.
"..I dunno why ya didn't just come into the caff with the rest of us if you were so hungry, but I guess that doesn't really matter right now."
"What is a...caff?" Lily asked her voice a little hoarse from the crying. Was that the missing piece of the puzzle? Does society have rules on where you can and cannot eat your food? No, she was certain she'd seen students eating out in the open before.
Lily tugged at her hair in frustration, trying to wrap her head around all of this nonsense. It didn't make any sense to her at all. Nothing here was even a little normal. There were rules on where and when to eat, people rarely said what they meant, people would stare at you but never bother to tell you what you'd done to deserve it. She was very frustrated, and very out of her element. She wanted to scream, but even back in the wilds that would have been taboo. Out there, where negative emotion draws the Grimm, a scream of anguish may as well be a beacon.
In here the rule of thumb persisted, or she assumed it did at any rate.
"We can go talk in my dorm if ya like..." Aegle offered. If Lily were more perverted, she might have read something into that. If Aegle were more, she might have meant something by that. Instead though she just nodded and sniffled a little, trying to control herself and her emotions. She was convinced that the hard part was over, but she had no idea what life still had in store for her.
"I would like that, I think. It'll be nice to get away from all of the prying eyes, and... and.."
She thought of all the things she wanted to tell Aegle. About herself, her life outside of the walls, and those that had saved her life.
She wanted to tell her about her parents, and how their death was her fault.
She wanted to tell Aegle about the tribe that left them behind, and about the struggles her parents went through to prepare her for a life outside...
But mostly, she just wanted to thank the girl properly. She didn't know how, but she would figure something out.
As the two started walking towards the dorm complex, with Aegle leading, Lily pulled the strand of sinew that held her hair and tied it around her wrist, letting her hair fall around her figure, the long bangs shielded her face slightly. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes solemn. She still felt very much like a freak being paraded around on display.
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