Was she truly so self centered?

She tried to think of something that could disprove that, something that might give her some consolation. Nothing sprang to mind.

She had interacted with Aegle perhaps more than any other student in this school. What could she tell anyone about her? That she was a determined and powerful fighter? That she had more grit than anyone Lily knew? Sure, but anyone who saw her fight even once could tell anyone that.

What drove her forward? Who was Aegle? Who was she really? While it was true that Lily had never gotten her to really tell her much about herself, it was also true that she hadn't ever given an earnest attempt to truly know her friend. She had only ever focused on herself. Her problems, her hangups, the things that made Lily feel bad.

If she had tried to think about her first fight with Aegle, tried to see how she felt, perhaps she would have noticed before it was too late.

"I'm a bad friend." She said, once again focusing on herself. It was really all she knew. She hadn't had to worry about anything, or anyone else for so long. Truthfully, she didn't know what it was to be a good friend. To be a friend period. The tears came then, as she realized all of that.

And so she turned and began walking. For the first time in a long time, she just walked. She wanted to flee, wanted to take off in a sprint to let the negative energy work its way out in the oldest and truest form of stress relief available to the girl, but she couldn't. Ears drooping, shoulders fallen, face still leaking salty tears, she walked. Thunder cracked in the distance, and the sun became obscure behind dark clouds. It was perfectly fitting for her mood, but not alltogether uncommon. It was that time of year when the rains fell most often. Still, she did nothing to hurry out of the coming storm. She walked across the breadth of the island, until she found herself staring at the forested enclave that she called home, and she continued to walk. By this point the rain was pouring in earnest. It fell all around her. Lily liked to imagine that the falling rain washed away her sins, but still she felt lower than the mud beneath her feet. Even in this state, she couldn't do anything but remain in an introspective hell. She jumped into the bough of the tree which housed the leaf and loamy moss bed that she'd constructed for herself, but instead chose to lay on the bough over the center of her campfire instead. The falling rains had long since extinguished the coals that she'd always kept burning below. Perhaps if she'd hurried home she could have saved her fire, but it barely even registered as a blip.

She lay there, looking up into the weeping sky. She was as relaxed and casual laying there as she may have been on any other night, watching the stars before getting one last meal in before her evening's repose. She didn't though. In fact, it was still far too early for sleep or rest. The day had barely begun.

For the first time since she'd arrived at Vytal, Lily would miss her classes, and shirk her training. She had far too much on her mind. What did it mean to be a friend? What kind of person was she? How much longer would she be defined by the tragedy that had defined her life up until that point?

All introspection.

"S'all about you, ain't it?"

Those words haunted her. What else had she ever known?

She had resolved to throw her life away for the first worthy life she encountered, wasn't that enough? Wouldn't it be fine to sacrifice the life that she had lost already? Wasn't that noble?

The vision of that emerald eye scornfully holding Lily in it's gaze fell upon Lily's mind once again, and she froze.

How long would she remain broken?

She had thought that she was getting better around people. Sure, she spent most of her time alone. She may not actively seek friendships or companions the way that some seemed to so easily, and she may have avoided more than one encounter because she didn't wish to interrupt her own schedule, but she was getting to know how things were done right? She had plenty of people to study. Their mannerisms, their friendly little tics, the way that they held themselves to not appear off putting. She'd not even had a breakdown episode in a while. Surely she was doing something correct right?

"S'all about you, ain't it?"

The words echoed again, and again, and again. Each time she tried to piece together what it was that she was missing. What she lacked, she just couldn't. She had no clue what she lacked.

All she could do, is hope that when she met Aegle again, that things weren't so bad between them. Maybe she could pick Aegle's brain, to see how she might fix herself.

What drove Aegle forward? Why was the girl so upset with the way Lily had acted? What was Lily's cardinal sin in Aegle's eyes?

She had much to think about. This was one problem that an afternoon abusing her semblance in the library could never fix.