Unexpected

[yuki]

The day was very beautiful. So beautiful, that Ara Thorne decided to go outside. She needed a little fresh air. And it wouldn't hurt to go to the courts.

The Chimera didn't really know much about tennis though. She knew it was her mother's favorite sport and Ara remembered watching her play it a year before she died.

Maybe I could try?

Arabella walked to the tennis court, carrying her racket in one hand and an electric green tennis ball in the other. On her shoulders, she had a backpack which carried her water bottle and her sunglasses inside.

It was bright when she entered the area. The sun was high into the sky and there were no sign of clouds.

Ara shrugged off her backpack and gripped her racket firmly. She took in a deep breath and threw the ball into the air. Swinging as hard as she could, the ball hit the racket with a loud Crack! Ara smiled. She hit the ball perfectly on her first try!

She watched the electric green blur as it flew through the air and bounced off of a wall opposite of the court.

But Ara had swung the tennis racket too hard. The ball came flying back at her and before she knew what had happened, Ara was on the ground. The ball ricocheted off into another direction and landed in a field somewhere.

Arabella grabbed frantically at her left eye. What just happened? She felt something like water drip down her face. It ran down to her jawline. Ara licked the corner of her mouth. It tasted like metal. She knew now what she'd done. Her eyes began to well up with tears.

Then there was a sound coming from the entrance to the tennis courts. The Chimera looked up, covering her left eye with one small hand. There was another student coming.

[ωΘĿƒ]

A calm, friendly laugh echoed up from the sidelines. A laugh that would otherwise be cruel to hear, but that was made to sound benign for all who would hear it. Cheerful. That was the goal here. Maintain a cheerful disposition, and all would be well.

"That was a good shot." The voice made just so it would be open, nonthreatening. "But, you should watch the ball next time."

Le Cyll trotted up, out from the sidelines where the shade of the trees made it cooler and more pleasant. He liked the shade. Not because of the light variation, but because he otherwise would have black fur, and that tended to heat up very quickly and make him uncomfortable. He wasn't wearing black now, though. He was dressed in a white t-shirt and tan jacket, with jeans to compliment. Black was a nice color, sure, but it was only one in a spectrum of them. He liked the variation, so although black wasn't past his point of adornment, he chose usually not to wear it.

Black made him look ominous, and he did not want to attract attention to the fact that his personality was more so than ominous. It was outright unacceptable.

No, he wanted to seem normal. Interestingly enough, normality was easily achieved in a school full of creatures. All hiding something, all covering up their true selves lest others judge them. He felt the similarity, yet, it wasn't humans he was hiding from.

It was everyone else.

"That black eye looks bad." Le Cyll said, throwing a little empathy into his voice for the effect. "Do you mind if I see it? I'm a doctor."

He was standing above the girl now, making his face into a mask of concern. He thought he did it all quite well.
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[areyna]

Areyna didn't feel so pleasent right now. She just got her cousin in trouble, a detention actually. Just to protect her. Sigh. Maybe exploring the school would help make her feel more at ease. She approached a tennis court. Eeek! Sports plus Aryena equals crisis. She was just about to turn the other way when she saw a girl on the ground covering her left eye, there was someone else tending to her wound. Wait! Areyna recognized here as the girl she ran into at the bathroom! With out any thought an instantanious action she ran towards them!
"Are you ok! Ummmm.....Arabella!" a worried expression on her face.

[yuki]

Ara glanced up at the older boy and winced. She could feel the pain coming. Her eye was burning in the blood that was coming out like red tears.

"Thank you," She stood up and removed her hand from her face. The boy seemed friendly and compassionate. His voice soothed her and made her relax as he examined her injured eye.

The Chimera heard another voice. It sounded close. She looked past the boy and saw a girl she recognized from earlier.
What's her name again? Ara's eyebrows pulled together.
"Ow," she winced again from the pain, her stomach churning. It was then that she remembered.

"Areyna."

[areyna]

"Are you alright!" Aryena said again panting. She paused for a moment. Arabella remembers my name. She then noticed the boy standing next to her. Aryena bowed hanging her head blushing.
"He-He-Hello. I-I'm Areyna" she stuttered nervously.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Le Cyll watched the happy reunion with some fascination. Wow. Each of them had forgotten the other's name, yet both were happy to meet again. Why was that, he wondered? They didn't seem well acquainted. More like an accidental meet, actually. Yet, they seemed to rejoice at the reunion, so he kept quiet and checked out the injured eye.

The blood had welled up out of the socket, and was making a bit of a mess. Le Cyll snorted the strong smell of the metallic blood out of his nostrils, trying to keep himself focused. Chimera. The blood smelled like Chimera. Le Cyll patted himself down for something to clean the blood with, and found nothing to use. While he was doing this, one of the two - the uninjured one - had offered her name.

"Le Cyll." He smiled, sweeping the courts for someone else. There. He looked back at the injured girl, giving her a little run down.

"It looks like it's a bad blow, but don't worry. These things heal fast. I'm going to get a towel to stop the bleeding, okay?"

To show her, he pointed at a man sitting on a bench nearby, workout towel in hand, slurping down some lime colored sports drink.

"Be right back, and try not to touch it. Applying pressure will make it worse."

With that, he went to fetch the towel.
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[yuki]

He was exceptionally kind. Perhaps too kind. Arabella wondered as she stood there awkwardly, waiting for Le Cyll to bring her the towel.

"Areyna," she said turning to her new friend. "Are you here to play tennis too?"

[areyna]

"O no no no! If I try to hit a ball I'll end up with two busted eyes." she pointed to her face speaking softly and timidly.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Le Cyll was able to haggle the towel away from the man, giving one mention to the injured girl and pointing in her general direction. Sympathy. Worked every time. The man handed it over happily.

"Does she need anything? The doctor? An ambulance?"

He sounded worried. Too worried, if Le Cyll was allowed to judge. It was a few damaged capillaries, not a broken limb. God knows how many times he's had to deal with those before... And they did not have antiseptics or anesthetics in the moorlands. Infected wounds were extremely common, considering the perpetual state of damp, and the rotting plants that composed the ground and poisoned the waters....

No, he could handle one single black eye.

"I'm a doctor." Le Cyll replied.

"Really?" The man was skeptical. "You look a little young to be a full blown doctor to me..."

"I'm older than I look." He said, biting back the sting in his words. Still not old enough to be a doctor, but he was.

He was a doctor. Enough of one to be considered an excellent physician in any practical sense of the term. People had speculated most of his life why this was, but no one had found an answer. He did not like helping the living. He was not compassionate - he had no drive to preserve life. Yet, here he was, good at something so useless to him.

Well, to be fair it had served a purpose in it's time, but now it was nothing more than an interesting hobby.

He took the towel with a thank you, and trotted back over to the girls.

The man had let him use a little ice as well, and both the towel and the ice would help stop the bleeding and lower the swelling. Le Cyll wrapped up the ice in the towel, keeping the towel thin enough for the cold to seep through, and handed it to the injured girl.

"Hold this against your eye. Not too hard, but make sure it's cold enough."

Wiping his hands together after handing her the towel, he looked out over the courts. Why was he here again? Not that tending to the every need of this pitiful little child wasn't fun, but he had come for a specific reason...

Drawing a blank, he decided to stay and tend more until his purpose here returned.
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[areyna]

Areyna figeted with her fingers awkwardly as she watched Le Cyll continue to tend to Arabella. The silenece was uncomfortable but Aryena is so bashful she would never start a conversation let alone be able to mumble a word out.

[yuki]

Arabella carefully took the towel from Le Cyll. She grimaced as she put it over her eye and then removed it, finding that there was a dark red stain.

"Oh," she put the towel back on her face. It felt soft and gentle, taking some of the stinging away. "I'm sorry. It's covered with my mistake." She looked at Le Cyll sheepishly.

Then she glanced at Areyna. "What are you doing here if you're not playing tennis?" Ara tried to pick up the conversation again.

[areyna]

Areyna pouted hiding her face with her long silky black hair.
"I got my cousin a detention..." she said guiltly."I was hoping exploring the school campass would help me feel better." Pause. "Umm....it's kinda helping. I think......"

[yuki]

"Really?"

Ara's eye brows rose. "Ouch." she winced again, shifting the towel around gingerly on her face. The pain was still there, but the blood flow was slowly decreasing.

"You got your cousin in detention?" She was surprised. Areyna didn't seem like the trouble maker type. "How?"

[areyna]

"I um..I....he was just trying to protect me from someone." She looked up. "I told him I was ok!....But he didn't listen." The guilty convicted expression still there tears rising threatening to slip.

[ωΘĿƒ]

How cute. It seemed they were both emotional, shy, and had self confidence issues. He knew right then that they'd be good friends... While of course he sat here and dawdled away the time into nothingness. One of them had a cousin that sounded a little like a hot head. How fun. At least there were still spine-bearing individuals in this school.

Le Cyll couldn't stand the weak. It bothered him so much to see them around - hurt him, you could say. He was still struck with such confusion over them. Mainly, these feelings stemmed from one unanswered question:

How did the weak survive in a world as carnal and destructive as this?

He had been puzzling over this conundrum for the longest time, yet he always saw it thrown in his face. These two... He doubted they would survive anything of real danger, yet here they were, alive and well, and chatting about the smallest of things that set them over the edge and bothered them. It didn't make sense to him. How could it, when all around, even in their own school, there were things just like him that wanted only the destruction of the weak?

He found himself getting too close to the edge of a depressive spike, and managed to pull himself out at the last moment.

Oh, life could be so troublesome, couldn't it?

"Don't move your eye." He sad, forcing out a small innocent smile and an empathetic voice with more difficulty that usual. The girl had tried to raise her eyebrows, and found out that it hurt her to do so. "You don't want to make it any worse!"

Without thinking, he ran over to the previous man and fetched a few more cubes of ice.

"Here. It's melting in this hot weather, and you want to keep it cool at least until the swelling goes down."

Interesting, that he could so easily help her. It must have been a habit of his - to see the wounded and need to fix what ailed them. He didn't even need to worry about it anymore. He just helped.

Hmm. He wondered why that was. Long lost compassion, maybe?

No, just a habit. A bad habit, at that. He had to stop being so nice. It could draw unneeded attention.

Again, without thinking, he checked the eye over, and was pleased with how low the swelling had reduced. Damn! He had to stop doing that.
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