Moving on.
"Mind if I take a rain check, even though it isn't raining?"
I knew Willow would make good on the promise she'd made the night before. She had something to do, something that I'm sure involved that Fred girl we ran into, and I wasn't about to try and stop her. She had her Resolve Face on. Anyone who knew Willow at all knew what that meant. I ( Read more... )
I knew Willow would make good on the promise she'd made the night before. She had something to do, something that I'm sure involved that Fred girl we ran into, and I wasn't about to try and stop her. She had her Resolve Face on. Anyone who knew Willow at all knew what that meant. I ( Read more... )
Speak of the devil.
"That's me. Kyla, right?" I asked, slowing down a little. There was no mistaking that scent around her now. She was just like me. Well, maybe not just like, but it seemed like we had a few things in common. In that case, she had probably guessed what I was, too. Considering she was another werewolf, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to put those pieces together.
"Sorry we didn't get a proper introduction last night. Seems like things got a little crazy there. You're friends with Anya?" I went on to ask. 'Friends' and 'Anya' didn't seem to fit in the same sentence. Anya was nice enough, but it was obvious she hadn't read the most recent edition of "How to Win Friends and Influence People." I guess you can't be too picky around here, though. You find someone who's on your side and might understand your situation, whatever it may be, and stick with 'em. Works pretty well, most of the time. Helped me make some great friends in people like Willow, Xander, and Buffy. More than friends, in Will's case.
So. Wonder what Kyla wanted?
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Up this close, I was fairly certain that I had been right about Oz. He definitely seemed to be of the same kind as father and myself. I certainly had not expected to meet others of like kind in Sunnydale. But considering everything I had detected thus far, I was having no trouble come to terms with it at the moment. And I assumed that with the full moon looming not too far away, we were probably even easier for others of our kind to detect. I had already begun to put in extra mediation time. With the new environment I was in, I assumed it would probably take a bit of adjusting to see how the nuances of my condition reacted to the change of venue. This also meant considering the possibility that he knew what I was as well, a situation that I was not quite sure how to proceed on.
With the expression on his face, it was obvious that I was going to have to come up with a reason for stopping him. “I just wanted to return the greeting, as I didn’t get to properly extend it before everyone went their separate ways yesterday. “That entire encounter was a bit…unusual, wouldn’t you say? Or perhaps it was just me.”
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"I'd say 'unusual' fits the criteria." Not only for last night's encounter, but for encounters of most any kind that went down in Sunnydale. Kyla must have been new to town, otherwise she wouldn't have been so hesitant to use the word "unusual."
"Well, I'm glad we got the chance to say hello the right way. Nice to meet you." I smiled a little. We'd probably be seeing a lot of each other, especially with the full moon coming up. I figured it would be in my best interest to get to know her better, at least a little bit. It was impossible to tell whether she was friend or foe, but it couldn't hurt to talk a little. What little information I might get would be better than nothing at all, and I'm sure Buffy would like to know if there was another werewolf in town she had to look out for.
"Are you new in town? I don't think I've seen you around here before."
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I lifted the morning paper still in my hand for him to see. “And I’ve started to notice a lot of unusual things happen here. And apparently, they get taken as quite the opposite, most times. Nothing more than standard fare…” I was hoping to glean an inkling of something from this entire exchange. If we were of the same kind in some way, surely there were things we both knew that most people didn’t.
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"Sunnydale is all kinds of different," I admitted to her. She had to have noticed that by now. Most people picked up on it right away, but then they were quick to repress anything that might seem out of the ordinary. Kyla being a bit out of the ordinary herself, I doubted she would use those tactics. "Where's 'home'?"
Small talk. I've never been great at small talk. I'm trying, though. Trying to be polite, at least... no matter how fake it makes me feel. I'd like to be able to come out and say what I know we're both thinking. We're both thinking about how we're alike. She probably wants to know if there are more werewolves around here. I want to know if there are more that came to town with her. It's a tough topic to work into a conversation. I can't just come out and say 'Hey, so I picked up your scent and you smell a whole lot like werewolf. How's that workin' out for you?'
Not exactly good etiquette.
“And I’ve started to notice a lot of unusual things happen here. And apparently, they get taken as quite the opposite, most times. Nothing more than standard fare…”
I was right about the not repressing. That was definitely a relief. Finally, someone who didn't write off vampire bites as freak barbeque-fork stabbings.
"People here... don't really like to admit that weird things happen. It's ridiculous, in away. The excuses people come up with..."
I looked at the copy of the paper in her hand.
"What unusual things did you notice in particular?"
That's as good a place to start as any, right?
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“East of here,” I respond with a slight smile. “Navajo territory in Arizona. Near phoenix, to be specific. My family is quite…traditional, let’s just say. I’m assuming you’re from Sunnydale, then?” If he’s gathering information on me, I might as well do the same. This was ridiculous. Obviously both of us were quite aware of the other’s ‘uniqueness’ but were dancing around the issue.
"What unusual things did you notice in particular?"
“Well simply the amount of deaths that have occurred just involving students since I’ve been here. I can only what the town statistics as a whole must look like. And the cemeteries…they’re everywhere here.” I suppressed a shiver, recalling the unusual number I had noticed simply from what little I had seen of Sunnydale so far. Usually burial grounds had feelings of peace, restfulness, some inklings of completion. The ones here- there was something angry and unnatural about them. Almost as if they threatened to rise up and demolish at any given moment. Shaking my head, I cleared the thoughts away to refocus on the task at hand.
“I’m sorry if I may seem paranoid but I far from think it’s simply me not having adjusted to a new place yet.” May as well out with. At least to a point. If I was let myself come off as a raving lunatic with severe visions of paranoia I may as well get something out of it, now shouldn’t I? “And you know that too, don’t you?”
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"Born and raised." Nineteen years in Sunnydale had given me plenty of time to get used to all the weird things that happened around here. There wasn't much that surprised me anymore, no matter how out of the ordinary things might seem. I thought it was a little unsettling, how very little a new werewolf in town actually surprised me.
Can we say 'jaded'? I thought so.
"Well simply the amount of deaths that have occurred just involving students since I’ve been here. I can only what the town statistics as a whole must look like. And the cemeteries…they’re everywhere here. I’m sorry if I may seem paranoid but I far from think it’s simply me not having adjusted to a new place yet. And you know that too, don’t you?"
"A little too well, I think," I admitted to her. I couldn't help wondering how long we were going to go on like this, without saying what we really wanted to. Maybe it was time to push a little further. Subtley. Well, as subtley as possible, considering I was about to out her as a werewolf.
"Forgive me if I'm overstepping my bounds, but... you're not exactly a stranger to the unusual either, are you?" I offered her a small, tight-lipped smile. "Seems to me like you're in the right place. There's nowhere better for people like us. At least here, there are people looking out for our best interests."
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Finally getting somewhere. Though I was a bit upset with myself for letting him get to the subject before me. There was definitely something to be said for caution, but I suppose after a while, caution simply became lumbering and unnecessary. “No, I’m not,” I said with a firm shake of my head. “Nor are you.” And he mentioned people here looking out for ‘our best interests’. Did that mean there were others like us here as well, or that there were others here who knew about him, as well as the oddities of Sunnydale in general? So many question to ask. I’d get to them all soon enough, I assumed. But as for now, a starting point…
“How long?” I asked, my head tilting slightly in curiosity. The question was simple enough. To any passerby, nothing would seem unusual about it at all. But we both know exactly what I was referring to, and that it was anything but usual.
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I didn't need her to clarify. The simplicity of the question made it so that any passing students that might overhear us wouldn't hear something they shouldn't.
"About two years now. How about you?" It was impossible for me to tell how long she'd been a werewolf without asking. Werewolves can sense a lot of things, but age isn't one of them. I couldn't help being curious. Maybe she'd been this way all her life. That would be interesting... definitely something I'd like to hear about. Coming to grips with the sudden change of lycanthropy was hard enough, but to live with it most of your life? I couldn't help wondering what that would be like. There had to be other wolves like that.
My cousin Jordy being one of them. He was six when he was turned. He's eight now. He's got a long, hard road ahead of him... lycanthropy is bad enough. I'll really feel bad for the kid once he hits puberty.
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“Less than a year. Half, to be precise about it. Are there others here?”
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So this was still somewhat new to her. And here I was, thinking that next to her, I would look inexperienced. Guess not. Maybe it was just that little touch of formality she had that made me think that way.
"Not that I know of... that could change anytime, I guess. All sorts of new people blow into town all the time... but if any others show up, I think we'd know before too long."
I couldn't help glancing at our surroundings. This really wasn't the place to talk about this kind of thing, no matter how inconspicuous we were trying to be. I smiled a little and put my hands in my pockets, wondering if she would agree to ditch class to discuss what I thought was a considerably more important topic than physics or geometry.
"... do you want to go somewhere else? The Grotto, maybe? It's still public, but a little quieter than here. We'd be able to talk a little more freely."
((OOC: Sorry about the extreme lateness, I've been clocking in a ton of overtime lately and RPing has kind of fallen by the wayside... whoops. Want to hook up on AIM sometime soon and talk about where we want to go with this? ^_^ I recently changed my screenname, it's Myyahelle now. Ping me when you get the chance! -- Chris))
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