Saying Hello (OPEN)

Echo jumped off of the boat and landed on the dock perfectly. She hadn't brought anything except a credit card, a wallet full of cash, and several daggers hidden on her body. She'd contemplated taking more, but thought it would be much more fun if she treated her trip like a covert operation where she had to travel light. She was positively giddy at the thought of all the people and powers here. It was a dream come true!

Looking around, she noticed she was getting a lot of stares. She looked down at herself and grimaced. Her skin was literally sparkling in the sunlight. She had no doubt her hair was doing the same. She started walking along the dock, looking for someone who looked like a student. Hello, hello, hello! I'm glittering, here. Come stare at me so I can fiiiiiind yoooou, she thought in a sing-song voice. She couldn't wait to see who would approach her first.

Aluna padded along the beach and found her first sign of civilization. Quickly shifting to her human form (which was still wet from her swim to the island), she began to run to the town. She leaped onto the wooden dock and watched a boat as it departed. he turned away from the water and saw a girl about her age walking into town. Aluna's eyes widened. "Is she...SPARKLING?!?" she wondered. She silently followed the girl for a short while, then decided to try to talk to her. She knew it would probably be difficult for her, since she hadn't socialized with anyone since she was six, and definitely not with someone her own age.

Aluna took a deep breath and walked up beside the girl. "Hello," she said, trying to hide her nervousness, letting her long silver hair partially shield her face.

“Oi kid, get up.”
He saw the wooden wall of the cabin. It was the first thing Ed saw when he opened his eyes, as it had been the same thing he had seen for the past…how long was it now? Had it been weeks? Maybe even months? Perhaps it had only been hours, and his sleep had killed his sense of time. Why did people have a “sense of time”, anyway? How did the human race develop a “sense of time”? His mind pondered this until he felt a strong hand prod him in the shoulder blade.
“Oi! KID. Did you not hear me?! Ride’s over, we’re here.”

He felt another prod, this time it was somewhere on his forearm. The germs…he could feel them. They were crawling in his skin, they were in his clothes, and they smelt putrid, like the sour smell of rotten fruit…
“Don’t touch me!” Ed hissed, his tongue flicking at the ferryman.
His eyes flared, completing his furious expression.
“Ey, kid, don’t look at me like that. I ain’t taking you seriously with that teddy bear you got there,” the ferryman laughed heartily.
And what the ferryman said was true; with a cream-coloured teddy bear in his arms, it was hard to find tiny little Ed, standing at 3’9”, a threat. It seemed Ed knew it too, as he climbed out of bed, paid the ferryman, slid his single backpack on and climbed the stairs which led to outside. He took a deep breath before stepping out on the boat’s deck.

Anyone who wasn’t Ed would have loved the scenery before them: the calm waves, the shining sun, the new land ahead. But, when one is afraid of germs, every moment spent outside was a moment of weakness. Ed brought his tongue over his eyes a couple of times in an attempt to let them adjust to the sunlight around him, but his attempts seemed futile; a nocturnal beast was never made to see the daylight.

Ed stepped off the boat quickly, eager to be able to stand on solid, stationary ground, and eager to get inside again. He was carrying nothing except Digger and a backpack twice the size of him, though he had packed considerably light. He wriggled the numbness from his toes, and looked at his surroundings carefully.
“This is our new home now, Digger,” Ed spoke to the motionless teddy bear, holding the stuffed animal out so it could get a closer inspection. “Founded in 1880, but it was just a hiding place for our kind back then, I read it in-”
“Hello,” he heard a feminine voice behind him.
Ed turned, cutting himself off in mid sentence.

His eyes met the sight of two girls, both pale with white silvery hair, though one was much more pale than the other, so pale in fact, that she seemed to be shimmering in the sun. Ed forced himself to blink, not wanting to freak them out with his gift. He envied them both slightly for their perfect, pale pigments: yes, he was pale too, but a grey-ish, sickly pale, a pale that simply meant he was tired and had very little contact with the sun. Ed clutched at his teddy bear even more tightly now. Was everyone at Foresta Academy like this? Did they all look strikingly perfect with pale skin? Was he going to be a freak of nature here, too?
No, Ed realized, they could not all look so pale. His mother was tanned and covered in freckles.

Despite all the questions he had, despite his observations, and despite all the germs that lingered in the air around him, Ed spoke back. He opened his mouth to speak, his lips attempting to form the simple word, but he struggled. It really was like he was speaking to an alien. Eventually, he managed.
“H-Hello,” Ed choked out.
It was only after the single word escaped his throat did he realize the greeting wasn’t intended for him. Of course, Ed thought. He gripped Digger even tighter as fear gripped him.
“The individual prongs on a fork are called "tines",” he said simply.
He attempted to apologize, but Ed’s social skills were limited. He didn’t know what to say…people were so different from him, like they were in a different world…And being Ed, he opened his mouth and blurted out the first fact that came into his head.
Nice going, Ed.

Echo turned around and smiled at the girl. "Ooooh, you look like me! Are you a mirror, too?" She caught sight of the girl's eyes and shook her head. "No, eye color comes after hair. You aren't someone's reflection." Echo heard another voice and turned. Standing behind her was a small child holding a bear. Immediately, Echo noticed his green eyes and brown hair.

"The individual prongs on a for are called 'tines'," the boy said. Echo blinked and grinned. "That's cool," she told him. She squinted, taking a closer look at him. "Hey, weren't you on the boat with me? I remember you. You didn't come out much." She walked toward him and reached out a hand to touch his forehead. Instantly, her hair turned chocolate and her eyes shone emerald green. Her skin flickered, but didn't change.

"I'm just gonna borrow your color for a little bit," she said. She frowned as the words left her mouth. They sounded...odd. Reaching up, she touched her tongue. It was long, skinny, and forked. "Oh, weird! This is your power? I love it!" Echo laughed and flicked her new tongue.

The almost-sparkling girl turned toward her with a big smile on her face. Her words, "Are you a mirror, too?" took Aluna by surprise. 'A mirror?' she thought. 'What is that supposed to mean?' Her face showed her confusion and she was about to ask, "What's a mirror? Is that your power? What can you do with it?" but before she could ask, a boy walking in front of them started talking. She watched as the girl touched his forehead and her hair and eye color changed to match his. 'Oh, so that's what a mirror does,' she thought.

When she flicked a forked tongue out and expressed delight at it, Aluna guessed it was a feature of the boy's that she copied. She looked him, noticing his pale greyish skin and his large green eyes which he didn't seem to blink enough, and when he did, it seemed forced and uncomfortable. She also noticed the teddy bear in his arms, though he seemed way too old for stuffed animals.

Aluna turned back to the mirror and said, "No, I'm not a mirror, I'm a wolf. The power was given to me before I was born." Addressing both of them, she added, "My name's Aluna, by the way. What are your names?"

“That’s cool,” the shimmering girl told him, much to his relief.
He squirmed as she squinted at him, feeling like he was being scrutinized for everything. He forced another blink, which made him feel more uncomfortable than he already was. If Digger was real, he would have been suffocated by Ed by now. Ed was squeezing Digger so hard that he was positive that his hands would be stuck to the teddy bear for eternity.
"Hey, weren't you on the boat with me? I remember you. You didn't come out much."

Ed nodded, suddenly remembering this girl. He had seen her briefly once, but since he had been catching up on lost sleep, he hadn’t seen her since.
“I was sleeping for most of the trip. I’m noct-“
He stopped speaking when he realized the girl was trying to touch him. He took a step back in fear, but it seemed the girl did not notice his horror.
“Don’t touch…”
He had been interrupted for the second time. The girl had touched him, and now her hair was brown. But not just any brown – the same chocolate brown as his.
“..Me…”

He looked the human mirror straight in the eyes and met the same eye colour he shared with his mother: the same, moss green. His eyes became as wide as football fields in amazement and curiosity. Was this the girl’s power? Did she always do this? Why was it only eye and hair colour? He pondered on these questions until the girl proceeded to check her tongue. It had become snake-like, just like his. This maneuver only raised more questions in his head, until the thoughts of the germs went away.
"Oh, weird! This is your power? I love it!"

The girl laughed, and Ed only nodded again. He looked down at his feet, ashamed. She had called his powers weird, just like the others before her had. Not only had she called them weird, but she had laughed at him. Of course, Echo wasn’t being mean, but Ed had interpreted it differently. Ed felt like running away, but his fear of being an outcast once again made him stay. His powers had done this to him before, and once again, Ed did what he only knew to do in situations like these: pretend to be what the people around him called “normal”.

He quickly held Digger behind his back and forced himself to blink once more. It didn’t really help his case, but Ed certainly thought it did.
"No, I'm not a mirror, I'm a wolf. The power was given to me before I was born."
“Chimps are the only animals other than humans that can recognize themselves in a mirror,” he blurted out instinctively.
Ed blushed slightly. He had ruined his chances at being normal.
Nice going, Ed.

However, he did find something interesting. The girl – not the shimmering one, the other one – was a “wolf”. He felt reassured, knowing that he wasn’t the only animal-based gifted in the group. Ed wondered what she had meant when she had told them that her power had been a pre-birth one. He did not understand completely, but he sort of knew what she had meant. When Ed was younger, he had seen some old pictures of his ultrasound, which had shown him with a lizard’s tail, which had apparently disappeared as his mother grew more pregnant. So technically, his power was given to him before birth, too.

“I am Ed,” Ed spoke as the she-wolf, who introduced herself as “Aluna” asked his name.
Before he even knew it, Ed had brought Digger out from behind him. Ed held him out.
“He is Digger…”
But the moment Ed had realized he once again had committed a social no-no, he hid Digger behind his back in shame, yet again.
God dammit, Ed!

Aluna looked at the young boy as he said his name. She saw him pull a teddy bear from behind his back. He called it Digger. She smiled gently at him and said, "Hello, Ed. Digger is a cute teddy bear. Where did you get him, and how long have you had him?"

Aluna was being kind to the boy because she could see he was kind of scared and nervous. She didn't want him to feel like an outcast, and it wasn't in her nature to be mean. She asked about the teddy bear because he was clinging to it like it was his only hope for survival. It was probably his only friend, and if he was still hanging onto it at that age, it had to mean something special to him.

"My name's Citra Imogene Echo Consulo. But please, call me Echo." As soon as she'd finished speaking, Echo stuck out her borrowed tongue and tried to lick her nose. Her tongue wound up between her eyes. Pulling it back in, she giggled happily. This was by far the coolest thing she'd ever copied.

As Echo pulled her tongue back in, another random fact burst out of Ed. Frowning, Echo thought back. "I don't think that's true," she told him. "I had a cat once who loved to stare at himself in the mirror...then again, maybe he was gay and had just fallen in love with himself." She shrugged and sat on the ground. She was now close to the boy's height, but relaxed so that it wasn't obvious that she'd sat down for this very reason. She didn't want him to feel like she was being condescending or something.

Watching as Ed tried to hide Digger, she smiled softly. She'd had a bear when she was younger. She'd named him James Bond after her favorite TV spy. She nodded when Aluna complimented the bear. "I don't think Digger likes being smushed behind your back," she pointed out. "You might be hurting his feelings."

Welcome back to another episode of “NICE GOING, ED!” Let’s see where we last left off…
“My name's Citra Imogene Echo Consulo. But please, call me Echo,” the shimmering girl had finally given Ed a name to call her, but at the same time, she had given him so many questions.
Why so many names? Why call her Echo? What was wrong with calling her Citra? What was wrong with the other names? The names all seemed so odd and foreign to Ed, that he began to think about Echo’s parents. What were they thinking?
“Oh, they all mean “mirror” or “reflection”…” Ed said. It was a statement, not a question.

But before he could give it anymore thought, he heard another laugh from Echo. His eyes shot up, and he caught a quick glimpse of his mimicked tongue being drawn back into Echo’s mouth. Ed took a tiny, timid step back again. She obviously thought of Ed as nothing more than a passing laugh: a joke, a clown, a jester.

"I don’t think that’s true…I had a cat once who loved to stare at himself in the mirror...then again, maybe he was gay and had just fallen in love with himself," Echo had replied to one of Ed’s fun facts again. But, being Ed, he hadn’t exactly understood that what Echo said was funny…
“That would make them asexual, not homosexual…” Ed spoke quietly. “Then again, some argue that asexuality is when one is sexually attracted to nothing, including themselves…I’m not sure if that could apply to cats, but I assure you that your cat most likely thought they were seeing another cat and possibly was curious…”

…And he just went on, and on, and on for about five minutes…
“…chimps look at their reflections, they can understand that it is simply their reflection, and not another chimp.”
The funny thing was though, Ed hadn’t really understood that in general social interaction, going on and on in a mini-monologue to two near strangers was not a good thing. And of course, it’s time to drop the catchphrase:
Nice going, Ed!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, he finished talking…
"Hello, Ed. Digger is a cute teddy bear. Where did you get him, and how long have you had him?" Aluna asked and greeted him once Ed had introduced himself and Digger.
This certainly made Ed wince. In his opinion, Digger was not cute. Digger was…well, Digger. Well, if you ask me, Digger’s adorable, but to Ed, Digger was just his friend, and boys of Ed’s generation certainly didn’t call their friends cute. In fact, Ed felt slightly patronized, but he couldn’t blame her, especially since Ed looked like a small child than a teenager. His age was probably unknown to both girls.
So, he attempted to inform them of his age.

“Thirteen!” He exclaimed, the words seeming to explode from his lips. “Um...I’m…thirteen.”
Ed looked down at his feet shyly once more. He knew he had made yet another mistake. Ed took another step away from the girls, so he was almost leaning against a stack of crates. The top crate was open and contained a load of fish heads, but Ed was too short to see it. He tightened his grip on Digger, who still was being held behind his back.

"I don't think Digger likes being smushed behind your back…You might be hurting his feelings."
The gig was up, and Ed had certainly been caught. His cheeks blushed a very, very, light shade of pink: it was almost invisible on his sickly pale skin. Ed forced himself to blink again as he carefully and timidly brought Digger out, facing the bear toward him so he could see its face. The toy was motionless and silent, but Ed had apparently heard something, because after a while, he spoke to the teddy bear.
“I’m sorry, Digger.” Ed apologized to the bear, taking another small step back away from the girls.

But that one step was one too many, as he ended up knocking the stack of wooden crates over, and the open one on top fell forward, its contents of fish heads falling right on Ed.
Nice going, Ed.

(I'll talk about Ed's reaction in the next post, this post is becoming way too long DX)