& I run from wolves, breathing heavily at my feet.

Estelle was not in the mood for what the month of February had to offer her. It was still cold outside as her boots crunched through the remnants of snow from the last storm, a reminder that winter was still trying to hold on to the island with its icy fingers. Pulling her thick jacket closer to her body in an attempt to get warmer, Stella moved in the direction of the Rose Garden - curious on how the plants where doing.

The rose garden had always been one of her more favorite parts at the school, mostly because the maze allowed some excellent hiding spots to listen in on conversations that most people didn't want to be heard and during the spring and summer the flowers had a tendency to bloom in a most wondrous way. Whatever the caretaker did always seemed to work, because Stella always made a point to keep coming back.

As she neared her destination, Stella noticed that there weren't too many people out today. She surmised that this was mostly because of the cold weather despite the fact that classes were out for the day. For Stella, there was something relaxing about all the snow despite the fact that she was freezing. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was an almost unlimited amount of water, but she would never actually admit that to any soul.

Breathing lightly into her hands, Stella neared the hedge maze in the rose garden - pausing momentarily as she heard somebody talking. What juicy information could she possibly find out today?

Kyland's head was throbbing, his vision swimming with the grey of the sky above him.  There was a sharp pain coming from his abdominal area, and his hand came away sticky with blood.  He let out a soft groan.  What had happened?  "You did this, didn't you?" he growled at the demon in his head.  His breath came out in short, pained pants, making his sentence sound as if it was being coughed up from the depths of his soul--if he even had one.  Was it possible to have a soul if you were inhabited by a demon?  

Alastor's response was a soft cackle.  "You asshole," Ky snarled viciously.  If he'd been quiet, he would've heard footsteps, but as it was, all he could focus on was anger and pain.  Tell me what happened, he demanded, a sharp wave of pain rendering him speechless.  

You stabbed yourself in the stomach.  No idea what you were doing.  You've tried to hurt me before by injuring yourself before, but never like this. The demon's voice sounded annoyingly injured, as if he was the one who was in pain. Kyland hoped he was suffering from this too. "How did I get here? Where is here, exactly?"  He could feel Alastor's presence recede into the depths of his mind, refusing to answer.  In a fit of rage, he slammed his fist on the ground, and regretted his actions instantly.  

The boy tipped his head to one side, and was rewarded with snow in his face.  He suddenly became acutely aware of how much he was shivering.  Although he was wearing a hoodie and and jeans, he was in no way protected from the snowy winter wonderland he'd somehow ended up in.  He tried to prop himself up, but there was no strength in his freezing muscles, and immediately fell back into the snow.  He faded in and out of consciousness as a pool of crimson spread around him.

Stella stopped breathing momentarily as the sound of someone cursing came to her ears. As it stood, Kyland was out of Stella's field of vision and she assumed that there were two people only a few feet away from her - only a hedge standing between her and Kyland. As she heard the faint sound of the young man asking questions, Stella frowned briefly - why wasn't the other person responding? There was another person... wasn't there?

Taking a deep breath, Stella peeked around the hedge - her jaw dropping at the site before her. A young man laid in a pile of snow that was quickly turning red from what appeared to be his own blood "*Merde!" Stella blurted out a small curse, running over to Kyland and falling to her knees beside the teenager.

Placing one hand on his shoulder in an attempt to avoid all the blood, Stella starting to shake the young man in some feeble attempt to get him to focus on her "Hey, dude! Are you okay?" Immediately as she spoke, Stella bit her tongue lightly - of course he wasn't okay. Who was this kid? She recognized everyone, but for some reason she couldn't recognize him. It was obvious then that he was new, but despite that how did he end up in the rose garden?

[ooc; *shit! ]

The boy's breathing slowly became shallower and more desperate, as if he was trying to inhale consciousness.  His eyelids were shut, but his eyeballs darted frantically back and forth beneath them.  He was drowning in a haze of pain.  There was red everywhere, even behind his eyelids, as if Alastor was taunting him for his actions.  "Asshole," he muttered again, the words slipping out as barely a murmur, almost unintelligible.  The sudden exclamation--a swear, he guessed--startled him enough to open his eyes, although it didn't contribute to his vision much.  He could see the faint form of a girl, but the scarlet haze washed out any details.  

He flinched away from her touch, unaccustomed to contact with others in a non-threatening way.  "Does it.. look like.. I'm okay?" he managed to ground out, coughing in between every couple of words.  A shudder ran through his body.  If he had any extra energy, Ky would've spent it on hating how weak and pathetic he probably looked right now.  His vision faltered for a moment, and in a panic, he tried to get up again.  And once more, he failed.  He forced his words through gritted teeth.  "Sorry.  Can you get help?"  Kyland managed to process that it might not be the best idea to offend the person who'd found him, who could possibly be the only one to rescue him from death.  Because right now, that was where he was headed.

Estelle was beginning to feel really concerned as she listened to Kyland's breathing, her eyes drifting down toward his wound. He appeared to be bleeding out and pretty fast at that. Chewing on her lower lip, Stella started briefly at all the snow the young man was laying in - attempting to come up with some sort of plan.

"Asshole." Stella moved her hand off of Kyland just as he flinched, "Wow, excuse you. Could you not curse out the person that's trying to help you?" The girl responded in kind, surprised as Kyland opened his eyes there was an obvious look of distaste sprawled on her face. Then he actually seemed to respond to her and Stella shook her head, "What happened to you?" Stella asked - seeming more intent on questions then actually helping the young man.

It was then that he attempted to get up and Stella's eyes widened in shock. "Slow down," she said to him in some sort of feeble attempt to make sure that they boy didn't die from bleeding out. As he apologized to her though, Stella warmed up to the idea briefly to helping out the young man himself. He looked so close to the edge, how would it look if she ran off to get help and as her and a teacher came back he was dead? No, it simply wouldn't do. She wasn't about to get blamed for anything ridiculous such as being responsible for the death of another student.

"I'm sorry, chère*. I'm the only help you'll be getting right now." Stella looked around her quickly, double checking to make sure that no one else was going to walk up on her using her magic. There was no way in hell that she would be able to completely heal him, but there was a possibility that she could close the wound and keep him from dying.

"This is gonna be cold," Stella mumbled a warning as she grabbed a handful of snow that wasn't already covered in the boy's blood and spread it on his wound. Afterwards, Stella's back straightened as she held both of her hands above his wound - hovering just a few inches away. A few seconds passed and Estelle started to mumble words that sounded ancient and mostly unrecognizable by the amateur ear.

The snow that Stella had spread on Kyland's wound slowly started to melt and seep into the boy's body, almost as if it were reaching for the deepest part of his wound. The feeling albeit a little strange, could be considered the equivalent of running cold water over a burned area.

[ooc;*dear.
this process is gonna take a long time, so I figured I'd break it up into two posts! realistically we're looking at about 30 minutes of her trying to work her magic and heal him, haha]

After the second failed attempt at getting up and the girl's cautionary words, Kyland decided it would indeed be better to just stay down for now.  As if he had any other options.  When he asked if she could help him, she seemed to hesitate and look around guiltily, as if doing something illegal.  Immediately on edge, he tensed and wondered what she was going to do.  The girl had apparently made up her mind at this point, and said something about being the only help he was getting.  The French touched his ears like a caress, much softer than her previous words had been.  "How--" his question was cut off when flames burst into existence at the edges of his vision.  A feral, cat-like hiss escaped his lips, in response to both the fire and the coldness that had suddenly seeped in to what felt like the depths of his being.  His brain processed that the fire wasn't real, as it was highly unlikely if not impossible if snow and frost-covered plants could catch fire.  

A reddish tint appeared in his eyes for a moment, showing Alastor's distaste for water.  It was funny, almost, that while Ky was terrified of fire and loved the water, Alastor loved fire and detested water.  He chuckled at this thought, but it turned into a cough.  He suddenly realized that the girl was murmuring something in a strange language.  If he'd been able to, he would have punched her or fought back in some way out of fear that she was trying to harm him.  Was she performing... magic?  How had he managed to "find" someone else with unusual abilities?  He'd heard of people who were "Gifted", but had always thought those were just myths.  What a stroke of luck, he thought to himself.  His lips curled back into a snarl-like expression, hands curling into fists with nails biting into his palms in reaction to the bite of the melted snow.  Why wouldn't the fire go away?  "Make it go away," he mumbled incoherently. "It's not real.  Fire.  Fire.  Not real."  Of course, his ranting about fire would seem crazy to any onlookers, as the fire was only in his mind.  For all the effort he spent creating a facade of normalcy in front of others, he couldn't quite seem to manage it at the moment.

Kyland's broken up words caused no distraction for Stella as she continued her process of healing, seeming to go into an almost trance like state. Affirmation of this happening when the young woman opened her eyes and they seemed to be replaced with two pale blue glowing orbs instead. Her speech started to speed up and the water that had seeped into Kyland started to work at the smallest level, piecing the torn muscle and skin back together one by one.

Since the process was so slow though, any person not accustomed to accelerated healing could easily be experiencing considerable amount of pain. Once severed nerve endings were being reattached to each other, the shock bound to affect anyone. As the process continued, the water in Kyland's wound began to move up and within moments Kyland was no longer bleeding.

With numerous beads of sweat dripping down her face, Stella blinked and within moments her eyes returned to normal - the young woman lost her balance for a moment and fell back on her behind. To any outsider it would seem that Estelle had just finished a very vigorous work-out, the truth only being known to her and the stranger that she just healed.

"It's not completely healed, if you can't already tell - but you should be able to take yourself to the doctor's office now and get a real healer." Stella said to the boy, "Instead of just bleeding out all over the rose garden," she then added - bothered by the fact that he had been dying in her favorite hang-out.

For a while, it seemed as if the girl was indeed trying to kill him--the pain felt like it was increasing exponentially, but it wasn't until the pain stopped and there was a sudden moment of blissful painlessness that he realized it was the pain of accelerated healing.  He should've realized before that knitting torn tissue back together couldn't exactly be painless, but then again it wasn't really fair to expect him to be completely trusting of a stranger muttering words in a foreign language over him.  Kyland's vision de-fogged, and everything around him returned to normal, the fire gone with the burning pain of the healing.  He tentatively sat up, this time successfully, and looked at the sweat-covered, exhausted girl beside him.  Before he could thank her, she told him that he should go find a doctor, reprimanding him for covering the rose garden in blood.

His brows knitted together in slight anger.  Ky knew he shouldn't be angry at the girl who'd saved his life, but he couldn't help it.  "Look, I'm immensely grateful that you saved my life and all, but I don't know where I am, I don't know who you are, and I don't know how I got here, much less where I could find a doctor."  He pointedly used the word 'doctor' instead of 'healer', still a bit disbelieving that there were other people who could heal people magically like she had just done for him. 

"D'you think you could give me some more information?  I'd be happy to get off your hands afterwards," he added. "And how do I pay you back for healing me?" It was less about gratitude--although he was thankful beyond words for help--than that he hated owing people.  Kyland was extremely hesitant to be indebted to someone; especially to this degree, they could ask him to do any kind of favor and he'd be hard-pressed to refuse them, considering it was a fair deal.

Estelle's brows quirked in surprise as the stranger she just saved admitted that he had no idea where he was or how he got here. Shaking her head, Stella was finally able to catch her breathe as she started to respond, "How can you not know? We're on an island. Unless you were knocked out and tossed here by some pirates I find it hard to believe that you don't know how you got here." Stella argued with the young man, despite believing his story since she didn't know who he was (and she pretty much knew everyone). Stella still found it pretty shocking for some kid to just magically end up on island without any knowledge of it.

The teenage girl frowned briefly, remembering that she was at a school with hundred of magical people walking by her everyday. Suddenly, his lack of knowledge made much more sense to her. "You're at a school, well a high school to be more specific. Tons of magical kids come here every year for schooling, I'm guessing you're the new kid now." Stella said to him as she made a motion like she was getting ready to stand up. Her jeans had started to get soaked by the snow and she really didn't like the idea of getting any of Kyland's leftover blood on her clothes. "The school has an actual doctor that can completely heal your wound, I only did it halfway." Stella mumbled out the last bit, almost seeming a bit ashamed despite her lack of interest in her own powers.

"Look, just the only favor you owe me is not telling anyone you saw what I did, okay? Even if this is a school for gifted kids, I don't like to talk about it." As Stella was finally on her own two feet, the young woman brushed of her pants leg and straightened out her jacket - frustrated at the fact that her clothes had been mussed up while she had been performing her magic.

The girl was justifiably surprised at Kyland's confession of his lack of knowledge about his whereabouts.  It wasn't every day that people just randomly showed up somewhere with no knowledge of how they'd gotten there.  "I hate to say it, but I really have no idea." This wasn't a complete truth; he could guess that it had something to do with Alastor.  However, he couldn't say how the demon had managed to teleport him to the middle of an island, and by the lack of intrusion on his thoughts, it seemed like he wouldn't be getting answers anytime soon.  The girl that he had wound up at a high school for 'magical' kids.  I guess that makes me a 'magical kid', the boy thought with a hint of cynicism.  He didn't really agree that being possessed by a demon qualified him to be labeled 'magical', considering he had no control over Alastor and he didn't really seem to benefit from his powers like he would've imagined one would benefit from having magical abilities.  It was more of a hindrance, really, aside from the fact that he could cheat off ghosts' intelligence.

She informed him that the school staff would be able to heal him more completely.  He thought better of asking her why she hadn't healed him completely herself, not wanting to sound ungrateful, and instead asked what she wanted as compensation.  Her request surprised him, not because as she herself pointed out, she was hiding her powers at a school that was presumably meant to hone them, but mainly because she could have asked for just about anything.  "I can sort of see where you're coming from.  I'm Kyland, by the way.  If you could point out which direction the doctor's office is in, I'd be happy to get off your hands."  He could sort of understand why she wanted to hide her powers; he felt a similar unwillingness to consider, in depth, his own 'abilities'.

 

[ooc; stella introduced herself and told him the way, END THREAD.]