Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ Aqua ❯ Conversations ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

Conversations

 

 

When Aqua next awoke it was evening. She rolled over onto her back and sat up. She shivered in the rapidly cooling air and looked down at the boy and, for the first time, saw white cat-like ears and resisted the impulse to rub them and see if they were real. The impulse bypassed, she was faced with the next decision to make: What would she do with the boy?

 

Aqua stared at him for a moment before he groaned and his head turned away from her. She reached out her hand and felt his forehead; she was surprised to find that he was burning up. He had a very high temperature. She got up and dressed as quickly as she could. As she was about to run back up to the school, she paused and bent down to check his temperature again to make sure it was as high as she had first thought it was.

 

As she pulled away, he stirred and grabbed her wrist. He squinted up at her and muttered something in another language. When Aqua tried to pull her hand away his grip tightened right before he passed out again. Aqua sat down next to him and started chewing on her thumbnail, at a loss as to what to do.

 

A few moments later she got to her feet and ran around the lake and back to the wooden house and grabbed some old pieces of cloth that might have been the remains of a very old towel left hanging above the improvised sink, or at least what she thought was a sink. Then she ran back to the bedroom where she kept the extra sheets for whenever she felt like spending the night away from the school before bolting back to where she had left the boy.

 

First she tucked the thick woolen blanket around him to keep him from getting worse. Then she dipped the rags into the cool lake water and laid one across his forehead to cool his raging fever. She sat beside him and changed the rags out every hour for the rest of the night in which he periodically tossed one way and then the other.

 

His fever continued to rage into the early parts of the morning, but broke as the first rays of the sun shown through the tall oak trees of Hangman's Forest. Aqua sighed with relief as he seemed to be sleeping peacefully and slumped back onto the ground and stared up at the partially star strewn sky that was now tinged with orange. It had been the longest night of her life, the first one that she had spent worrying over the welfare of another, she had even felt oddly protective of him while she had watched over him, though the reasons were a mystery to her.

 

She sat up as her stomach gave a growl of protest at having missed dinner the previous night. Though she was used to missing a meal every so often she didn't know how long it had been since to boy had last eaten. Aqua got to her feet and stretched her sore calves and started back to the school to get breakfast for them, but stopped just as she was about to step onto the main forest path. For some reason, she felt reluctant to lose sight of him.

 

She shrugged it off and amounted it to having just spent the entire night watching over him before meandering down the wide path. She took her time and walked at her usual speed, but sped up when a few of the older students spotted her and began to make their way towards her. Aqua avoided them by ducking into the cafeteria and behind one of the kitchen workers.

 

Amber looked up as Aqua approached her. Of all the people she knew, Amber was probably the closest person that she considered a friend. They exchanged their usual morning greetings before Amber said, “Some of the other students are saying that something landed in the old forest and that you were out there when it happened. Know anything about it?”

 

Aqua considered the question for a moment. She could keep the boy she had rescued a secret or she could get help for him by telling Amber now. With sudden clarity she recalled the white cat-like ears that had been in the place of what humans considered normal ears. If she told Amber about him now, those ears would be discovered and he would be hauled off to some lab and be experimented on. She realized that he was probably what had landed in the forest and that he was an alien.

 

“No,” she lied, shrugging her shoulders in her usual careless manner. This was her secret now, and no one would find out that an alien boy resided in the school forest from her. “At least I don't remember anything landing. If anything did fall from a plane, or whatever, then it probably landed somewhere just beyond Hangman's Forest. Anyways, it's not like I care,” she finished.

 

Amber eyed her thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to preparing breakfast for the other students. Being a student herself she balanced helping in the kitchen with homework and classes. The only free time she had she spent running errands to try and pay for her tuition at East High, though helping in the kitchen helped shave a large chunk off.

 

Aqua watched for a moment before asking, “May I get my breakfast early this morning? You know how I hate eating with the rest of the school.” Amber smiled some as she pointed to a counter opposite her that supported that days breakfast. On it was toast, oatmeal, cereal, poptarts, eggs, and an assortment of fruit. “Help yourself,” Amber said, while continuing to chop up strawberries.

 

Aqua muttered a word of thanks and quickly took several things of poptarts and, as an afterthought, several apples, oranges, and grapefruits. Then she slipped out the back way to the kitchen and walked off towards the forest, bring careful to make sure that no one followed her.

 

A few minutes after she left the school, she walked back down the winding forest trail back to the lake. After she walked around the lake edge and came back to where she had left the alien boy, she sat down, deposited the food, and began to peel an orange.

 

As the smell of food wafted over his nose and he inhaled it, he stirred some. Aqua saw this and moved the orange closer to him. He opened his hazel eyes and weakly sat up. He spoke again in the same language that he had spoken in the previous night and looked expectantly at her.

 

“Um…I can't understand a word you're saying,” she said, her face betraying her confusion for the first time in her teen years. He face suddenly fell with disappointment and he tried saying something, but it came out so gargled that she couldn't understand a word of it. “Hold on,” she said, and got up and ran back to the wooden house for a canteen. As she came back outside she paused by the lake to fill it before running back to him. She sank back down to her previous spot and held it out to him.

 

He hesitantly reached out to take it in his hand and, glancing from her back to the water, drank some of it. On the first gulp he spluttered and spat it back up and thrust the canteen back at her. Aqua took it with a shrug and drank from the side that his lips had not touched. She noticed that the boy was watching her drink and then offered it to him again.

 

He glared at the canteen suspiciously before taking it and imitating actions and draining the rest of the water. “It has no taste,” he said dryly, surprising her that he was fluent in a language that she understood, though she did not allow her face to betray her emotion again. “What is your name?”

 

“My name?” she repeated, adopting her usual careless expression.

 

“Yes, your name,” he said irritably.

 

“Aqua,” she replied tersely.

 

“Your real name.”

 

“Aqua.”

 

“Aqua?” he repeated in a disbelieving tone. His look was incredulous as he stared at her, feeling outrage at the lie slowly building.

 

“Aqua.”

 

“That's a backwards name.”

 

“Well, I'm sure that it's not as horrible as your name.”

 

“As if you know it.”

 

“So, what is it?”

 

“My name?”

 

“Yes, your name.”

 

“Why would a commoner need to ask my name?”

 

“Welcome to Planet Earth. Now what's your name?”

 

“Planet Earth?”

 

“My home planet. Name?”

 

“Where is Earth in the universe?”

 

“I don't know, but what I do know is that you seem awfully reluctant to give me your name.”

 

“To know ones true name in my race is to control that person's life.”

 

“Then you control mine.”

 

“Impossible, no one would ever reveal their true name to a complete and total stranger.”

 

“Um…I don't know anything of your race, but humans don't have that kind of power with a single word, nor do we have these true name thingies.”

 

“The name that my people call me by is…” Here he hesitated and wondered briefly if he could trust her. Well, she told me a name to call her by, so I might as well return the favor, he thought cautiously. “…Darain.”

 

“Darain,” Aqua repeated, testing it on her tongue. “Seems fitting.”

 

“What is your price?”

 

“Price?”

 

“For saving my life. Where I come from, there is always a price of some sort that the one rescued must pay to the one whom rescued them.”

 

Aqua stifled a laugh at his words and raised an eyebrow at him. “Look, I don't know where you're from, but here, there is no such thing as that. When one saves another's life, it's without expectation of a reward, it's by choice,” Aqua said amusedly.

 

Before Darain could respond, a bell rang in the distance, making Aqua leap to her feet and half-shout, “Aw crap, I'm late.” She turned to Darain and hurriedly added. “This pile of stuff is what we on this planet call food. I wouldn't suggest wandering out from these trees, either; I'll explain when I come back in a few hours.” Then she dashed off towards the school for her first class.

 

Darain followed her a ways, curious to see where she was headed, but heeded her suggestion and stayed by some of the trees when he came within sight of an odd looking building. He watched as she bolted inside before turning back and heeding his grumbling stomach. Come to think of it, I think the last time I actually ate was when I left home, he thought quietly.

 

Once he came back to the small heap of what Aqua had called food, he squatted down beside it and picked up a poptart and said, “What is this?” as he examined it, before eating it bite by bite, wrapper and all. Well, at least it isn't poisoned, he thought grimly, as he swallowed the last of the crinkly wrapper and poptarts. Then he bit into a grapefruit and immediately spat it out and dropped it off to the side. For the rest of the morning, he carefully sampled the food that Aqua had broughten him and ate what he dubbed good enough to eat and tossing what he really didn't like off to the side.

 

* * *

 

Aqua slowed her pace after she entered the school and casually walked down the deserted halls and tried to catch her breath before she had to face the other students and teachers.

 

Her breathing returned almost back to normal a few classroom doors away from her first period class. As she opened the door, a hush fell over the class; this was the first time that anyone had ever seen her as late as she was.

 

The teacher cleared his throat and said, “Now, as I was saying before Aqua decided to join us, today several students will be pulled from class, one at a time of course. A specialist will question them and they will have to answer truthfully, lest their funds be revoked. The students will be pulled out at random times so that no one may skip out on the questioning.”

 

Aqua was sure that they had done the random part this time around, because she and a bunch of other students had skipped the period that had been set as the time where the students would be pulled out and questioned by the “nut-cases to see if they were still sane,” was the popular saying from the previous time used to describe how the students were questioned by the therapists.

 

Aqua wasn't called out from her first four classes, nor during the time that she was getting lunch for her and Darain. The amount of food that she got was no different from what a student might usually eat, but for her, it was more than three times the usual amount that she might eat for lunch.

 

She and Amber exchanged a look before Aqua took her lunch and disappeared to the forest. She found that Darain had moved from one side of the lake to the other, exploring the perimeter of the lake, but making sure to keep a wide berth between the water and himself.

 

Darain looked up at her from a plant he had been inspecting as she approached. “What is this?” he asked once they were sitting and had the food spread out between them and held up a hamburger. Aqua barely glanced at the burger as she said, “It's a hamburger, its…edible, just try it.”

 

Darain sniffed it then cautiously took a bite out of it. It wasn't the best thing in the world, but, as she had said, it was edible. “Why didn't you eat very much?” he asked once they were finished. “You didn't eat anything earlier.”

 

Aqua considered his question for a moment. Indeed, she never did eat all that much, even when she was hungry. “I suppose it's because I never had much to live on before I came to this school,” she answered with surprising honesty.

 

“School?”

 

“A place where we learn the basics for life, I suppose.”

 

“Like how to control your abilities?”

 

“Abilities like what?”

 

“Like how to manipulate your surrounding environment and use it in a battle against a stronger opponent.”

 

“No, we learn stupid stuff like reading and writing.”

 

“That sounds like…a waste of time.”

 

“Yes, it is,” she laughed. For once she was glad to find that someone genuinely agreed with her on the stupidity of school.

 

“So why go?”

 

“Where else do I have to go?”

 

“Home?”

 

Aqua snorted dervishly at his last question and said tersely, “I have no home, no family I care enough about to call my own.”

 

“Why?”

 

“That is none of your business.”

 

“Touchy one, aren't we?”

 

Aqua made no response to his question and settled for glaring at him. Silence stretched between them for several minutes before, “Why do you suggest that I stay within the confines of these overly large plants?”

 

“Because if others of my race discovered you, you'd be hauled off to some lab and experimented on. They'd want to know what you were made of and how you came to be.”

 

“Why don't you haul me off to a lab and do these experiments that you speak of?” he asked suspiciously.

 

Aqua got to her feet and stretched. “I never said you had to stay within these trees, I merely suggest that you do so if you don't want to be imprisoned.”

 

“That's not what I asked. Why don't you haul me off to these supposed labs yourself?”

 

Aqua looked at him through cold eyes as she said, “I know what its like to have tests run on you against your will, but for no reason.” Then she walked back up to the school in time to hear someone calling her name in her class.

 

“Here,” she said snappishly as she slid into her seat without the teachers notice. The teacher looked stupidly up at her and said, “You are to go down to the counselor's office for the questioning by the specialists.”

 

Aqua stifled a groan of regret at having decided to not skip that class, but got up and did as he said. She walked down the straight hallway and turned the corner to find the hidden, shabby door to the councilor's small, dingy office. Everyone hated the small, cramped thing. It had no windows, one desk, three very uncomfortable chairs, and one candle to provide hesitant, flickering light.

 

The walls were cast in shadows as the candle threatened to give out, but it managed to stay flickering. In two of the chairs sat the Mrs. Nattily, East High's school counselor, Mr. Moore, the specialist as his nametag read. Mrs. Nattily motioned for her to sit, which she did rather reluctantly. Her eyes flicked from Mr. Moore to Mrs. Nattily as she waited for either to speak. After a few moments of tenuous silence Mrs. Nattily spoke in her high squeaky voice like a mouse's and said, “Well-” she glanced down at what Aqua took to be a list of student names “-Aqua, I'm sure you know why you're here today.”

 

Aqua leaned forward in her chair and rested her left elbow on her knee and her chin on that palm, as she said, in a drawling, sarcastic voice, “No, I don't. Could you inform me as to why I've been called down to this dismal place?” Mrs. Nattily's sharp, eagle like eyes narrowed to little more than slits as she said in a calm, restrained voice, “You have been called down here to talk to Mr. Moore. You will answer all his questions wholly and truthfully.”

 

It was Aqua's turn to narrow her eyes. They had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get her to talk about the time she had lived with her father, and it irked her to no end that they thought that they had the right to know every intimate detail of her life. If there was one thing she hated, it was know it alls. “That depends on the question,” she said in an irritatingly cheerful voice as she leaned back against her chair, crossed her arms, and gave a false smile.

 

Mrs. Nattily's face fell ever so slightly, but could say nothing as Mr. Moore started questioning Aqua. Most of the questions consisted of what she had learned over the course of the year. She answered most to Mr. Moore's satisfaction, but purposely bombed on some of the math ones. It was near the end that he finally started to get on her nerves when he started asking questions about what she liked to do with her free time and what her favorite kinds of food were. From there the questions escalated to where she lived and what her fathers name was. What finally set her off was when he asked, “Did your father ever beat you? Did he leave those scars upon your body?”

 

Aqua sat frozen in her chair for the briefest of seconds as her green eyes flashed dangerously. Mr. Moore and Mrs. Nattily gazed at her hopefully, unaware of the danger that they had invoked with that question. Aqua hissed angrily at them before she shot from her seat and yanked the door open and stormed out. The door closed with a resounding snap as she ran from the school to the forest.

 

Many of the older students on their breaks stood to watch her tear across the school grounds towards the Hangman's Forest. They muttered to each other in wonder at what could have caused the normally calm and collected Aqua to lose her head and run away. Many put their heads together to gossip and speculate as she disappeared into Hangman's Forest.

 

Aqua didn't slow her pace until she was beside the lake. Not seeing Darain around, she stripped to her under clothes and dove in. She swam as far down as her lungs would allow before kicking back to the surface, only to take a quick breath before diving back under and punching and kicking at the surrounding water in anger and frustration. They just don't know when to quit, do they? she thought angrily as she again kicked her way to the surface.

 

When she did reach the surface again, her head collided with something solid causing lights to blink in front her eyes as she began to sink back into the lake. As her head sank beneath the surface, a hand grasped her wrist and pulled her back up above the water. She coughed and spluttered as she was dragged up onto the banks and had her dry clothes thrust into her arms.

 

Once Aqua regained her senses, she dressed and looked around to see Darain with his back to her not far away. “Your kind has no sense of decency,” he commented, not turning around. “My people at least know when to stay dressed.”

 

“Whatever. I don't really care what you think,” she shrugged, heading towards the other side of the lake.

 

Darain turned to see if she had dressed and saw that she was already gone. His ears flicked back in annoyance at her rude behavior. No one's ever treated me with such disrespect and escaped punishment, he thought sourly.

 

Aqua strolled back to class as though nothing had happened. She slipped into her seat without the teachers notice. When the bell rang, she was the last out the door and carefully avoided other peoples gaze as she walked through the narrow stone hallways to her next class. As she passed one of the hallway windows, she glanced out of it, and realized, with a jolt of something akin to terror, that Darain was standing at the edge of Hangman's Forest, watching the other students' mill about in the sunshine.

 

For a split second Darain looked at the school itself and she could have sworn that he was looking at her before he disappeared into the forest once more. She scanned the grounds to see if any one had noticed an alien boy watching them, but, thankfully, they were as clueless as ever.

 

Shaking her head in annoyance she walked into her history class and took her usual seat at the back of the room and fell asleep as always. She got the notes from a random boy as they walked out of the class with a promise to return them the next period. Luckily, her next, and last, period was study hall, the time in which she completed her daily assignments and copied down the notes from the classes she had either missed or fallen asleep in.