Inherently Innocent

And Dream Under The Stars

She had kept her eyes closed for minutes with no success. However, if she had been able to change the colour of the grass that easily, she would have probably felt worse.

"Still nothing?" Juniper asked her.

"Nothing," Liliac opened her eyes.

She was still getting used to her right eye feeling the sunlight. She couldn't see any details. She just felt the light. Her healthy eye, though, could perfectly see the beautiful clouds that remained tainted pink after the sunrise had passed.

"What if you hold two different things but concentrate on one? Maybe the two will get the same colour."

"I've tried that before," Liliac dropped her shoulders.

"Then we have to think about how guidance works. Aloe said it comes naturally to them, they just talk with the insects they want to call."

"How do I speak with hair? With a shirt? With grass?"

"I don't know. You were the one who asked a human for help," Juniper crossed her arms in that annoying way she loved to do, exaggerating exasperation to the point of mutual annoyance.

Liliac didn't like Juniper. There was something in her disappointed eyes that reminded her of the Host. She had to remind herself that the two were different. Juniper had more in common with Liliac than she had with her uncle. The two of them hated the Host's guts even if they showed it in different ways.

"Well, what is colour?" Liliac reached up for her hair, forcing herself to keep it in place.

"What are you, an art teacher?" Juniper scolded.

"No, I mean in nature. Apart from the aesthetic, what is colour? Pigment or whatever, right? But there must be something more to it. Aloe and Xochitl talk with living things. Plants and insects, to some degree, are alive. Colour isn't. What does your ishine guide?"

"My ishine?" Juniper coughed.

"I mean the one with leaves crawling up its back."

"Oh, Dera. She isn't my ishine," Juniper frowned, but Liliac frowned harder. "She doesn't guide in the usual sense. Supposedly she only works for communication. Her kind lives longer than usual to teach the smaller blooming ishine."

Something lit up behind Liliac's eye.

"So she's a teacher. Like Thyme's father. Maybe if the three of you get together I can get a human, ishine, and nymph to help me," The plan was perfect. With all perspectives, it could work.

Juniper closed her eyes for a second. Liliac wondered if her idea had just been that stupid.

"Sounds like an idea of my own," Juniper said.

Liliac bit her lip. She could tell from the girl's tone that she wouldn't do it now. There was a hidden let's keep trying my way. So there was more silence. That lack of sound that had accompanied them for days. That absence of noise that Liliac was forced to get used to so quickly. She broke it.

"Colour change," Her voice was louder than she had expected, so she corrected herself by repeating it quietly. Her hands were already crawling up her arms. "We've been thinking of colour only, but what I do is change colours. Like fruit changes colour when it matures, or like leaves change colour with the seasons."

Juniper's eyes opened wide. Liliac could see her iris, hidden in the brown shadows, only when the sun hit it.

"Or when an animal changes into winter fur."

"What?" Liliac's joy settled. "What the hell is that?"

"You know. When a fox turns white to hide in the snow for example."