Morana knows she's different from other people in more ways than one. Firstly, she's sixty-seven years old but stopped ageing in her twenties. Weird things have also happened around her right after she's wished for it. But most importantly, no matte...
I answered Morana's question after question. It honestly felt a bit strange. No one had ever looked to me before as a source of knowledge, but I did rather enjoy it.
I had one thing, though, which had been nagging in the back of my brain since picking her up. It really was stupid, and I had no right to wonder what I wondered or feel what I felt. But I did, and the nagging grew stronger and stronger.
"Who was that dude, by the way?" I asked her and kept my voice casual. "Dereck was his name, right?"
"Oh, he's just a colleague," she answered with a shrug, but that far from satisfied me or made the tinge of jealousy go away.
She was not my mate. We were barely even friends yet. I had no right to be jealous.
"He seemed to view you as more than just a colleague," I pointed out and got up from the couch, not able to sit still. "I'm getting a soda. Want some?"
"Sure," she smiled and, by the looks of it, she didn't find anything amiss with my behavior. "And well, he is a friend as well."
I walked into the kitchen and opened my fridge. "Cola, Fanta, or Dr Pepper?"
"Cola."
I took two cans and walked back out. Handed one to her before opening mine and taking a sip.
"Known him long?" I asked and took another sip.
"Since I started working there. So about five years. Really would be nice to get it sorted so I could keep working there longer. Took me three years before he started thinking I was okay. Not really up for starting that process all over again."
She both sounded and looked sad as she said it. Her eyes were on the can she held with both of her hands.
Momentarily, my jealousy was forgotten, and I remembered what she had said the day before about people just not liking her. I could definitely see how that would happen. Humans would likely be able to sense the darkness in her magic, but since they wouldn't have any clue what it was... As I had said earlier, what scared people was the unknown and what scared them, they considered evil. Most must have avoided her throughout her entire life.
"You said you've lived in a lot of different homes because people didn't want you around," I said, remembering more exactly what it was she had told me about herself the previous day.
"Yeah. The longest I got to be in one place when growing up was 2 years. Between when I was eleven and thirteen." She smiled, but it was a bitter one which didn't quite hide her sadness. "I did my best to be as good as possible to be liked, be perfect, so I could get to stay. But then one day they had had enough of me and I was forced to move home again. After that, I couldn't bring myself to be perfect anymore. Sometimes I only got to stay in one place for a month before I had creeped them out enough."
"Did something happen in that home? I mean, something that could have caused them to send you away?"
"Yeah," she sighed and was quiet for a long time before speaking again. The concern I felt had time to become knots in my stomach. A part of me didn't want to hear whatever had happened. But another part desperately needed to know, and then punish whoever had hurt her.
"There were three other kids living there as well," she told me. "One girl who was about five, who actually didn't seem bothered by my presence like all the rest. But the two boys, one my age and the other older, avoided me like the plague when they weren't busy making things hard for me. One day, the couple who took care of us left for something. They were gone maybe two, three hours. The boys locked the girl into a room. Then they came to my room and..."
She closed her eyes, her lower lip trembled, and even though she didn't say what the two boys had done, I guessed they had hurt her both physically and emotionally. It made my blood boil with fury, but it was overshadowed by sympathy for her.
When she opened her eyes again, a few tears fell from them.
"They were surprisingly careful to not leave any particular traces on me. A few bruises, but I wasn't exactly a careful kid, so I always had some bruises. They then locked another door from the outside and climbed into that room from the window. When the couple came home, they claimed I had locked all three of them in. I tried to tell what really happened, but they wouldn't listen."
I placed my can of soda down and then took hers from her hands as well. After having done that, I pulled her to me, placed her in my lap to just hug her. She didn't resist, but simply leaned her head against my shoulder and let her silent tears continue.
"I've never told anyone that before," she said after a long time of crying in my arms.
"I'm glad you told me. It's not good to keep stuff in," I told her and rubbed her back in a circular motion.
"It's not like it really bothers me anymore. It's been a long time since."
That was an obvious lie. Her tears were enough proof of that. But I didn't contradict her.
"It's weird though," she continued. Her voice was very quiet, barely more than a whisper. "I don't know why I told you. It feels so comfortable talking to you. But I guess I'm just pathetically starving after friendship."
Morana laughed shakily, but my mind was elsewhere. She felt it too, the comfort and ease I felt being in her company. She felt the same about me.
It made me happy, but also all the more confused. Goddess, I wanted her to be my mate. But maybe the last thing she had said was the actual truth. I certainly was starving for friendship. Though I had some, I didn't have any I could spend time with on a regular basis. So could that explain why I craved her so much? Was I just pathetically starving for friendship?
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