Sustainable

Chapter Five

Caelen

I stared at the girl in disbelief, my heart pounding against my rib cage. "You...you're like me? You're like me how?" I stuttered, still in total denial about what she'd just told me.

"I can do things. Change things, though not like you. I can change... people." she squirmed under my penetrating gaze, and I softened. Meeting me was just as difficult for her than it was for me. I lowered my voice, making it as soft and relaxing as I could to coax any snippet of information from her. "When I'm around other people, I can... mess with them. Emotionally, I think." She shook her small head; blonde curls flying. "What do you mean, mess with them?" I furrowed my dark eyebrows at her, and she stiffened. "Take your time." I added.

She took a deep breath and ran a pale hand through her hair. Shaking visibly, she clasped her hand with the other again. "I can make people feel things. Anger, and pain and stuff. It's like, I take over them emotionally and they don't even know." Her weak voice cracked, obviously close to tears. "I'm so scared of what I've become! Like, I'm abnormal. Why is it no one else can do these things? And then, all of a sudden, you turn up." She whispered the last sentence slowly, turning her eyes onto me.

Finally able to get a good look at her, the first thing I noticed was her eyes. Huge smoky grey orbs stared at me quizzical; asking me for answers I'd been searching for my entire adult life. They were heavily lashed with long and relatively dark lashes, and her skin was an ethereal shade of porcelain white. Small pink lips curved into a nervous frown, and wisps of almost impossibly pale blonde hair fell into her face comically. In all, she was rather pretty, in a cold and otherworldly sort of way, even though she was clearly very young - maybe about thirteen or fourteen. "Who are you?" Her abrupt question snapped me out of my gaze, and I searched around nervously. "And why are you like me?" She held her breath, awaiting some life-changing answer.

"I don't know, kid." I sighed, and her small shoulders slumped sadly. Her eyes began to cloud, and she rested her face in her hands. Small shudders wracked her body, and a sob escaped. "I thought... since you used whatever you've got so easily, you might know. That's why I followed you. I thought... you could help me." She continued to cry softly, and sniffed.

I frowned at the poor girl. All my life, I'd expected this to happen to me, but this girl had been left in the dark, only to find out in a way that could only be described as messed up. "C'mon, kid. You'd best be getting home." I pushed myself off the floor to stand, and she liked up at me, alarm in her eyes.

"I can't." She whispered in a strangled voice. "She knows what I am."