Aqua Jewel

Chapter 5 - The Whisp

"I don't know," I repeated for the third time. "It just happened."

Lae sighed. My friends had been asking me the same question over and over since I'd saved the little boy from the pond. "What happened?"

I was telling them the truth. I had no idea, but Lae didn't seem like that very much. In her world, everything made sense. I didn't live in Lae's world and hardly anything ever made sense to me. "Well, there must be something you understand about the whole thing," she told me frantically.

"Yeah, I understood that that boy needed help," I said, getting annoyed.

"But nothing else?"

"Give up Lae, she doesn't know any more than you do," said Rennoc. Lae shot him an evil look, but she stopped talking.

Suddenly, I saw something moving to my left, right beside Alyk. My head snapped over to look but it was gone in an instant. Nika noticed my head turn.

"What is it?" She asked.

I hesitated. "I don't know."

Lae frowned and narrowed her eyes at me. She opened her mouth to say something.

"Lae," warned Rennoc.

Just then, Haras's eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. He lifted his hand and pointed behind me. The others all looked at the thing he was pointing at in curiosity. Their first impressions of it were exactly the same as Haras's. All except Alyk, who frowned as if he couldn't tell what was so different about whatever they were looking at.

Slowly, cautiously, I turned around. Standing in front of me was a girl about my age. She had very long black hair and a pretty face with perfect lips and long dark eyelashes, but the fact that she was so beautiful wasn't why my friends were gaping at her. The girl was colorless. She was all black-and-white. Her eyes and lips were light gray, so were the few freckles that went across her nose. Her skin was very, very pale. In fact, it was completely white, and that wasn't all. She seemed to blur with her surroundings, as if she weren't solid, like a ghost. I wanted to ask, "What are you?" but I knew that would have sounded rude, so instead I started to say, "Who are you," but Rennoc beat me to it.

"What are you?" he asked. Unfortunately, Rennoc did not have a very good sense of what is rude – either that or he simply didn't care. Fortunately, the girl didn't seem to take it personally. In fact, ever since I'd seen her, she hadn't made any facial expression whatsoever.

"I am a whisp," she replied. Her voice was dull. It was like there was something missing from it; kind of like a robot, but it was still smooth like a regular person's voice.

"Who are you talking to?"

We all turned to look at Alyk. He glanced at me strangely, as if he expected me to shout out, "Ha! Fooled you!" But then he quickly looked back at the whisp when he saw my expression and realized that we weren't kidding. Then it dawned on me. He wasn't looking at the whisp; he was staring straight through her. Alyk couldn't see her.

"He cannot see me," said the whisp. Well duh, we'd kind of already figured out that much. "I am surprised that even you can see me." She didn't seem surprised. Her facial expressions hadn't changed and neither had her nearly robotic voice.

"What do you mean?" Haras asked.

"You're saying that nobody else but us can see you?" Lae said.

"It appears so, yes," replied the whisp.

"But ... how is that possible?" asked Haras.

"We're not special," added Nika.